How long until profitable at 2NL Cash...

Hey now,

I've been grinding away at 2NL Holdem since around the start of January this year. My first 60k hands were largely downward spirals, with some okay wins and then extreme fishiness to go long with it.


I've just finished playing another 65k hands, and although the graph's makeup is different, I'm still on the downward trend.


I'm wondering how long it should reasonably take to become profitable at the lowest level stars offers for cash games. I haven't been messing around at this, I've been revising hand histories, implementing learnt strategies.


I have solid preflop hand ranges, I 3-bet as you'd expect, steal blinds, isolate limpers and do my best to extract top value out of bigger hands. Yet for some reason I cannot seem to get the graph going in the upward direction.


I feel that I am good enough to beat the stake limit and I'm playing/learning for at least 5 hours a day.
Thoughts?

It's hard to get an answer about how long will it take to win.
You need to improve your game not by reviewing your hands but by knowing for what to watch in your reviews and accepting that You screwed up at that point and try to improve that.
Because of the fact that it is 2nl most of your hands that You review should end up quick with: i should have folded it preflop. So because of that the first step should be creating solid tighter preflop ranges for 2nl. Then You will do better.
Good luck

Hi. Can you maybe post some of your basic stats if you are using a hud? It could be that a quick look could at least point to something.

I was basically profitable from the start. Not great, but consistently profitable except for unlucky runs.

The way I played is to be very aggressive with premium hands. You would be surprised what junk ppl at 2NL call with. Rarely bluff. Just value bet. Also, try not to make hero calls because the bluffing frequency isn't as high as you might think.

You make your money by value betting the hell out of strong hands.

Once you get more comfortable reading villains, then it's ok to open up and bluff more. But do it in position and in low risk spots where even if you get caught bluffing you won't lose much. I.e., try to stay away from triple barrel bluffs as those unnecessarily build up the pot and invites calls from marginal hands. Save the triple barrel as a move for higher up the ladder.

Don't play cash on ACR it is very difficult and the edges are razor thin.Play on Bovada. PM if you want professional Phil Galfond videos to learn from how pros think about hands. HU NLH and PLO mostly.