Relax and watch the EV roll in

Not all exploits have to be active. You don't need to "own" your opponents. Most of the time, they'll do it to themselves and you just need to be there with a giant net to catch them when they do.

I've been on a bit of a downswing lately and we're now in the process of grinding our way out of it. What happens to me during these times is I have a tendency to look inwards, assign some blame and then look to make changes. And unfortunately, I think this is detrimental to my game.

When you see your opponents make big deviations and mistakes, day in, day out, the temptation becomes to try to capitalise on all of those mistakes as much as possible. But the problem with poker is that capitalising on mistakes can often be very counter-intuitive and if you're a step behind in the levelling war then you're going to punt and kill yourself. And punts will destroy your WR.

It's hard to reflect on this because by trying to "force" your way out of the downswing and by changing too much you actually end up elongating it. Surrendering control is difficult but it's what the game demands constantly. Sometimes when times are tough, just relaxing and going back to your fundamentals is key for both your win-rate and your peace of mind.

This is what I have had to remind myself lately. I'm a long term winner in the games that I play in. And that winrate has come from my fundamentals more than it has come from forcing opponents into mistakes. Listening to a lot of top players over the years, you hear that statement a lot.

"I understand where my win-rate comes from."

I'm not sure that's always been the case for myself. I don't think I've asked myself that question often enough. We absolutely do want to deviate from theory in some spots but the frequency with which this happens can often be overstated. You see high stakes regs and their sick hands on YouTube for example. But what you're seeing is 5 hands out of 10000. And for those other 9995 hands, they played pretty fundamentally solid poker that setup those 5 hands naturally. You don't have to go for the soul read in every single hand. You don't have to own your opponents to generate win-rate. A lot of the time, your edge comes from small wins compounding over time rather than making -10bb calls that you think are profitable in the moment because your opponent is out of line somewhere.

Make small adjustments often, but don't overestimate how much you need to make huge adjustments.