[stigmata]

Being totally straight with you Sean, it comes across as pretty arrogant that you go straight in and post this in the HSNL forum. There seems to be one post a month here that starts the same way as yours, and they normally get berated for it. I'm suprised this post hasn't been moved yet. There are great thinkers & posters all over this site and you would probably get a much better response by posting in an appropriate forum.... like beginners or maybe midstakes.

This forum (HSNL) is - to use a fashionable word - very "polarised" and the content tends to be either amazingly good or atrociously appalling. And the best content tends to be very specific to very tough situations versus great players in online high stakes games, and as such the advice is actually sub-optimal or plain wrong if misapplied to other games.

Anyway.... apologies for the rant. It sounds like your taking the right approach.

The truth is that the state of poker books for NLHE isn't great and they can only take you so far. I would advise just reading the hell out of the mid-stakes forum for the next year or two. Seeing how different people think and approach the game is the best way to learn, and I honestly think this site is the greatest learning tool for poker ever. Signing up for one of the video content sites (cardrunners/stoxpoker etc) is also a good idea. Then maybe think about coaching.