Read: Slippery Slopes

Good poker players know that they should be aggressive when playing poker, but they also know that it's possible to be too aggressive. The same is true for VPIP; tight is generally better than loose, but only up to a point. In a sense, a large part of becoming a winner at poker boils down to finding a number of "sweet spots" in our play. We want to rarely cold call a raiser PF, but sometimes we should. Limp-opening pots is frowned upon, but you need to occasionally do so to mix up your play. Three-betting, check-raising, etc. all fall into this same category; there is a balance that lies between extremes. Unfortunately, these sweet spots vary as a function of table dynamics, opp tendencies, and stakes, so, in a sense, it's like trying to hit a moving target.

In a similar vein, good players know they should use math (read: pot odds, implied odds, etc) to make solid decisions, but they also need to realize that psychology comes into play, too. Both are important, but one shouldn't over-emphasize one over the other (read: Spock vs. Kirk; both are needed to save the universe, right?). Again, just how much science vs. art needs to be applied varies between tables.

In a related way, good players also walk the fine line between under-thinking situations and over-thinking them. Not rushing into a decision is smart, but the book Blink also showed us that it's very easy to over-analyze things in life and end up with the wrong answer. Going with our gut instincts at the poker table is a powerful tool, but it needs to be tempered with critical reasoning, hand reading, tell interpretations, etc.

The same "sweet spot" effect is true of the stakes that we play at; if we play at stakes too high for our bankroll, we don't play an optimal game (read: scared money), yet if we play at stakes too low for our 'roll or skill, we often play sub-optimally and loosen up too much. To play perfect poker, you want to be on the edge of your seat, but not so much that you're too terrified to 3-bet bluff or c-bet into a big pot.

So what's the point of all this? Well, I've lost more than a little bit of money in Project Hindenburg over the past few days, and I'm trying to understand why. The main reason I've come up with is that fact that I'm playing "a little off" my game. Not a lot, mind you, but just a hair too loose, and a tad too passively, and a bit too weak..... and it's made a huge difference in my results. I'm also playing at the $10 tables with a bankroll that is just big enough, which I think is also making me play a little off my game (read: scared money).

Mr. Multi and I have been talking a bit about this off and on recently, and the conclusion I've come to is that playing poker is a lot like trying to balance a ball on the top of steep hilltop that falls off in every direction. Rolling off the top of the hill in the one direction is "too loose." To the opposite side is "too tight." In another direction might be "too aggressive," and opposite of that is "too passive." There are other pitfalls in other directions. Another direction might get you into the "over thinking" regime, while the opposite of it might be acting too quickly. And yet another direction might be playing in games too small for your 'roll, while in the opposite direction to it is the scared money slippery slope.

Back in a college physics course, I recall a discussion of stability that used this same type of "hill" analogy. The professor showed a series of hill-tops that were unstable, meta-stable (read: sort of stable), and then stable:
Playing Perfect Poker is all about making yourself as "stable" as possible, which of course relates to tilt-proofing ourselves. We want to strike a balance between all the different aspects and factors in the game, and we want to adjust the "hilltop" in such a way that we have a deep, secure pocket at the top of our hill that keeps us from tilting off in any bad direction.... and losing money.... like I've been doing recently in Hindenburg.

[edit: another "sweet spot" that I forgot to include in the chart at the top of this post is MUBs vs. HBs. It's just as easy to fall into a MUB (Monsters Under Bed) mindset, and fold to big bets w/ less than the nuts on the river, as it is to fall into the HB (He's Bluffing!) syndrome, where the opp's bets are saying one thing, but you convince yourself that he doesn't have it. It's a fine line to walk, and very easy to start playing too much on the MUB or HB side of things, and not in the stable position in between...]
All-in for now...
-Bug
PS. Just to mix things up a bit, I've decided to allow myself to play the occasionally low-stakes single-table SnG in Hindenburg. Friday afternoon I played a 10-man $3.40 Turbo and took first place for a nice $15 win. It felt pretty good to break out of the cash-only restrictions of Hindenburg, but I'm not going to go crazy. Maybe 3-4 SnGs per week, max, in the experiment; the main focus remains NL 6Max Cash Games (If I can figure out how to be stable again, that is...)