Been seeing a fair bit of chatter lately about how the online games are changing again, mainly around faster formats, more anonymous seating on some rooms, and even low-mid stakes players using way cleaner preflop ranges than they did a year or two back. Feels like a lot of the old advice people learned first up is getting a bit dusty.
The big thing I keep hearing is that small edges matter more now because rake bites harder, especially if you're splashing around too much from the blinds or calling 3-bets too wide just because the price looks decent. Then you've got bounty comps and short-stack spots where heaps of people still play them like regular freezeouts, which seems pretty costly.
Also curious where people stand on exploit vs more theory-based play these days. I reckon plenty of the field still has obvious leaks, so going full robot probably isn't the move in every pool, but some of the standard punts that used to print just don't seem to get through as often now. Even simple stuff like c-betting frequency, defending the big blind, and opening size from early position feels a bit different depending on the room.
If you've been grinding lately, what adjustments are actually helping? Keen to hear from cash players and MTT lads both — especially if you've noticed certain formats getting tougher, or if there's one change you've made recently that's cleaned things up straight away.