I feel as if my game is undergoing some major transition. It's a process, that's for sure. But lately every single day I've just been discovering/re-discovering things about poker and my brain feels like it is on fire. IDK how well I am going to be able to put this into words but I'll just ramble a little bit here and leave you scratching your heads.

Here's my take on 'Theory':

Sometimes you just need to step outside the fucking box. Yeah that's right, get outside you drone. Videos and forums have constantly preached at you to think in a one dimensional way. You are a clone like bi-product of reading words written by strangers and then believing, accepting, and implementing what your digest into your so called poker game. I say fuck what you heard. Drop what you learned from the forums and videos (posts like this are meant to exagerate a point so like, don't literally do this lol) and start to take shit into your OWN hands. Start looking for spots to take lines you've never taken before against your regular opponents if you find they aren't giving up much to you. Your image is important for your bottom line and you'd be surprised about how some people will react if they think you are 'bad'.

When was the last time you raised a cbet with JT on J62r?

I bet you never have you uncreative piece of sloth.Because that wouldn't be the optimal way to play the hand right? You want to make the standard play right? The one you feel comfortable with? The one your regular opponents EXPECT YOU TO MAKE. This is sort of an example of theory in a vacuum. It's certainly easy to tell someone what the so called 'optimal' way to play a hand is just by looking at a hand history you posted on the forum (most players would always flat call here). But does that hand history really tell the whole story? Go back and read Sklansky's Theory of Poker because you seriously just missed something.

So you continue to make the plays, you are expected to make, 100 percent of the time. You occasionally take some money off the regulars who are too dumb or spewy to notice your hand is often face up, and you crush the fish with your solid fundamentals. But is this really enough? Will this carry you further in poker? Or will you be grinding .5/1 for the next 3 years? How can we move beyond SSNL with this fundamental base of knowledge? I'm not fully qualified to tell you how to beat MSNL or HSNL. But I'm currently in a transition from SSNL-MSNL and I am constantly questioning the way I think and trying to construct a better way of thinking for the challenges that lay ahead. My game plan and playing style is undergoing some construction, so I may not be filling in all the blanks here in this post of what is on my mind.

In the JT hand example I believe the optimal play is to raise a certain % of the time. (But who the fuck actually deviates from their standard plays right?) The question of when to mix it up and why simply can't be answered just given a hand history and no further data. You just have to figure that out for yourself. Playing your hands in that 'standard' way every single time is not going to make you a tough regular who is capable of anything. It's going to make you an easily readable tag-fish robot who will get eaten the fuck up by anyone with half a god damn brain. Fortunately everyone sucks huge donkey dick at SSNL so you don't have to get too creative to survive.

Poker isn't played in a vacuum. You probably hear this all the time. I read it all the time from when I first started till the time I wrote this post. But do you really understand it? Just asking yourself the question isn't how you will find out. Try taking some weird lines in your game next time you play against the regulars you play against the most (preferably the better ones) and you might learn a thing or two.

Nw you might ask, 'well why would I ever choose a play with lower EV over one with higher EV'?. If you ask this question you aren't thinking outside the box and are misinterpreting Expected Value IMO. I'm not saying you should be ditching higher EV plays consistently (in fact you may discover some of the 'non standard' ways to play a hand turn out to be more profitable in a vacuum). Pick your spots and always have a good reason for what you do.