[DrGonzo]

Very good post!

This is exactly what I and probably a lot of other itermediate players are struggling with.

When you first start out playing, you have no real idea of the relative value of a hand in different situations. As you progress, you learn the value of position, the value of different starting hands and the value of different made hands for different boards. You also learn to watch your opponents and adjust the rating of your hand based on how loose/tight/passive/aggressive your opponent is. Now, you can win some money, mostly from bad LAGs at the lower levels.

When you have learned that, I think many players get stuck. The next step(s) in expanding your poker knowledge seems to be much more diffuse and hard to find. Most of us have probably read about the levels of thinking that you talk about and understood them. I think that the majority of the players here at the forum find it very difficult to implement these ideas beyond the basic levels of thinking though.

I find that trying to identify an opponents level of thinking in different hands and applying higher levels of thinking often gets me frustrated and then I revert back to just 'waiting for good hands to play against LAGS and bluffing the tight players'.

Being more used to playing Sit-n-Go tournaments I also have a hard time identifying when and how to shift strategy based on how your opponents image of you shifts during the game. I understand that this is paramount for being a succesfull cash game player.

So, I know about and understand these theories, but find it difficult to apply them. You gave one example in your original post. It would be really great if you or any other experienced player could give some more examples of how to apply higher level thinking or how to shift strategy. I'm not talking about your most ingenious plays here. Which were the very first situations that you identified where you could use these ideas efficiently back when you were struggling to move from the basic 'value bet the loose players and bluff the tight players' strategy? Also, did you do anything special to overcome the obstacles of keeping learning at this stage?