Just getting started with NoteCaddy? Read this first!

If you want to watch a webinar (English) http://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/33136/

Полная русская инструкция NoteCaddy -
Español NoteCaddy para HM2. Documento de ayuda | Hidro
Českoslovenští uživatelů Note Caddy - zpravodajská

Everyone knows that NoteCaddy takes notes for you. However, not everyone knows that not all notes are created equal! There are some settings in NoteCaddy that require explanation but changing the default values can give you much better information.

First things first, whether you're using NoteCaddy basic or NoteCaddy premium, you need to enable it in HM2's HUD settings

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro...ud_options.png

You'll see I have highlighted two options. The first is to use NoteCaddy in the first place. I assume if you're reading this, then you'll want to select that one :)

The second one is "start caddy report on hud launch". This one isn't required but of course it is recommended. The caddy report serves the following functions:

-Gives you a listing of the notes that NoteCaddy created while you were playing and allows you to replay the hands at the touch of a button for instant review.
-Lists the hands that you recently played and gives you the ability to instantly replay them and mark them. There is a little checkbox to the right. You just click it and the hand is marked. No more forgetting or having to go through the hand viewer. Just keep the caddy report open in a corner and it is now one click away! If you stack tables and missed the showdown this could also be an easier alternative than trying to find the table again and replaying.

So now that I've sold you on the caddy report, it is time to restart HM2. When you do, NoteCaddy will load automatically. You'll get the first confirmation of this when you look at the bottom left of your screen

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro...ting_notes.png

NoteCaddy will quietly do its thing while you do yours. If you're using NoteCaddy basic, you can stop reading here because the rest of the article is for premium only.

If you look closely at the speed at which hands are processing, you may notice that it is very slow. The reason for this is so that your CPU usage stays very low. When some people see HM2 using 40-50% cpu time, the conclusion is that any slowdown is caused by this. This is not necessarily true though because you still have 50-60% capacity on your CPU! What we'll do next is increase the speed of NC dramatically and then you can make your own conclusion about whether it has an impact on your performance.

Let's go into the NoteCaddy tab at the top of HM2 and click "run NoteCaddy" which should be at the top left of your screen. Next we go to file->settings and we see a screen similar to the one pictured.

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro...e/nc_speed.png

I've highlighted the two things you should consider changing. First off is "use turbo hand grabber". This opens a much faster connection to your database. The next item is the thread count. By default this is set to 1 but you can set it higher depending on how many cores your computer has. If you have an i3 or any type of underpowered machine you may want to leave it at 1.

Next we'll move to the "note settings" tab.

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro...e_settings.png

You'll see I've highlighted 3 items here.

Add notes for hero This is pretty straightforward. If you pick this, NoteCaddy will make notes for you. Prior to HM2, it was recommended to turn this off because it created too many notes to look at while playing and was mostly useless. With the HM-App, it's different. While playing live, NoteCaddy will work much like your stats do. Each of your stats like VP$IP shows in your HUD only for that table. Now the hero notes work the same way. This is good because it helps you figure out your table image. If you ran a big bluff and got caught, there will likely be a note for it and you'll know that you look like a maniac! You can use the hero notes later for self analysis as you do with your stats.

Show net profit in notes This one is also pretty simple. Notes were generated from hands and when someone plays a hand, they either win money or lose money. This option will show you the net result. So if you have a note like "3 bets hero" you can see how the villain did in those pots. Did you crush him? Now you can know in an instant!

Print results for implicit strength/weakness in notes for appropriate variables I know I am going to get myself in trouble for even bringing this one up but it's just too good of a feature to ignore. Many of our notes discuss the strength of hands players take certain actions with. For example, "continuation bet ace high flop". If someone shows down then we get some great info. Unfortunately, showdowns are pretty rare for most games. Is there nothing we can learn from these hands?

Well, maybe there is. I go back to my "continuation bet ace high flop" example. If the other player in the hand raises the continuation bet and the original bettor folds, this is much different than if he shoves. So if we say that in the hand where he folded he is "implicitly weak" it would be logical. If he's folding it's because he was probably weak. The opposite would be true for the shove. Sure he could have shoved 3 high but we're just going to take away the conclusion that he showed strength and take it for what it's worth.

So, in short:
-if someone continues showing aggression in the hand but after the note was taken, it is implicit strength
-if someone folds before showdown in the hand where the note was taken, it is implicit weakness

Simple, right!?

