Keeping track of your opponents

Player notes

The top poker clients let you scribble notes about each opponent that you can consult later when you see that opponent again. For example, you might write “calls with anything” or “never bluffs”. This is a great resource for adapting your play against different opponents. You'd need a photographic memory to keep track of all this information in your head.

To add a player note in Party Poker, right-click on the player's name plate. In Poker Stars, choose the Notes tab in the lower left area of the window; to see a player note, just hover your mouse over the player.

There is a great tool called Poker Tracker that automates this process. It reads your hand history emails to create a profile on every opponent you have ever played against. Then it writes a player notes database for the poker client to use. See our section on record keeping for more details.

Buddy list

Many poker clients let you maintain a “buddy list” of other players. You can see which of your buddies are currently logged in and, at some sites, the tables at which they are playing. You can use this to keep track of your friends…or to find that crazy maniac who was so good for the game the last time you played.

Real-time heads-up displays

Several third party software packages display opponent statistics directly on top of the poker table window, where you can use it in real time to help you make your decisions. Typical information is the number of hands the opponent has played, the percentage of flops seen, percentage of showdowns won and various measures of aggressiveness.

Where do these opponent statistics come from? There are two categories of heads-up displays. The first category uses statistics that you have collected yourself with a tool like PokerTracker (see our Tools page). Every time you play in a hand, or at some sites just observe the hand, you can save the hand history for later reference; tools like PokerTracker allow you to store the hand history in a database and use it when you ask for opponent statistics. The best heads-up display that uses this technique is Poker Ace HUD, which costs $25 (and you'll need PokerTracker as well). Another capable tool is GameTime+; it is free.

The second category of tool uses a centralized database of hand histories that is collected by the tool vendor. With this technique you don't have to maintain your own hand history database. A good example is Poker Sherlock, which costs about $15 per month for a subscription to the database. One disadvantage of tools that use a centralized database is that some poker sites have forbidden the use of such tools in their Terms and Conditions. (For example, see Party's “unfair advantage” statement, which specifically prohibits this tool.)

<-- Previous		Next -->
Keyboard shortcuts for Party Poker (and others)		Keeping track of your own play