Realization...

[JDMcNugent7]

This is a small part of Ray Zee's article on "The Stages of a Poker Player's Career" - It can be helpful to most here so I would recommend u read it

After describing the begining player's phase and the Evolution phase that follows, he gets to the advanced stage...

Ray Zee-
"This is the advanced stage of a poker player's career. Now the cat is out of the bag. He wins more often and gets what he believes is the right feel for the game. Great plays come about by pushing marginal hands and making fantastic calls on the end through his ability to read hands. Poker is fun played this way. But no longer is the tight player inside the body. All hands start to look like they have value, and with skillful manipulation winning the pot is easy. He begins to believe that he can play bad hands for profit where in reality he can't. The player has taken a big step backward and a long leap forwards at the same time. The tight style needed is gone and a new imaginative style is born and he becomes loose aggressive. Unfortunately for him, if he gets too loose he loses all his money and may never recover. But for those that are moving up the ladder, this is the last leap before the finishing stage."

As I read that I felt like I was reading completely about me and where my cash game is at right now. I've made alot of $ in the past, made some crazy good calls, and started seeing value in every hand. I became way too loose and in time it caught up to me. I feel like alot of us players who think we are "fairly experienced" are possibly at this stage, or maybe the stage before where ur actually still playing a little too tight and unimaginative... none of us are at the Expert Status that follows.

I just thought this would help many ppl on the forum and possibly show them where their cash game was currently at. My new "plan" is to drop down to 2/4 and 3/6 at cash while I re-work my game, trying to find a real nice balance between being creative and loose, with aggressive and tight. In the meantime hopefully I can keep brining in the $ from tournies, tho I really doubt I'll be playing much poker the next few days.