[negipai98]

Interesting post and you make points that myself and other micro players certainly need to consider. For what its worth, my sense is that you should play the style that wins at that particular level and not open up your game unnecessarily just for the sake of making your stats more impressive or gearing yourself up for the level at which you will play in a year. The reality is that the game changes as you ascend levels, and what works at one level may not necessarily work at another.

From a personal perspective, I was playing about 17/8/3 at 25NL and winning to the tune of 6 PTBB/HR over about 13,000 hands (not that many hands, I know, but representative to a degree). Some may laugh at those stats but I was winning because at that level you really don’t need to do much more. So what did I do? Well, I thought about how easily exploitable this would be when I moved up and decided to pump up my VPIP and AF. The end result was my stats looked great and I went on a major downswing to the point that I almost needed to drop down levels. It would be overly simplistic to say that the my downswing was solely caused by my change in style. Could I have played better post-flop? Sure. Did I tilt along the way? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, my original style was working for that level and there was no real need to modify it. Finally I decided to end the experiment and get back to basics (about 18/8/3 now for 8000 hands) and am doing fine.

I think we always need to balance the need and desire for improvement with the reality of the particular games in which you play. In some ways we fall victim to insecurities about how we play vis-à-vis how top players play and succumb to the need to tinker with what is working. Again, this is just my humble opinion, but I would recommend simply focusing on winning at the level at which you are playing, then adjusting as you move up the ranks. If you are smart, observant and a hard worker, you will be able to make the necessary adjustments and be successful.