My first question is pretty general since I experience the same thing playing live 1/2. The beginning of pretty much every session I play is always bad. I always lose money in my first hour. I'm sure it has to do with limited knowledge of the other players and lack of image, but, has anyone else had this problem and what did you do to overcome it?

I also have a very limited bankroll, so I am trying to move up the levels responsibly and also at a proper pace so I learn an can succeed at the next levels. I did a search on moving up levels without much success. How many hands do you think you should play or what win rate should you have before moving up.

Sorry if these are silly questions as this is my first week playing online. I'll insert a graph of how I'm doing. Somehow people seem to be able decipher a lot from these graphs. Maybe someone can give me some insight on how I'm doing.

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you losing at the start of a session is just variance. can't really give an exact winrate/#hands before you move up, just make sure you're properly bankrolled and confident you have an edge or can gain an edge at the higher limit.

Playing at these stakes, I would say that your image as a whole will most probably go largely unnoticed, unless of course you fall on either ends of two extremes, the very tight NIT or the overly loose aggressive MANIAC.

That being said the reason for early chip losses are probably not due to the image you currently portray on the table, but instead your understanding of what the characteristics of the players on your table are. Simply because of the limited hands you have seen them play.

The main reason I can think of why you might be losing at the beginning of your sessions, is because although you are aware you don't know a great deal about the players, maybe you are not acting accordingly to this fact. Are you playing tight at the start until you get a better understanding of the players? or are you simply looking at your cards, your stack size and your position, without considering other players stack sizes and how this effects your pot odds. Or that you don't yet know a great deal about the other players hand ranges, and how they might react to your raises/bets.

If your just sitting down on a table, in my opinion it is best to sit tight for a good few hands until you begin to get a feel for how the other players react, spot those who just cant fold any draw and any pair (calling stations), and seek out thin value. As this will be where a large majority of your profit comes from, as we all know its hard to make the nuts, so every penny you can squeeze out of a fish whilst we have a marginal holding is going to be worth your time in a lot of situations.
**** In NL2 this player type is going to be seen a great amount.

The problem is a great deal can also be lost against this opponent if a hand is approached wrongly. If say you don't know a person is this player type, you may decide to c-bet or double barrel with AK high or alike, without realizing that the guy is going to be calling you down with bottom pair for 3 streets.

Goodluck at the tables!

Nice graph dude.

Thanks, I meant I also play badly at the start of every session. It is like I can't think right until I get into the flow of the game.

It's just so hard to know if you will have the same edge moving up. I believe I have an edge at 2nl but being new I don't really know how I am doing. I think most poker players think they are better then they actually are. Don't want to fall into that category lol. I guess just move up and see what happens?

Give 5NL a shot, there won't be much of a difference, still lotsa donks.

You have a good attitude for learning it seems and your graph looks nice (13k hands isn't a big sample but I'd still wager you beat the 2NL games handily based on it). Think of shot taking as a learning experience.

Thanks for the well thought out response. I agree with everything you said. I guess I need to be more patient at the start of sessions until I am comfortable at the table.

Just crushed a quick 800 hand session. 2nl is so much fun. However, even keeping everything in mind, I still loose money at the start of the session. Its so obvious by looking at the graph where I started a session again after posting the last graph. So damn frustrating.

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Do I need a psychiatrist?

Go through a session review or two and compare your play early on to your play later on. Or even post a few hands from early and late on the forum.

It might not be - I used to have the exact same issue and the problem is getting fancy early doors when you have absolutly no info on the players.

For example, we have a reg to our right - a prime target to light 3B vs his CO opens. We have no hands on the blinds. Sure enough CO opens, we 3B and the BB cold calls. (CO folds). Flop comes ace high and we cbet - bb calls.

What we have done here is jumped the gun with the light 3bet - its a bad 3Bet since we dont know how tight/bad/good the blinds are. We then compound the mistake by cbetting the flop without ANY info what so ever on the blinds.

So, even if the light 3bet is +ev vs the reg, the spot maybe -ev due to the blinds. So, tbh, I would suggest staying away from these spots where we have a lack of info available - which typically occurs at the start of the session.

It depends on how much you lose but first of all - keep it calm
In NL2, if you lose 20-30 at the start from $2 buy-in that is normal (at lest to me) so I would not worry to much about it.

Are you starting the session playing more loose? what are you doing different?

Absolutely. Going through my hand histories I've definitely caught myself trying to take advantage of super good spots where I didn't have enough info to make a good decision.

I started waiting to post until the bb now, whereas before I would just post. Doesn't hurt to get a few extra hands of free info and also slowing down all my actions at the start of the sessions to make sure I am thinking clearly and taking into account the lack of information and playing slower.

I'm playing the same style I always play. But, with less information which is tending to get me into trouble I guess.

Yes losing at the beginning of a session is normal because you invest a bunch of big blinds with random hands as soon as you sit down. And you have very little info on your opponents. Moving up is an individual thing but you should have a decent sample size showing that you can beat a limit. 13k is not decent by the way. But with the easy time you are having at NL2 I would move up and take a shot at NL5.