I'm pretty new to poker, but definitely getting into it, so I'm reading up on it - having a hard time finding a good book, but that's another story.

Some of the books I've checked out have advocated taking notes and using odds calculators during online play - both of these struck me as cheating.

Earlier I read another article that provided examples of note-taking in 'in-person' pro tournaments, so I'm over the idea of that being cheating and am now a 'note-takin fool'. My question is what should I be noting? So far I just make notes where I see something interesting - e.g. 'this player calls anything' or 'went all in preflop with 2 7 off, got lucky'. Sometimes these have been helpful, but I end up without notes on most of the players at the table. How can I take better notes? Or more to the point, what should I be noting?

Also, the idea of using odds calculators DURING online play - this still strikes me as cheating and/or unsportsmanlike. Thoughts?

I've been playing mostly free tournaments on winamax.fr that pay real money, just not much at all. Top 630 get paid out of 5000 usually, and the lowest winners get a couple cents. I do typically make it to the winning group, my best is 54th out of 4200 players, and I typically come away with €0.01 to €0.09 (I don't consider it too bad for free games). Obviously though, I'd like to come away with the top prize. Any general advice that I might be able to implement in the short term to help me get closer to that while I read up and polish my game? Specifically, I KNOW that I suck at bluffing, being bluffed, and reading the other players (I normally play a pretty tight and conservative game).

Sorry, I know that's a whole bunch of questions in a single post, but your help is appreciated.

-A noob

Poker odds calculators are not really needed during play as long as you have a decent understanding of math. It doesn't take long at all to learn the odds in poker. Taking notes is really important if you are playing for money against the same people regularly. But if you are playing for free it is not so important as long as you can memorize who is at your table. This comes with time. I would give Doyle Brunson's Super System 2 as well.