how much tactic do you need in nl2?

Hey LP Com,

Iam following Poker theories and plays for quite some years now (especially LP since I have some SC background myself). Unfortunately, I started "really" playing Poker after games were already tougher than in the golden ages. By the term really I mean that I bought in for 40 buyins of 2nl and tried to beat the very micro stakes.

My first try was somewhere in 2012 and I tried again in 2013 and in dec 2013/2014. To be fair, I have to add that my first try in 2012 was with stupid BRM and a lot of playing in very different buyins/sngs whatever. In 2013 I figured that I should really focus on cash nl2 only and wanted to give it a shot if i can at some point beat those stakes. After I busted my BR I just went away from Pkr for couple of months. Then I saw a nice series from intellipoker where a german PS teampro was starting off with 80$ BR from nl2 and his goal was to achieve a 8k BR. He released a video every day he played and it was amazing to see how easily he had beaten those lowstakes. This kinda motivated me again and I was telling myself that I should give it another try (ofc I know I will never ever be moving up as fast as him or anything, my pure goal first is just beating nl2).

I think for a nl2 player I have quite a good understanding of poker and Iam willing of learning much more (thought a couple of times to get a membership at RIO/DC or BFP).
Thing is eventhough Iam quite certain that I play much more solid poker than most of the guys Iam facing at the tables, I keep on being a loosing player (iam close to busting my 40 buyin roll yet again). Maybe I just think I play more solid poker and I dont and Iam just bad and should quite and never touch it again. But I see so many weak plays (way too much limping in, ppl not playing the BTN correctly, ppl not playing positions out correctly in general, calling flush draws eventhough the pot odds are way too bad) that Iam too certain that it must be something else than my knowledge about the game. And I have the feeling putting more hours into my poker knowledge and reading more hands (usually ofc they are at way higher stakes) is nothing I can profit from atm.
For example balance my 3bet range: Iam quite sure nearly no one at my tables even has any idea of what my 3b range looks like -> most of the dudes just play their cards and nothing else. And yet its furstrating why I cant beat so many bad players.

What the guy from the blog (intellipoker) did in nl2 was just value betting/folding a lot and obviously that seems very reasonable. But I dno if I do this I feel like everytime I valuebet something everyone else will fold anyways so Iam just making a very slowly kinda steadily profit.This would be okay, but on the otherside in some pots (and those are much bigger because ppl following to way more streets) you get suckedout or run into a badbeat or sometimes also overestimated my hand a little. Which makes the profit always negative in the end for me. Dont get me wrong Iam not that kind of guy that barrels all streets if he has TPTK because he thinks thats great or plays super aggresive (I play a 27/19/6.5 over 10kish hands).
Maybe Iam just too impatient. But for me it feels like "variance" is owning me. Sometimes I run good and then on the next session I run incredibly bad and often I cant force myself to stop playing when things going bad because I want to get to breakeven and then things are going even more downhill (eventhough I still try to play the same pkr and not to force pots and stuff).
I probably should just give up and concede but something insides me is protesting against that thought until I see soo many bad plays.

Has anyone made similar experiences and how did you get out of that or do I just have to admit that Iam to bad for the lowest stakes of pkr ?

around 4 paragraphs worth

If you are 27/19/6.5 over 10k hands, and you lost most of your 40bi roll at 2nl over those hands, then you are doing something seriously wrong.

yea i think i have some issues with emotions on the one hand and foccusing on the other.
if i have a look at all my graphs from the 3 mentioned attempts: in all cases my winnings go straight up in the first 1-4k hands but then iam kinda hitting a "downswing" that i never fully recover from and getting deeper and deeper.
my graph from my actual attempt is going up and down like 4 times after each other and ending in more and more negative. i also ran a lil bad since my all in ev is breakeven but iam down -30bi but I feel like the bigger issues is definetly with me. first iam always winning so easily that i prolly get overego and after i start loosing, i fear that i can not recover from that and play more and more and loose more. getting anxious.
start to open a table more to recover faster and obv thats something that makes it even worse, i start loose the focus for each table and go to showdown with too bad hands.
but its too hard for me to keep myself away and telling myself that i will come back tommorow with a clear mindset. because even if i go away for 1-2 days if i come back, i have in the back of my head that i have to make up for some bi's that i already lost and looks like that is pressuring me too much inside. i guess i start to play too marginal spots etc..

--- Nuked ---

okay thanks a lot for the input. ye i guess i definetly have to do that.
noticed in yesterdays session that i also get way too "emotional" about things. everything is cool until i loose a first big pot then i kinda start panicking and force a lot more hands against some 80/40 fishs at the table which i find myself then into flopping nothing and facing bets anyway because they are kinda always bettin.
Then I also start to feel pursued by some players because they saw me loosing big pots.
I made a rule now for myself that everytime I loose a pot that is at least half of a buyin I will stop the session immediatly and review the session in detail first.

