retooling - review

so i've retooled my game now and i just wanted to really review the process and share my thoughts on my game as honestly as possible throughout the process.

before retooling:
looking back on the way i played before i'm surprised i made any money! hows that! i was really tight and selective about the cards i played and i never made a move on anyone unless i was tilting and just got lucky they didn't have the goods either.

the way i played, i really grinded, waiting ages for those premium hands only for everyone to fold to my raise as it was the only one i had made. i got lucky on some instances where some donkfish would play a long with me and i'd stack him but those occasions were pretty rare and i think playing at 3bb/100 provided that point.

so why did i play that way. well probably because of slansky and malmuth! play tight, play super tight. give credit and only show down the nuts. thats all well and good but in nlh you rarely get to see a showdown so waiting around for the cards and the play to align so i could show down aces really didn't help me on a path to a steady profit :)

looking back, i really sucked, and i mean really sucked! most poker players blame the cards, suck outs, bad beats or the poker gods and i did the same. but guess what, it was me. i was just a bad player!

post retooling:
right now i love my game. i'm really happy with the way i play, my reads, my aggression, my table awareness and many many other things. the retooling process was well worth the effort and the strange feeling of admitting to myself that i wasn't a winning player or would never move beyond the micro stakes.

i will however say that since i started retooling i have run bad in places and you only have to look at the two hands i posted a few days back to see that i'm not making it up and i'm not lying to myself. reviewing the session where i lost $46 or about two buyins you can clearly see that the biggest pot a lost outside of those to $25 a piece coolers was $2.25, there were no mistakes in between, no chasing draws, no calling when i was behind, i was just playing solid grade 'a' poker and it was working.

i had another little session just to see if the above wasn't true and to see if i hadn't learnt as much as i thought and the results are as follows

nl25
106 hands at 17/16/8
+$39
74bb/100

verdict: crushed!

so with that said i look back over the last week where i basically erased everything i had learnt right or wrong and approached the game as a total newbie. i invested about 8 hours running through videos in detail and probably the same playing 2 tables and my understanding of the game has increased sooo much!

there is still so much more to learn but right now i actually feel like i have the foundation of a game that i can build on, get better and ultimately move up the levels and make a profit. the futures bright, the futures poker, hehe!