When you first get started on effective note taking, there may be a lot to work on, but as you progress you will find that as the bigger leaks get better resolved, which means you won’t take as many notes. Like all things though, you will get what you put into it, but the benefits that can be gained here are very significant. As long as you are well organized and consistent, you will find that your efforts here are time well spent.
Note taking provides the foundation for my entire program of self-review. A combination of live notes and after-session notes, kept in a poker diary, is the first step to improving your game as a poker player.
For after-session notes, we’ll need to go over the session afterward, selecting hands that at least appear worthy of review. You’ll want to look at hands that made and lost significant amounts of money, as well as any other hands of interest, including those you have marked for review during play. It’s best to look to view common situations together if you can, in order to better identify patterns in your play and what can be improved upon.
From there you can hone in on particular situations by applying filters to have your software look at specific situations. There are two main types of filtering you can do. The first is to find a selection of hands that have the certain characteristics you want, so that you can have a look at them and look to find better lines. The second is filtering for situations, like after you raise when you have a draw, to look at overall profitability, so you can discover whether certain plays make or lose money for you.
There also are add-on programs like Leak Buster that you can use to help find leaks in your game. I don’t recommend these programs. First, they are not meant for heads-up players, so none of the information will be relevant to you. Second, it’s far more effective to learn to analyze your own play. In the end there’s no substitute for putting in the work here yourself as it allows you to develop your better poker playing skills.
