[Marquis]

What stands out most to me about your advice here is that it is tight. I still value it and use it and thank you for it, but I think it's somewhat predictible that your advice will be at the tight end. Check behind. Fold, he has a boat. "Pumping paired flops is sketch." (I love that one.) I feel like you must be missing some value bets and folding too much, but maybe it's offset by the rest of us value betting to much and calling too much. Post some hands. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

droolie touched on something that I'd like to backup with my own limited experience of watching variance affect my earnings. I've never actually charted it, but when I look at my bankroll over short-term periods, I notice a lot of break-even, some huge upswings, and a few downswings. During my break-even periods, I'm not catching any draws and my big hands are getting cracked or winning small pots. What keeps me break-even during those runs is pushing small edges, often with small pots, by isolating bad players, taking well-timed stabs at scary boards, playing the opponents more than the cards, using my experience and all the tricks I've learned in these forums. Maybe I'm over-simplifying it, but that's what I currently believe. (Entity will probably prove to me that I'm full of crap and stupid and I'll move on, but that's besides the point.) Anyway, I don't think a tight style is conducive to this kind of play because there just aren't enough edges available for you to push. You can't "pick your spots," because they aren't there. Loosen up and stop worrying about the variance. All that does is lower your expectation.

Hope that helps and best of luck.

By the way, you should be able to get a brand new system for 4-tabling with no overlap for around $500. If you need help with that, PM me.