Spark graphs

So by now you know that NoteCaddy will show you ranges of hands. What happens, though, when we have 9000 hands on a player? He has probably shown down for each note maybe 20 times. Can we really be expected to read and understand that in the 2 seconds we have? Of course not! If only there were some way to condense that information so it could be instantly . We do agree with you though, it would be cool to implement if there was a logical way to do so without providing confusion in-game... at this time that technology doesn't exist... maybe in the future if we are lucky.

Just kidding it does exist! It's called CaddySpark. Here's an example.

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro...rtial_note.png

So here we get our first look at a NoteCaddy note. The CaddySpark graph is on the right. We see the note is "cbets in position". It is hopefully understandable that when we see (107/190 56%) that means that in 190 hands where he could have cbet, he did so 107 times which works out to 56% So now looking over at the spark graph, you'll see there is more activity in the area where it says "strong". This means that most of the time when this player showed down, he showed strong hands. If we think about it, it's logical that the low percentage would correlate with a stronger range.

The idea is that the strongest possible hand is all the way to the right and the weakest to the left. So if it's based on pre flop, then AA is all the way to the right and 72o is to the left. Post flop, whichever hand is the nuts would be to the right and 3 high to the left.

Finally, we see the play button in the middle. Clicking this will pull up all of those hands for you to review.

Implicits, part two

But we're not done with implicits yet! Wouldn't it be good if the implicit strengths could be represented in the spark graph somehow? Indeed they can.

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro...d_settings.png

On the above screen, we can set spark values for implicits. Let's have a look at the same note with the settings already updated.

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro.../full_note.png

You can see the spark points have changed quite a bit. Around 20% of the way to the left, we have a very tall line. Looking back the the image above that you'll see that "implicit weakness" we set to 20 and strength was set to 80. So why is that 20 line so much taller than the 80 line? Because this player is weak! Assuming is cbet didn't work outright, he ends up folding quite often. He doesn't keep showing strength in a way that is effective at winning without showdown. That is arguably very good to know.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Olaf

Without Implicit:

Good hand: Nut Straight,Two Pair
Bad hand: Middle pair (Not so good for raise flop - semi bluff)

Good hand/Bad hand = 2:1

With Implicit:
Good hand: Nut Straight,Two Pair
Bad hand: Middle pair, Implicit weakness*5

Good hand/Bad hand = 2:6 = 1:3

The other thing you'll see added to the note now is the +429.9bb. That means despite looking like a weak player from his graph, the fact is that continuation betting in position has still proven quite profitable for this guy. We certainly get a mouthful of information from that little square!

Basic player pool analysis

Still awake? Were you left wondering about the profitability element? How profitable is the average player when continuation betting in position? How often does the average player even continuation bet in position?

To answer these questions, we'll just make some quick customizations. On the top right of NoteCaddy, you see the section called "note definitions". If we right click the header (where it says "definition name") we get a drop down menu as pictured.

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro...mn_chooser.png

We'll choose column chooser and see the options displayed as follows.

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro...n_chooser2.png

These are all aspects of the definition that can be displayed. We drag and drop the ones we want back over to the header. I choose "average", "avg strength", and "net bbs" and my screen looks like this:

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro...ew_columns.png

The average is the average percent of the time it happens. So on average, our player pool is cbetting 69% of the time. The strength is also 69. That means that the average point on their spark graph would also be 69. Finally, we see that the player pool has won a total of 2183 big blinds by doing so. Time to continuation bet more!

If your thirst for knowledge continues, right click the definition and click analyze. Here you have an options of graphs that are similar to those shown in hm2. The exception here is that you can see how the profit is distributed among players and a full list of hands that generated the data.

http://www.assaultware.com/img/intro...n_analysis.png

Ok that's all for now. One thing to keep in mind is that we have just scratched the surface! All this data analysis is of course available for any definition we made ourselves too!

Make sure to check out AssaultWare blog where more articles will be published

Here is a list of the videos that are found embedded in the software

Intro to NoteCaddy hm-app
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/intro_hem2.wmv

Advanced Tutorials
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/filters.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/test-environment.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/hud-options.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/player-types.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/flop-actions.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/fl...us-actions.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/flop-range.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/flop-general.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/preflop-actions.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/pr...us-actions.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/holdem-cards.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/preflop-general.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/variables.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/general-tab.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/no...put-editor.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/pl...te-history.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/settings.wmv
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/cr...efinitions.wmv

Excellent document explaining implicit strength/weaknesses (contributed by user TJD)
http://www.assaultware.com/videos/implicits.docx