I've recently come to the conclusion that I'm not NEARLY as good at poker as I once was... and that I'm going to have to totally revamp my game with a back to basics approach until I'm capable of doing the things that actually made my old game work, and maybe learn some new stuff along the way. Anyways, on with the hand.

Game is deep and pretty soft. I've seen opponent a few times months ago and he was a losing player, sort of a semi-loose, semi-aggressive type, but I don't remember much else. He seems much looser and more aggressive tonight, and he's up a bit after some swings. Stack sizes are ~620-650 effective(he doesn't make neat stacks, and this happened a while ago), and I cover. Game is 1/2/2 with 5 min to go. High rake situation, 4+2, ugh, ugh. Probably won't be going back till they lower that rake...

Preflop we have 1 "limper" in middle position, and he calls from the HJ. I am in the cutoff with KQs(I forget which suit), and I raise to 25, Blinds fold, both call. Pot is 74

Flop is J-10-3 rainbow. Check to me, I bet 50, and the first player folds. He minraises me to 100. In general, I think when faced with a very small raise relative to pot and stacks like that, it's usually fundamentally more sound to call with a straight draw, but I've got overs as well, so I'd like some thoughts on that. I take a long look at his stack while considering whether he's maybe trying to set up pot sizes for a river shove, to give the impression of setting up for a shove to increase his fold equity, or just minraising for some inscrutable reason. Anyways, I elect to call. Pot is 274.

Turn is a 5 that puts a flush draw on the board(not of my suit). Seems pretty meaningless. Checked to me, what do you think I should do here?

I only got marginally better for a couple years. I thought getting better at poker was about learning a little trick here or there, tweaking my game and squeaking out progress. But then I started to truly understand thinking in terms of range and choosing betting lines that exploit the way people bet their hands. Now I feel poker is very little about learning objective truths like how certain situations are "supposed" to be played and is instead about learning how each opponent plays as fast and as thoroughly as possible so that you can exploit them.

The fact that you refer to your "old game" as if it were something fixed that you need to revert back to, and that you would like to add to it incrementally (as I used to think about my game) leads me to infer that you probably don't truly understand range based thinking and choosing to bet your hand in a way that exploits the way your opponent is going to bet the different hands in his range.

your preflop raise seems huge

I check back here

check back, you got your free card, take it.

minraise means top pair - AJ/KJ/QJ, imo. Don't ask me why they do it, they just do.

Why so much pre?

As played, check back USUALLY - unless V is in the habit of making moves and then giving up, which at LLSNL and from your reads sounds rather unlikely.

He could have a hand that won't fold the turn but doesn't want to bloat the pot anymore by betting himself (QJ comes to mind) so he elects to just CC down after bloating on flop. I doubt he folds for one barrel here, so if we are betting turn we have to follow it up with a huge bet on the river to get him to fold better hands. Plus, we have position and he is giving us a free card to beat him after making a nice pot for us. For these reasons, I check.

Also consider that if you hit the river, if he bets you can go all in, or even if he checks, he probably calls us since our hand is so disguised after checking the turn back. Fish NEVER believe you when you check back, and unless the flush draw comes in with our straight - he is calling a large bet with any hand that he value raised.

We still beat a lot of air that raised the flop, and if he has A high and an A comes on river he probably bets and calls our raise.

If river is a K or Q I probably bet smallish for value if checked to.

Don't try to get fancy here, either he got fancy or more likely he isn't folding but is still giving us a free card to beat him - take the card and plan on getting paid if we hit. LLSNL players will do this with like Jx+ sometimes, and then if you barrel turn and barrel river they will still say "ok, I guess you have a set, I call." I can think of a time recently where I had a hand like yours, put V all in on turn, he said "I guess you have two pair, I call." and showed J7 to win when I bricked river.

Yeah, this deep I flat the flop min raise too. If we were shallower, I'd just shove. Turn is a perfect time to take a free card, imo. No-one c/min-raises and then c/f a blank at LLNL. You have a lot of equity, don't throw it away by turning your hand into a bluff.

Okay, I'm afraid what I'm about to say will probably make a lot of people mad, and make me sound like a total *******. I have a hard time contradicting people because I'm afraid I will be condemned for it.

