Rant/dilemma: Feeling like either quitting poker or at least moving away from 2nl...

So I am at the point in my poker playing where I'm going to do either one of two things; either quit or move away from 2nl. Id really like to hear from people who have recenltly moved up from 2nl, if anyone, and hear their thoughts on what i have to say.

I have been playing real money poker for 5 months now. I came off play money and was playing 10nl and 25nl, definitely out of my league especially when trying to shake the play money playstyle. So i finally bumped back down to 2nl. Ive spent a lot of tme and money on poker studies between ebooks, articles, forums, and oodles of Cardrunners vids (Verneers micro vids in particular). It amazes me that with as much as I (think?) I know about poker from the large amount of time invested into it, I can be losing this bad.


Let's just jump right into numbers first then i will get to commentary..

Here is my graph from the past 30 days.



Mainly a disaster.

For each down and upswing on that graph, I have the reports from HEM so you can see how I was playing. So lets take a look at the first big downswing and see what was up.



Here is the report for the first upswing.



wow 14/10 gives results, and the main profit comes from the button where I'm not even opening much like i should be.

Lets check the next downswig





and the next upswing



My god is it possible, i'm positive over 15k hands? At this point my playstyle can be summed up as such: The only thing I'm opening from UTG and +1 are all suited Ax, pocket pairs, AA, AK, KK, AQ, KQ, QQ and JJ. CO the same plus AT+, KT+, QT+, JT. From the button I open anything within reason. I try and play super tight from the blinds with only pocket pairs and UTG range broadways.

You would think the win streak should sort of continue. O well...



At this point I'm really getting into 3 betting more because I know I was severely lacking in having any sort of 3 bet game and understanding a good strategy for it. I thought that the 3 betting was casuing me the issues, but I checked for all of the 3 bet pots I entered into and i was actually profitable in them overall so it wasnt the issue. I was definitely loosening up as you can see and I told myself ok man tighten the hell up. So here is todays final graph.



Back to tightening up and wasnt 3 betting much and o well. Still no results. It's funny because I'll be sitting there winning some good pots, a few all ins ill be sitting at tables with over 250BB' s and I'm thinking gee I must be doing good, then i check the reports and I'm down 7 bucks.. I am like.. What in the absolute hell is going on are you kiding me?

So right now, I am done with 2nl. I'm either going to take a stab at 5nl playing one table at a time for a while, or I'm just quitting poker altogether. To me, 2nl is a twilight zone of nonsense. I'm so sick of the players at 2nl playing bingo. It's just filed with idiocy like people even playing 25/5 who are peeling my pot sized bets, street after street with freaking J8o to make their freaking hand on the river with the 8. Calling retarded odds to make their river flushes. Shortstacks galore going all in every time you raise. You've heard all the complaints before, so there's no need to reiterate them. But seriously 2nl is crap. It may as well be play money. I saw an interview with Tri Nguyen where he advised never even setting foot in the micros because you dont learn anything, and I'm really starting to understand why. The only thing I'm learning is how I have a greater capacity to hate people even more than i ever thought possible before I started playing poker.

What really tops it off for me are the people playing something like 75/5 who you will constantly day in and day out see sitting on huge stacks. I have seen a few times some people with as much as over $20. So they are playing completely counter to any good advice to be given about poker and they are somehow rewarded. This is one thing I will admit sometimes makes me think where if a site is going to be rigged, there is the evidence. It makes no sense how a player can be playing "bad" yet be winning hugely... That is unless because this player likes to limp into every pot and therefore donates to the site's rake, he gets rewarded more from the site. Hey that's just my little conspiracy theory and I will leave it at that, this post isnt about the topic of if a site's rigged or not, I'm just saying.

Anyway, I learned of the website pokertableratings.com and I checked these bad players with the huge stacks out on there and amazginly enough, even though they sat on huge stacks they were all long term losing players. So if these players are actually losing players at 2nl then who in the world is BEATING 2nl? Anyone? So I realized that the site had a tool to search to see who the top winners are. I looked to see who the top players were at 2nl. I was amazed to see that you can actually view their sessions and hands. So I filtered for 2nl and checked some of the people beating for a solid BB/100 over a large hand sample. What were these people doing to win? Playing at least 10 tables, some 24 tables, and simply peddling the nuts.

So that is what it takes to beat 2nl? I figured ok then, who am i to argue with results. So I started doing just that. I was ten tabling the nuts and that is when i had that first upswing as shown.. Then things went haywire, seemed to come back together, then bam, down like a rock. So that is how I have so many hands played in a month, I play 8 tables at a time (down from 10). I honestly don't feel if I played any less I'd have any better success. It's not hard to look at a table and decide if youre raising your hand or not preflop and if you should c bet the flop or call. If anything, if I play fewer tables, i get bored and start playing super loose trying to MAKE the action happen. Mind you i realize 100% that mass table nut peddling is not playing poker. It's simply a way to beat 2nl.

I would really love to know if right now anyone is truly crushing 2nl 6 max over 50 k hands by doing anything other than playing as a 12/12 mass multi table nut peddler.

So that is my rant/dilemma. What to do? 5nl single table? Quit? I can't even really fathom quitting right now after all of the time I have put into studying this game and putting hands in. But something is wrong here, and it's either in my brain or it's 2nl.

A couple of quick pointers which could definitely be elaborated on.

1. You are folding too much post flop. Your overall WTSD must be about 20 with a W$SD of 55%+. You are giving people way to much credit for having made hands.

2. You are not c betting enough for 2NL. Your flop cbet is around 50%. Now this may be ok for 50NL+ when people actually put you on ranges and come over the top of you more, in 2NL most people love to see flops. They will see a flop, 75% of the time they will miss completely and fold.


To me it seems that you are playing fit or fold post flop. Although it is never a good idea to bluff at these stakes it is ok to c bet and take down uncontested pots. These small pots are where you will find a big chunk of your profits come from


post your stats as a whole as it is hard to try and add them all up when they are in 5 different pictures...

Heya, yeah i posted them separately for each swing because I figured people would actually like to see the comparisons, but here is a grand total overall.



Ugh, the blinds. i did the math and I'm actually recouping a decent portion of $ from the BB where I lost $210.60 just from posting, so i think I'm maybe doing decent there despite a heavy loss. As for the SB i lost $105.30 from posting. So I seem to be OK there too. But obviously even though the other positions are profitable they're just no where near enough to counteract the blinds.

And you are correct that i am giving people credit for hands they probably dont have. This is because I am horrible at determining if they do or don't have one. It's been rare where i have sat there at the river facing a bet and thought about the line he took and made successful hero calls. I think nah he cant possibly have it and hes just trying to bluff me out and I'm I have typically been wrong. So to me that was a leak; *not* giving people more credit for their hands, so i tightened up with the cbetting. I looked at it like this: Rarely do players give me credit for my bets when I do end up deciding to c bet extremely light (and then it seems they love to fold when i do have a hand which is why i tend to always fast play everything so people just have no idea). The microstakes vids I've watched always preach stop bluffing and start giving more people credit for hands and this is what i started doing. I stop barreling flops OOP if I have nothing unless I know that the villain is a thinking player and the flop is welll out of his range. Right now though i do c bet IP when checked to usually 3/4 or a PSB.

If you are rolled for it I would suggest moving up to .02/.05.
I always ran better there than 2nl.
If you are not rolled for it, then don't do it obv.