Friday, July 20, 2012
Zoom Poker Strategy
Why should I take notes?
Taking Notes on how your opponents play is crucial to
becoming a big winner at any stakes. Knowing how your opponent approaches
certain situations will allow you to take advantage of their play and eliminate
most of the guessing work. Depending on the time of day and the stakes that you
play in Zoom Poker, the player pool will be around 100-600 players. The smaller
the player pool, the more frequently you encounter the same opponents and the
more important your notes become.
Below is a list of tips for taking notes in Zoom Poker:
Sit out next hand
If you are playing 4 tables of Zoom Poker it can be very
difficult to take quality notes and play at the same time. Don’t fall into the
trap of taking notes whilst you continue playing on 4 tables at once. The
problem with this is twofold, firstly you will play suboptimal poker when
trying to concentrate on note taking and secondly, you may rush your notes and
end up with one that doesn’t make sense.
Abbreviate and
standardise notes
It’s very important to make your notes as short as possible
in order to make it easier for yourself to read later. If you’re note is too
long, it will distract you more than help you. By learning to abbreviate your
notes you reduce time wasted reading irrelevant notes. The format of your note
taking should be consistent. This makes it easier for you to quickly read them
and find key information. Use the same abbreviations and the same structure.
Bad Note example: ‘This guy raised pocket sixes under the gun, then
reraised all in when guy on the button reraised him preflop and everyone folded
around to him’
Good Note example: ‘Raised 66 UTG and 4bet all in to LP 3bet’
The bad note example isn’t terrible because it is a very
accurate account of what happened, it took into consideration position, range,
different actions etc. But the note is too long!
The good note is much shorter and says pretty much the exact
same thing but it makes some important assumptions. These are the assumptions
which you will treat as standard. In the good note, it was never mentioned that
everyone else folded. If someone had called or raised, then the note would say
that. The note also doesn’t mention stack or bet size so we assume 100bb stacks
and 3bb open raise. 4bet all in suggests the sizing was large since we did not specify
that 3bet was large.
Identify Player type
and Counter Strategy
Identifying which player type your opponent falls into will
allow you to carry out a generic counter strategy against this opponent in
order to exploit them. Is your opponent a TAG (Tight Aggressive), LAG (Loose
Aggressive), TP (Tight Passive) or LP(Loose Passive)? What is the appropriate
strategy to use against these kind of players? For example, your opponent is
Loose Passive, this means they call too much so your counterstrategy should be
to value bet them with a wider range and reduce bluffing. This information
should be placed at the top of your notes. E.g. ‘Loose Passive. Value bet wider’
Colour Coding
This can be a great way to identify players at a glance. A
colour coding system may look something like this. You should come up with
something similar and that works for you.
- Red – Aggressive players that either raise a lot, 3bet a lot or get really aggressive postflop.
- Blue- Calling stations
- Green- Players who fold their blinds too much so against these players you can steal their blinds with weaker hands.
- Yellow – Shortstackers
- Orange- Tough regulars/Tricky players
The more general the note, the higher up it should be.
Notes which involve very rare situations aren't as useful as notes which involve very common situations so for this reason, general insights should always be on top. Good general notes to take are, how does your opponent play flush/straight draws, small pocket pairs, medium pocket pairs, monster hands etc.
Common Mistake: Generalizing
too much and NOT Updating your Notes
Often notes will be taking based on a few hands that go to
showdown. You might make assumptions on how someone plays based on a small
sample. For example, you see someone go all in UTG with 23o, you immediately
assume that this guy is an idiot shoving any two cards. However, It is possible
that he is a successful regular who just misclicked and that this won’t happen
again. Chances are this isn’t the case but it is possible. So when you are
given information that your note is incorrect, do not hesitate to update your
notes. Extreme example: if the next 10
of his all ins, he shows AA.
Session Review
By utilising the Hand History Tool in PokerStars we can sort
hands by pot size. At the end of each session, you should analyse the biggest
pots regardless of whether you played or not. This will allow you to take notes
on players who you have yet to play a huge pot against. This is information you
have already paid for. Don’t waste it.
Combining Notes with
a HUD
Taking notes is very important when playing online poker.
But your notes should be used in conjunction with a HUD (Heads Up Display). A
HUD will track your opponents play preflop very accurately over a certain
sample size. The drawback of a HUD is that the preflop stats will be much more
accurate than postflop. So having good postflop notes on your opponents can
make up for this.
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