A great poker player requires - great memory/hand recollection?

[spector]

I have just been going over my game in my head recently and I was realizing how little I usually remmeber about my sessions. Partially do to me being only an online player, I really do not keep tabs on the regulars and such that I am playing against online. I just don't remember peoples handles and such. You always hear poker annoucners on TV talking about how great players like TJ have ridiculous hand memories and such. Is it something that is required in all great players? I will write notes on someone if they do something I find particularly strange or if it is something that reaffirms a previous read I had on them or something but thats about it. Is that pretty normal for people playing 4+ tables?

[fraac]

The ideal player would have perfect memory, along with a need to exploit and no desire to destroy themselves. Stu Ungar had the first two. Not sure anyone has the last two together, they seem to exclude one another. I think you can be pretty good without conscious memory. Pippa Flanders says she can't recall previous hands.

[tewall]

Memory mostly has to do with understanding. If you read what the good players say about memory, you will see that they mention remembering the relevant factors of the hand. For example, they may remember the flop was K x x with no draws possible, but not remember exactly what the x's were. But they'll remember the action before it got to them, how people had been playing, etc.; all the relevant things that went into their making a decision.

When you're multitabling, you're not putting that much thought into many decisions, you simply don't have time. So it's not surprising you wouldn't remember hands.

I remember years ago when I used to play in chess tournaments, I would remember every move of every game with no effort at all. That simply came with thinking so much about the decisions I was making.

[PJo336]

That was actually a memory exercise. I forget where I read about it, but professional chess players and amatuers were both shown a chess board with pieces in certain places, then they were asked to reconstruct where each piece had been. The professionals showed a much higher rate of correct placements. The point is, observation and memory can more or less be aquired based on repeated exposure. Even if you feel you are not remembering much, odds are the more you are playing the better you are getting at it.

[TomTom]

[ QUOTE ]
That was actually a memory exercise. I forget where I read about it, but professional chess players and amatuers were both shown a chess board with pieces in certain places, then they were asked to reconstruct where each piece had been. The professionals showed a much higher rate of correct placements. The point is, observation and memory can more or less be aquired based on repeated exposure. Even if you feel you are not remembering much, odds are the more you are playing the better you are getting at it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I remember it differently. Expert players made different mistakes then good players, as the good players remembered the board exactly, while the experts made mistakes in placement where the situation was equivalent; essentially expert players remembered the situations and not just the raw pieces.

Not sure how this applies to poker unless you remember every turn and river as "BLANK."

[fraac]

It's hard to remember random events. I find, anyway. Poker much harder than chess to recall history. Cause and effect, "I did this so you did this, so I..." is easy, but so much of poker is mere playing the odds.

[Mike Gallo]

If you do not know how your opponents play, you will have a difficult time putting the player on a hand.

If you can't spot the sucker at the table within the first five minutes of sitting at the table, then you are the sucker.

I do not play online, so take this information with a grain of salt.