Full Tilt Poker Player Notes File

Hello,

While I am still on a poker break, I recently treated myself to one night of online poker for working so hard on my thesis research. I used my Iron Man medals on FTP to buy a $26 token. I played a NLH 6-Max KO tourney and finished 19th or 20th for a total of a little more than $100 with the several KOs that I had (each worth $4). I will leave it in there and treat myself here and there to a small game when I have some free time (which isn't all that often these days). I did play one of those Matrix tournaments which I found really awesome. If you haven't tried them, it's four SNGs for the price of one and if you are a half decent player, your risk of ruin in those is minimal and the profit can be decent too. But most of all, it's a nice bang for your buck if you just want to kick back an entertain yourself. For $1 you can play four SNGs. Not too bad.

Anyway, this post was about something that I found amazing about the new player notes file format on Full Tilt Poker. They have converted to an XML file format (it's about freakin' time). What this means is that you can now transfer your player notes from one computer to another with ease and even from one account to the next. I can also see them being posted online which may not be so great. All I need is the whole world to have a note on me saying how badly I played that 6-2o from OOP all-in. But the benefits outweigh the possible downsides. While I play more than 95% of my poker on my laptop, I occasionally play on my desktop and now I can finally transfer my notes. Also, my main laptop was out of commission for some time and I used a temp. I built up a lot of notes over the two months that I used the temp so now I can transfer those over. I suppose one can even trade notes with friends as well as others online and build up a notes database that can potentially give you information on tens of thousands of players. To see the file, check your Full Tilt Poker install folder for a file that is your user name and ends in .xml. For example, mine is located in the folder C:\Program Files\Full Tilt Poker\Tom Jefferson.xml.

Update: ohcaptain commented that FTP may have protections against editing the XML file. After reading his comment I began to wonder. I had not actually tried editing the XML before writing this post. So, test I did. Here's how it's done (it really isn't complicated at all). After locating the XML, open it in an XML editor or other HTML specific editor (not Word, Wordpad or Notepad). If you don't have one you can download some freebies on online (search xml editor or html editor). When you open the file you will see the following text.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- Do not edit this file -->
<PLAYERDATA version="1.0" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/schemas/client http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/schemas/client/PlayerNotes.xsd" xmlns="http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/schemas/client" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
NOTES>
<NOTE PlayerId="Player1" ColourIx="4" Text="Loose-aggresive player." />
<NOTE PlayerId="Player2" ColourIx="7" Text="Tight player." />
<NOTE PlayerId="Player3" ColourIx="7" Text="Newb." />
<NOTE PlayerId="Player4" ColourIx="7" Text="Overbets river when bluffing." />
</NOTES>
</PLAYERDATA>

Each <NOTE> "tag" had a PlayerId attribute. All you have to do is add new lines to the file. Make sure that you type the lines exactly as is. If you are not XML savvy it would be best to copy an existing line and simply update the attributes with new data. The ColourIx attribute is used for the color that you assign to each type of player. I don't know what number represents each color but if I am really bored one day I will test it out and post it. Don't keep your hopes up though. The Text attribute is the note itself. You can write whatever you wish here. There is one caveat, however. Certain characters need to be represented by their hexadecimal codes. For example, you can't simply use the "&" symbol. You must use &amp; to represent it. There are many such examples and you can look this up online. A good basic resource is http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp.

And the kicker (no pun intendted). You must have the FTP software closed when you are updating the file. If FTP is open it will erase all your updates when you close the software and reopen it. There is a reason for this but it's probably pretty boring to most people reading this. So remember, close FTP if it is opened (that includes the lobby not just game windows) and edit away. Enjoy! Hope this helps. If you have any questions, shoot me a comment.

See you on the felt,