Is It Possible To Become A Worse Player Over Time?

[Bryan15]

when do you think lag becomes effective 200NL??

[RyverRat]

I think it can be effective at 100NL as that is where the good players start creeping in. You need people to be level 2 thinkers and notice opponents behaviour and also know that they can lay down hands.

[Mase31683]

Stop worrying about players at micro always having the nuts. (Refer to my location) You have to keep betting at them, because they're generally loose players, which means value bets pay off. You may have just hit a bad streak of cards, that happens from time to time.

Don't change your game just yet, look at what you're doing different. Go over your PT stats, and see if something's changed. You may have stopped value betting when you felt like these guys are always having it. It's okay if you did, but accept it and fix it.

Looser players will tend to have large stacks, but they also tend to go broke. You just don't see them when they've done the latter because they leave. Playing looser is going to increase your variance, so they will have super stacks sometimes. Don't try to play their game just because it looks like it works for them.

The best thing you can do is analyze your play. Check out the posts on using PT to evaluate, I think by Pokey, it's very good. Be brutally honest with yourself, this is the hardest part for me. I want to believe that I'm a great player, but I'm not yet. I have a lot of work to do, as most players do. The best thing is when you find a flaw, it makes you that much better a player.

Get back on the horse, and give em hell!

[LiveInPeace]

Its possible to become a worse player over time if all your opponents are getting better

[JH1]

[ QUOTE ]
Stop worrying about players at micro always having the nuts. (Refer to my location) You have to keep betting at them, because they're generally loose players, which means value bets pay off. You may have just hit a bad streak of cards, that happens from time to time.

Don't change your game just yet, look at what you're doing different. Go over your PT stats, and see if something's changed. You may have stopped value betting when you felt like these guys are always having it. It's okay if you did, but accept it and fix it.

Looser players will tend to have large stacks, but they also tend to go broke. You just don't see them when they've done the latter because they leave. Playing looser is going to increase your variance, so they will have super stacks sometimes. Don't try to play their game just because it looks like it works for them.

The best thing you can do is analyze your play. Check out the posts on using PT to evaluate, I think by Pokey, it's very good. Be brutally honest with yourself, this is the hardest part for me. I want to believe that I'm a great player, but I'm not yet. I have a lot of work to do, as most players do. The best thing is when you find a flaw, it makes you that much better a player.

Get back on the horse, and give em hell!

[/ QUOTE ]

This is excellent advice. I also thought I was becoming a worse player after joining 2+2 - I went from 8 ptBB/100 to breakeven over 40k hands.

I figured out about a month ago what was going on. I was reading all these books and all sorts of strategies online and trying to implement WAY too many of them, and often times improperly.

So I went back and just played by "feel" like I used to and started to retrain myself. I would read maybe 2-3 of the stickies in the micro forum, then play for a couple of days trying to get the hang of what they were saying. And if one of those strategies/plays didn't fit my playing style, I threw it out the window.

Eventually I went back to those stickies that didn't make sense to me to try them again, this time with a better understanding and more and more of them worked. Some still didn't but that's ok.

As for playing TAG or LAG, I don't think that LAGs necessarily make more at the micros at least. The important part of both playing styles is the aggression part, not how many hands they are playing. If you want to play LAG you have to be an excellent hand reader. If you play TAG, you don't have to be quite as good (keep working on it though) because people should be giving you a lot more credit and if they are playing back at you, they have something unless they are a complete LAGtard.

I've been running at 14/8/2.7 over the last 40k hands and I'm making my 10+ ptBB/100 just as easily and with less variance as the LAGs.