The theory of evolution - poker and otherwise

It's been a while since I wrote anything but I feel this is a great time seeing as how I seem to be at a crossroads in both life and in poker. I start baseball practice tomorrow at 5:30 am and will be doing that 4 days a week. As a result I need to commit to earlier bed time and more exercise so my volume of hands will need to go down.

As far as poker goes, I crossed the 100k hands mark a couple days ago. I a in the midst of a downswing that has me questioning everything I know about poker. I've done tons of reading on these forums and watched Spenda's micro videos here and at grinder school and for a while I thought I was making progress. Now though, I just don't know. I tried playing TAGGy only to experience insane amount of variance which lead me to try playing a more passive pot control style which has only lead to more losses. I'm getting so frustrated because I feel like I am playing well when I play TAGGy but I seem to end up value-towning myself so often that I am beginning to feel like I need to scale back my aggression. Especially in 3bet pots.

I have a few questions for everyone who is more experienced than I am.

First, currently I am usually 3betting with hands like JJ+ In position and TT OOP. I also 3bet AK and AQs both in position and OOP usually. Additionally I tend to polarize my range a bit by 3betting some suited connectors IP. I'm getting a bit uncertain about my 3betting range such as the inclusion of AQ and TT-JJ IP. Is it better to flat these vs an EP raise to keep their range as wide as possible? Vs. a TAGG? Vs. a LAGG? Vs. any passive person? These questions I just can't figure out right now.

Second, I have really been trying to refine my Cbetting recently with mixed results. So I'd like to just throw out a couple theories about it and have better people let me know what they think. As far as Cbetting goes it is an interesting balance. The way I see it you want to be Cbetting wet flops to extract value with your made hands, ie TPTK and Cbetting dry flops with your airy hands so as to pick up the dead money. Obviously, Cbetting is also highly villain dependent but is that basic theory correct? For instance, if we Hold AhQd and flop TPTK on the board Qs7s8h this is surely a good spot to Cbet to both protect our hand and to extract value from draws. On the other hand if we hold AsQc on a board like Qs7s8s is this also a good spot to Cbet because of our nut draw? Or is this a better spot to check call?

As for dry flops. Let us say we hold JJ in a 3bet pot and the flop comes down 3h7cQs. Shall we 3bet here? The only hands calling us as far as I can see are beating us except maybe TT or AK. Conversely, if the board is 3h7c9h. Is this a spot to b/f? Can we assume that the only hands raising our Cbet are beating us?

Clearly I have an assload of learning to do since after 50000+ hands at 5NL I have fallen all the way back to breaking even. I just wish that I could really pinpoint my leaks because right now I simply have no idea why I am losing other than running bad and sometimes stacking off too light.

So it's been a while since I last posted. I'll admit my last posts are at best embarrassing and at worst just absolute verbal diarrhea not worthy of being read. However, I'll leave them there to remind myself of a mind state I hope to never be in again.

After getting a wake up slap in the face thanks to my guys in the IRC channel I have become remotivated in a way I certainly wasn't before despite feeling like I was (lol sentence structure). Gone are my days of auto-piloting 6 tables for a .08bb/100 hands and thinking that I am actually accomplishing anything. Recently there has been a lot of new responsibilities in my life and as a result I am needing to manage my time that much better. I am focusing on studying both in school and in poker a lot more than I have previously and I feel like it's paying off. I have recently received a 100 dollar bonus on FT that needs to be worked off in the next month, though I will most likely fall short since I have my baseball spring break trip coming up halfway through March.

Speaking of baseball, it has been a great source of inspiration for my poker game because of the amount of work and mindset that I approach that game with. I truly enter every bullpen, game, and practice with improving and winning at the foremost of my mind and this is starting to rub off on my poker brain.

Additionally, I recently got a job over the internet with the old company I used to work for testing some of their websites for bugs and though the pay is not exceptional by any means it certainly gives me a little bit of a comfort zone to the point where my poker can take longer to come along.

I'm trying, for the first time in my life, to keep everything in balance and to give each aspect of life 100% effort while also staying organized. It's certainly a tough job juggling poker, baseball, classes, work, and still managing to get enough sleep to function throughout the day but despite that I'm not feeling a lot of pressure and am actually relishing the challenge.

More updates with more poker related stuff later.