[Vex]

Background:

For years I've been a donkey, playing what I think was a game that was only mediocre, and then when I wasn't on tilt and spewing. When tilting, I would either go maniacal lagtard when I was winning, or get really weak and passive when I was taking some horrible beats.

Recently I decided to take a break, regroup, study the game, and then go back in and see if I can't actually do better. So, I re-read parts of some books, and played a few thousand hands in Poker Academy Pro, really paying attention to the recommendations it makes and trying to learn from it.

I learned to tighten up, play more aggressively, and keep on an even keel. I think I was careful not to read too much into the actual playstyles of the AIs, though, because it's pretty obvious the Poker Academy bots are not great analogs to Stars microstakes players.

So, here are my first 10K hands or so. At the .25/.50 level I went on a heater and knew it; for about half those hands I was +9bb/100. But that beefed my new starting roll up enough for me to feel comfortable stepping up to the .5/1.

Once I stepped up I lost for a thousand hands, and I'm not sure if it was a cooler or just me adjusting. After that, it's been a bit of a rollercoaster, but the swings haven't been big and I feel like I'm beating the game.

Over all I feel I'm playing a pretty consistent TAG game. I think my weaknesses are:

1> Not enough river aggro
2> Not stealing / defending enough
3> Not open-raising enough
4> Not checkraising enough
5> I get thrown off by unexpected donk bets and checkraises

Now, the stats:

game_level $0.25/$0.50
total_hands 4786
vol_saw_flop 18.05
saw_flop_sb 22.55
co_folded_sb 80
co_folded_bb 91.67
att_steal 21.2
co_pct_wsf 30.55
co_total_won 86.95
co_big_bets_won 3.63
sd_pct 32.9
co_sd_win 57.67
pf_raise 7.56
co_flopaf 1.72
co_turnaf 2.03
co_riveraf 1.42
co_totaf 1.73
rake_in_game_won 51.55

game_level $0.50/$1
total_hands 5814
vol_saw_flop 17.23
saw_flop_sb 21.12
co_folded_sb 85.96
co_folded_bb 73.85
att_steal 21.35
co_pct_wsf 33.92
co_total_won 54.4
co_big_bets_won 0.94
sd_pct 33.67
co_sd_win 58.9
pf_raise 8.05
co_flopaf 1.76
co_turnaf 1.77
co_riveraf 1.67
co_totaf 1.74
rake_in_game_won 104.45

I would like to hear comments and advice, and will answer questions. I'll manually retype any additional stats from PT's "More Detail" report you want to see. (sure would be nice if it would export that one...).