I'm not talking about my old game it like it's something fixed that I need to get back to. Rather, that it's a set of abilities, practices, and methods that I used to be adept at, and now am no longer adept at, and would like to be adept at again. People talk about "true range based thinking" like it's some sort of transcendental Enlightenment, something that must be experienced and taught by a True Master before one can comprehend it...it's not. When I first heard about it, I thought something like that, that it must be something super-deep, which required gobs of mathematical study to even start to understand. When I found out what it actually was, I was actually a little bit pissed off, since it seemed to me to just be deliberately obscure language for a relatively simple(though in practice often difficult to apply) concept. The only part where I ever referred to learning things incrementally was the last phrase in the first sentence. If that led you to believe that I was thinking like that, well, I apologize for being unclear.

Back when I was actually somewhere approaching decent, I was able to track pot odds, certain plausible implied odds, and weigh them against what my opponent's possible holdings were, quickly without too much difficulty. I devoted more thought to hand reading, manipulating pot size, thinking ahead to later streets, etc, partly because I had the time to do that, and I was just mentally used to doing it. I didn't use a HUD, and instead I would look up the stats directly on PokerTracker, which I think helped my game much more than using a HUD, because I was able to analyze my opponent's playstyle and what types of hands they would play in what ways, rather than just seeing "Oh, this guy is a 23/15/whatever". I think that led me to think more about exploiting my opponent and avoiding things that they could exploit. I'd plan hands out in their entirety much more often. I'd still make spontaneous plays, but they were generally the result of noticing some certain betsize, or something, that allowed me to heavily bias my opponent's possible holdings towards a certain, more narrow, category.

One of the things that I didn't do was use PokerStove, because I didn't know it existed. Instead, I'd set up EV equations with lots of terms, and a significant amount of "fudging", which was less accurate, and a lot slower. My preflop re-reraise and re-re-reraise sizing were poor as well, largely because I wasn't able to analyze a large enough number of possible holdings and how they affected the probabilities of other holdings for all players to work out a fundamentally sound method of optimizing my betsizes against a given set of opponent, and also because I never really worked at learning it by experience, since I figured(wrongly) that I could just outplay them after the flop. I also avoided memorizing the statistics and combinatorics for a lot of common situations, since I figured that was something I could do at any time, and that it would only give me a small extra edge. Those are the types of new things that I was talking about adding, and if you define that as individual increments, then I suppose we could call that incrementally adding to my game.

The problem with deciding to have a game based purely on adapting to defeat a certain opponent is that no change to my play really exists in isolation. A change in the number of hands I reraise in late position changes our opponents perception of what hands they are likely facing when we reraise, a change in our raise sizes changes the potsize on the next street, a change in our hand selection affects perceived implied odds, etc,etc,etc. I'm not talking just about table image, but also about the hard numbers. And unless I have the ability and experience to know the effects that a certain change in my play will have on other aspects of my game, then I won't be able to play a style based purely on exploiting my opponents well. I'm not saying that's impossible, but I don't currently have the ability to do so. I never even approached that, even at my absolute best. Until and unless I have the ability to do so, I'm going to have to make my adaptations more limited(rationally, with exceptions, of course. If some total maniac is moving all-in every other hand, things are simpler). I don't have the capability to find an analytical solution to each opponent, so I'll try to work out what affects my own changes are going to have, positive and negative, which ones can be analyzed, which are most important and which are, whether they will be noticed, etc. For me, at least, I've found this to be easiest when working from a combination of a playstyle or styles that I am experienced with, a foundation of logical truths that I can use to model situations, and, especially when we are actually playing, a well practiced thought process that lets me apply things I have learned in many new situations. Personally, I don't consider this a "fixed game".

Unfortunately, I'm not very good at any of that right now.

Standard raise here is to 15 pre. I've been adding +5 for each extra opponent. Do you think I should dial it back?

meh. check is invitation to bet and make him shake his head and go 'unbelievable' and pretend he's making a huge fold of AT or whatever. Or he calls and then you sigh/check the river if you miss (or just hit a queen) or shove a nine or an ace.

I know it's 1/2/2 but with the fact that it's 5min to play, can't we treat it as though bb = $5? I was thinking if anything make it $30 instead of $25 pre.

I take the free card btw.

Was there any particular resource that helped you understand and apply thinking about hand ranges and exploiting opponents accordingly?

I tried to apply what I've been reading and posting from 2+2 and got crushed this weekend (figures). Maybe it just takes lots of playing and reading before I see real results?