You need to accept that poker is a game where you win and lose big pots. You also need to accept that the only profitable way to play against a calling station is to play tight and aggressively...betting air against them constantly and getting called down by bottom pair and losing your stack is turning their weakness into a strength.

you need two builds, the 9 pool and fast expansion

haha ye but it feels like i watch all the streams and therefore know all the common tactics and then i go to ladder and play i win couple of games but am not too good in my mechanics to playdown the strats i know and then i face a worse opponent that just 6p into my fe and i can not hold it and lose..
except that this loss now mostly costs me all the profit of the 6 games before which makes me at the end of the day loosing.

All you need is to play tight tag and not tilt.

flop a set ship, top pair 3 streets of value, fold when raised unless you have the nuts, where nuts is more then one pair hands.

All I read was the title of this blog, but I've been doing well playing without any strategy whatsoever, and just following a hand chart plain and simple.

should change your id to Puntix. lololol

on a serious note just try to play as solid as possible with a strict stoploss and it should help you lose slower/learn the game faster

ye busted already and giving up on poker. looks like iam too shitty in this game or too impatient or whatever. thanks anyways for ur suggestions will probably lurk around still because i still find poker quite interesting but i wont play it anymore. lifetime loss of -100 bi's on nl1/2 looks like its not meant for me and it really costs alot of time even on those very low lvl
i rather will play some sc2 or whatever to kill some freetime
gl to everybody of you - will still lurk blogs and whatever

Biggest mistake beginners make is trying to be Phil Ivey and make plays. Poker is more straightforward than you think.

Write down or use pokertracker to find the hands where you went to the showdown and lost. Then ask yourself, was this a retarded play? If the answer is yes, stop doing similar things. If you don't know the answer, ask someone.

I have just started playing poker again after not playing for six years and this is what I am trying to do.

yea I definetly go to showdown with retarted hands where it was kinda obvious that he can only lay out or call if he has a better hand. But after the comments here I switched to more nitty TAG as I was probably too lose before and my results got even worse I would say. I played 21/18/4.5 and still kept on loosing.
Basically it went like this: Someone calls preflop and on the flop I feel like just literally everyone at nl1/2c is betting the flop. Statistically in around 1/3 of the time I will hit the flop as well but I can nearly only call that with top pair everything is else seems like wasting money if I dont know if they are bluffing/semibluffing or really have already a better pair then me or even more.
So very very often I fold the flop now and I feel like that this is very exploitable but okay its zoom and the very lowest stakes so I keep telling myself "dont worry they dont realize it".
But everytime I hit the flop people suddenly check to me and I bet and they fold. Since I keep folding way more often then I do bet and continue -> I lose money.
Sometimes it even feels kinda rigged for a **** newb like me. Everytime I get A A UTG and start betting 3bb everyone suddenly folds right away (ofc a direct UTG raise seems strong) but everytime I get like A Q/o UTG and I raise 3bb, two ppl call and I totally miss the flop -_- (okay one could say now: dont play A Q UTG but at some point I will turn into a rock that plays only the super premium hands).

And I seem to loose also quite some money when playing pocket pairs. For example if I have 10 10 on BTN. CO opens with 3bb and I reraise to 8bbs. He calls and the flop is K high rainbow and he leads out for 2/3 pot. Iam kinda supposed to fold. It feels weak to me to call here and just desperatly hoping for a 10 since the pot odds are not good enough. And following the "only value bet" logic here I can not really call with a non-top pair....

And thats why I evacuated my remaining 20$ from my stars acc and wont touch poker kinda again unless I might be able to build some small BR with freerolls which will probably never happen and I wont try too hard since I know that I suck too much and probably would need a coach to turn into a winning player at 1/2c lolrolrolol

Your mistake was playing zoom. 21/18/4.5 is way too loose for zoom.

played regular tables all the time before zoom and was loosing there aswell, coz it felt that in zoom people are a lil bite more willing to call your flop bet since everyone just bets the flop and so pay off your hand which is only true very rarely and sometimes of those rare occasion you dont have the best hand anymore postflop

On January 07 2014 03:15 julep wrote: around 4 paragraphs worth

this needs a lot more love

In all seriousness all has been said already in this thread. Beating nl2 really isn't that hard but it's all about patience imo and just sticking to the basics of valuet betting. It seems that you get too involved and emotional about hands in general, maybe like a mini tuff_fish. You have to be able to zone out any sort of negativity during your session otherwise it will always start affecting your play.

Good well thought strategies can work even better at 2nl than higher up

fuck man, if u need advice beating nl2 its prob a sign to get out now before u waste any more time on it.