Well I started this thread because I wasn't satisfied ebing only a 2.o winner. I had several good months to start the year, but I felt like I was just grinding away. So immediatedly after starting this thread, I went on a 45 BI downer followed by a long BE stretch, then another ~30 BI downer, all from the end of June to the end of July. During this 'bad run', I really stopped being complacent with my game, and started to try all kinds of stuff to get better.

The biggest thing that caught my eye, almost right away, was after downloading pokerEV, it seemed almost impossible to get a winrate over 3 playing an abc/standard TAG game. I would run sample after sample through, and I could never get my sklansky bucks(red) line to show that if I played near perfect I would have a 3+ winrate. Until this time I was playing a 21/17/3 style, but my W$WSF was at 39.5%.

After tinkering for 1000s of hands, I started to get better. For August my W$WSF was over 42%, and I had started playing a 21/18/3 game.

What I tried to improve was:
1. Started to play better in the blinds
2. Stopped autopiloting
3. Cut down a little on my tables, from 8-10 to 6-8.
4. Started taking better notes on the regs.(I noted anything unusual and any 3bet stuff)
5. I really started looking at flop textures vs a villains range.

From mid July on I had really started to experiment with scenarios. I figured out that I couldn't just play abc TAG anymore if I wanted one of those big winrates you hear about. I stopped trying to become unexploitable, and started trying to exploit anything. After I would try something out, I would try and figure out how to beat myself.

My Self Improvement process using scenarios
1. Run a manual EV calc on it, to see if it could be profitable.
2. Check as many ranges with Poker Stove that I could think of.
3. Figure out how to expoilt myself, or find the counter to my experimental strategy.
4. Then find a way to exploit the most common 'counter startegies'.

This kept me far ahead of any thinking player or reg, because I already knew what they would try, BEFORE they tried it. This made a lot of my adjustments feel natural. I had already run all the EV calcs for both my strat, their counter strat, and my re-counter strat. A lot of these scenarios where simple stuff, like 3 betting, flop raising, blind play, floating etc. I really had stopped taking lines where if do this...and villain does this...then I have no idea??? This had kinda limited my play, but I really started to play much better postflop.

I had solid months in Aug and Sept, then didn't play a lot in Oct or Nov(like 25k total hands), but still had winning months. I continued to progress some and regress some, but my W$WSF kept improving to around 44%. I really started to get a much better feel for what I was focusing on, but I sometimes over focused one thing and started to leak a little here and there. I continued to run scenarios, and get better but I was still running about 2-2.5 ptbb/100.

At the end of Nov, everything started coming into place. I had run dozens of scenarios and felt like I wasn't really limited anymore. I talked to a friend of mine and he told me I was on the right track, as he had just taken a few weeks before me. He showed me his graph where he had been killing Stars 200nl for almost 14 ptbb/100 over like 25k hands. Our stats where very close, as we had been playing a similar game, but I was still winning only marginally especially compared to him. This gave me a ton of confidence in what I was doing and where I was headed. December was by far my best month at 90 BI's(18k) running over 7.5 ptbb/100. I have hit a minor snag here in Jan, but I still pulled 45 BI's running at ~3 ptbb/100, and like I said the weekends have been terrible and I am still fighting some of my basic leaks. I also need to clean up some of my mental leaks, but I got a couple new books so maybe they will help.

So in summary it really has been a slow evolution over the last few months. I didn't really have any aha moments or sudden improvements, but I slowly 'equipped' myself with a ton of knowledge about applicable in game theory and adjustments.