Going for the throat, leak-fixing that just falls into your lap

February has been going great so far, a huge improvement over weak-tight January. I've rekindled my killer instinct by re-reading Small Stakes Hold'em and my redline is thanking me for it! It's funny how sometimes improvements come from seemingly random events. In one hand this month, I open 99 in EP, get called in blinds. I flop the nut top set, make a hefty bet and get called, ditto OTT. River a full house and shove about a PSB, thinking he either had a lower FH or a busted draw. Villain goes in the tank and finally says "Frank H?", tanks some more and says "should have 3b my AA and see you fold PF" and folds.

My read was wrong but I didn't think much of it and continue playing. However, over the next 10 mins, the guy gave me a total preflop whooping, 3-betting, 4-betting and even a 3b/5b where I attempted to 4b bluff him. Everytime I had a weak hand and folded. Just as I were ready to start adapting, he shut down completely. Later on, I was browsing friendlypoker and I saw a post with his name "1k$ in 1 day" and I looked at the graph inside. I just couldn't believe a nitty player could do so well in 1 day. Some of it is variance of course, but I was intrigued.

He happened to be online at the time so we started chatting. We happened to have completely opposite playing styles. I tend to prefer LAG while he was squeeky tight around 12/9 and we started exchanging tips and pointing out leaks in each other's game. We started talking about different strategies with different hands and he pointed out how tight I was to resteals and how easy it was to exploit me. I had always known I was too tight to resteals but I never gave it that much thought until that day.

It's funny how that particular 99 full house ended up being worth a lot more than a mere pot. After our conversation, I really looked in-depth at many spots in my pre-flop game that were badly in need of improvement (IMO, preflop was my weakest street up to that point). After that I played a few sessions, tweaked my preflop game with new strategies and it worked wonders. I really think that fixing those leaks will have a big impact on my bottom line. I look forward to find out how it works out over a good sample and I am psyched to play some poker!