Focusing on quality more than quantity so far

So the month is almost over and the bankroll is right at $1,700. I have only played about 80k hands this month, way less than I had planned on. But that's okay. I ran pretty bad the first week of the month; not so bad it destroyed by bankroll.. but bad enough that I spent a few hours pouring over pokertracker and analying my game. Some of my play seemed really solid but what I did find that appears to be a huge leak was some of my passive play preflop in the 3-bet and 4-bet game.

Now you are thinking. whoa buddy, don't level yourself. This IS 25nl.

Well I hate to say it, but 25NL is not like it used to be. People actually do 3-bet light and bluff when their range is perceived to be strong and play a much more competent preflop game than one would think. That's not to say that there isn't a fair share of fish, even the regs are pretty dang fishy at times.

But even though I feel I have a huge edge postflop vs your average 25NL player, I felt I was getting outplayed preflop enough of the time for some concern.

So in the last 2 weeks I have steadily been opening up my 3-bet game and bluffing a lot more from the blinds against serial blind thieves. I have also been 4-betting light quiet often against habitual blind defenders. I find that 3-bet/4-bet bluffing at 25NL gets a huge amount of respect from regs as they don't expect 25NL peeps to be playing this way.

So my winrate has increased quiet a bit, from like 1.7BB/100 to something ike 2.5BB/100. That is a small sample size, however, so the verdict is not out yet.

I do, however, feel much more confident in my preflop decisions now and really am constantly surprised at how frequently 3-bets/4-bets take down the pot without a fight. Rather than causing more tough decisions, it is actualy decreasing them and lowering my variance quiet a bit.

At any rate, I am only about 1k VPPS from platinum star and plan on getting it before months end. I am having to cash out part of my bankroll to pay some bills because my real job has been slow this month, but I should be able to leave about $500 or so profits from this month in the poker account. I am hoping to be able to move up to 50NL by the end of February. I am curious to see what the quality of play is like there as 25NL has been a bit tougher than I thought it was going to be.