At what stakes does note taking become neccessary?

[Yabasa]

This is directed more so to the higher stakes guys who have worked their way up the stakes. At the moment i'm playing in $5 SNG's on FTP and i'm taking on average about 3 to 4 notes on my opponents at each table. I definitely find it a useful task as it keeps you focused on the game and helps identify your opponents tendencies. However it is relatively rare that you run into the same people again at those stakes and it can sometimes feel like a waste of time.

My question is at what stakes do you begin to run into the same people over and over again where keeping detailed notes on their play will add significantly to your EV or is indeed neccessary to beat the games?

And also how much effort do you think you need to put into taking notes and the lower stakes where the player pool is much bigger?

[dneureiter]

If you have time to do so no reason not to take as many useful notes as possible. Practice shorthand and just focusing on main points / leaks. sure it's not that useful at the 5s but I find alot of regs and fish play good volume at the 10s and knowing how they play is very valuable.

[taipan168]

I always took notes, even when I started out at the $5.50s (which were the lowest level at the time I started playing). I liked the discipline of observing other players and I came across the same opponents more often than not.

At the $27s where I've got in some cases thousands or tens of thousands of hands against the same players, I have very detailed notes on their leaks or tendencies (which tend to be pretty minor for the winning regs) as I'm sure they do on me.