Making Your Game Less Exploitable

[PuppyFridayYall]

When I first started playing at Full Tilt four months ago I was playing .10/25 NL. A few things clicked and I turned my initial $500 deposit into $80,000. I played 10/20 NL from $40,000-$80,000 and then I went on a huge week long tilt/bad luck infested downswing losing all but $13,000. If you were to graph my upswing from .10/.25 it would be a straight line up to $80k.

Since my downswing I've strictly been playing 5/10 and it seems that it is taking me MUCH longer to ascend to 10/20. OBVIOUSLY I RAN WELL INITIALLY. On my upswing I only played 5/10 for a week or two before I had enough to move up to 10/20. It's been nearly two months since my huge downswing and I'm still at 5/10...bouncing between $15,000 to $30,000 twice already. The earning has been also much slower. And I think I know why--I'm being exploited by players familiar with my game.

Since I've been playing much longer now with the players at 5/10 they have had the chance to collect hands versus me to store in their Poker Tracker database. I own Poker Tracker but do not own a Poker Ace HUD so I can't look at stats during gameplay. I also play on a Mac the majority of the time so I'm unable to run Poker Tracker. I own it, that's about it.

I think three things have contributed to my current situation: running extremely bad, tilt, and regulars exploiting whatever stats they have on me; when I think about my fast rise as an unknown at each level and now relatively swingy, slow crawl back up I think the latter factor is the most important.

How likely is it that my game is being exploited by regulars who know my cold call percentage/aggression factor on each street etc. ?

To counter this I wish to make my game as unexploitable as possible. I would describe my game as being semi-tight, aggressive, with a bit of wierdness thrown in--so, as a fairly standard player, I'm a little unsure as to how to go about doing this and I would like your input. Is the idea to make your opponent think you could have anything at anytime? Would the effect of that not almost make it hard for me to judge how to play the hand? By that I mean that since the opponent doesn't know how to play against me how would I begin to interpret what his moves mean?

So...perhaps that's not the idea? Or maybe it is, but to just a degree. Really, what am I missing here?

Do I have to use Poker Tracker?

I'm confusing myself just writing this. The point is, it's likely I have several leaks that are easily exploitable for those with HUD programs and enough hand history with me. I wish my to make my game less exploitable.

Cliff's Notes:

Essentially, it's likely I have several leaks that are semi exploitable for those with HUD's and enough hand history with me. I wish my to make my game less exploitable.