I love 2+2! (sarcasm, long)

[beachbum]

So I start playing at Party in October of '03. I already read HEPFAP. Keep playing starting at 0.50/1, up to 1/2. Read TOP and Feeney's book. Never heard of www.twoplustwo.com or pokertracker. December of '03, I've progressed to 2/4. Continue to study the afore mentioned 2+2 books diligently while playing. My mentor/friend is Fulltiltpoker's current CEO who is the one who introduces me to poker. He tells me keep detailed records, keep playing, and continue to study. At the end of February '04 my rate is 2.27 BB/100 for just over 38,000 hands.

For the next month and a half, I play almost 32,000 hands at 3/6 and make 2.5BB/100. My last day of limit for the 7 following months is April 15 as I accept a new job offer and switch strictly to MTT. Oh, BTW I register for 2+2.com on 4/6/04 and make a half dozen posts or so before April 15.

Ok, laid off in September, get back into limit in November. Start at 2/4 because it's been a while. Start reading the limit forums again. People talk about this Ed Miller book, while all I know is HEPFAP. I post some hands, and read the advice in the small stakes and general hold'em forums. Seems everything I do is weak-tight.

General advice is ram and jam, jam and ram, keep ramming and jamming, then ram and jam some more. Value bet, raise, reraise because your hand has to be good against the complete donkeys at Party. Oh and ram, jam, cap. If you can, contact Party customer support to see if you can raise the cap on your particular hand to more than 4 bets, even make that hand NL, because my TPTK has to have value over Mr. 70/0/0.5's range of hands. Everytime you have a flush draw, bet, raise and reraise. The same with an OESD. You have JJ in the SB, cap preflop because you have pot equity, even against 6 limpers. Same with AK. Never check AK in the BB preflop, then try and check raise the flop if you hit because that's weak-tight.

Well now I have 20,000+ hands in since November and I'm at 0.87BB/100 at 2/4. Great. I'm not being results oriented and I appreciate variance, but I don't feel like I'm playing well. Maybe my game before was weak-tight, I don't know. But I don't feel being hyper-aggressive postflop is my style. I'd rather keep a potentially large pot to a medium size pot by check-raising to thin the field, or check-calling strong draws against 2 opponents, etc. if I can with that pot twice as often. Do creative things like trapping an opponent drawing dead in the middle by (God forbid) checking first once in a while. Check-calling or check-folding the river against 2 opponents when I've got a good hand but there's a pretty good chance I'm beat, rather than leading out and risk getting raised and reraised just because there's a decent chance I have the best hand.

Anyway, I'm partially venting because I'm frustrated. But am I the only one that feels this way here? Should I try to force my game into being something not quite comfortable at first, or try to find a happy medium? I mean if you have a fundamental problem in your golf swing, correcting it might be uncomfortable at first but will help in the long run. I don't want to play weak-tight, but I think selective, not hyper, aggression is the way to play. I'd love to hear feedback.


Chris