I'm taking a break from serious poker at the moment, so I thought I'd devote some time to something I've been planning to do for a while, which is play 1,000 hands at all the 6-max limits from NL2 to NL100 and discuss how to go about beating them ITT. I've just completed my 1,000 hands at NL2.

I've never played this low before - I've never played in a serious way at any level below NL100 - and it's different to how I thought it would be. I was expecting people stacking off randomly, play money style, with nobody ever folding any piece of the flop. But that isn't how it is.

The thing that sticks out about NL2 is how straightforwardly most of the players play. A lot of them play fit-or-fold on flops and there is little to no bluff checkraising or other deceptive play. Preflop, there is almost no light threebetting. There's a lot of limping, and while I was only limp reraised once in the whole 1,000 hands, I saw an awful lot of limp folding.

What this all adds up to is an invitation to go completely mental on the button. When it folded to me on the button, I was probably opening around 75% of my hands. If there was one limper to me, I was still opening around 40-50% of my hands. I was much tighter in other seats.

Postflop against one opponent often only a single cbet was required to take it down, but depending on how the hand developed I would sometimes fire two or three barrels. I was cbetting the vast majority of the time, but on hands where you have a lot of good outs it can be better to check. For instance, I checked KQ on J96. This is for a number of reasons - I have the ten for the nuts, other good outs in Ks and Qs, if the ace comes I might be able to represent that, and my opponent is quite likely to have hit this flop.

Against two opponents you should usually be giving up without a hand. The exception is flops like Q32 where your opponents are unlikely to have flopped anything.

With regard to threebetting preflop, NL2 opponents seem to roughly divide into two groups - those who never fold threebets (a large majority) and those who basically always do. Mostly you should not be threebetting light, but if you find an opponent who folds to them they are unlikely to adjust, so go ahead and pound them with threebets. A single instance of seeing someone fold to a threebet would be enough for me to start reraising them to see how they react.

I ran about 27/21, which is laggier than I normally play, entirely because of my opened-up range on the button. Graph:



As you can see, I didn't run very well and ended up losing a little over a buyin, but EV-adjusted I ran at 17 bb/100. Obviously over 1,000 hands this gives absolutely no indication of my true winrate. If I had to make a wild guess, I think I could sustain about 15 bb/100.

Edit: I should mention I did this 8-tabling, with a HUD.

Any questions? Fire away!

No questions, but I like the idea of what you're doing - looks really interesting.

GL, I'll be interested to see what you find.

2nd, looking forward to moar

You have no credibility whatsoever with 1,000 hands. I know you play a lot higher than this, but 1,000 hands can be done in a matter of hours.

If you -really- wanna start a decent project, I'd do 10k at each level. Maybe you have to work or you go to school so you can't play much, which is okay, but your sample size is worthless.

I don't think you can sustain 15bb/100 over 10k. Over 1k? Probably not too hard. Start prop bets if you want to get motivated and spice things up.

Good luck, looking forward to this.

Gl with this, 1k hands is a small sample size but should still give you a decent
feel for how that limit plays.

I semi agree with ohaithar.

It is super cool that you are doing this and trying to give back, so no matter what you end up doing I will definitely appreciate it. With that being said, I do think 1000 hands is too small of a sample to learn much about the stakes. I think like 10,000+ hands would give you a much better indication of how the stakes play, and would also let you play in some semi interesting spots (which cannot be guaranteed to happen in only 1000 hands).

However, as I previously said, I'm still interested about hearing your take on the micros and I do appreciate you taking the time to do it.

This is excellent since I just made a deposit again and trying to build a roll anywhere from 2NL to 10NL right now so I am looking forward to this.
I do agree with 10K sample per level, that would be a sticky in no time and help out tons of new players.

There's no way I'm playing 10,000 hands at any of these stakes. If I played 10,000 hands at NL100, winning at 5bb/100 which I'm pretty certain I could, that would be $500 profit. At NL2, even if I won at 15bb/100, that would be $30. So basically you're suggesting I pay $470 so I can educate the beginner forum, then do it again at NL5, NL10 etc. No thanks.

I disagree that 1,000 hands is too small a sample to draw conclusions about the limits. I don't need a 10,000 hand sample to figure out what people's threebetting frequencies generally are, or to figure out whether limp-folding is done commonly. That said, if anyone disagrees with any of what I've said in my first post, feel free to say so. That's the point of 2+2, discussion.

ITT ChrisV demonstrates that even winning midstakes players can't beat 2NL if they lose one 70/30 flip per 1000 hands.

If you have a complete beginner or even someone who has played a few times live , play 27/21 over a large sample at 2nl they will lose money . If they try it at 5nl they will go broke . Imo . Cool project tho , I'm interested in what your observations are . Thanks for taking the time to do it .

ITT ChrisV loses -2.5 bb/100 at NL2 but thinks winning 15 bb/100 is easily doable.

umm i think your results will be very missleading due to 1k hands.... play 10k and then report...

ChrisV is not looking for results. He can obviously crush these microstake games with little to no effort.

What you're doing is great ChrisV. Super looking forward to this and your thoughts on the difference between the levels at microstake.


I think you'll find that there is little to no difference between 2nl and 5nl. At 10NL, there will be some "regs" who 3bet light but still easy to exploit. Interested in hearing your thoughts on the jump from 10nl to 25nl and 25nl to 50nl.

Looks to me like he lost two.

ChrisV: How the hell did you learn to play at 100NL in the first place without grinding the micros first?

good luck on your project.I am waiting for your observations and tips for 25NL and above since i play there.

Agreed. All everyone reads on here is how you need a gazillion hands to know anything. As you alluded to with examples, you can get a pretty good lay of the land at low levels with 1000 hands. I mean even after 100 hands it's fairly easy to notice that you've entered Passive City.

Cool idea for a thread - and very helpful - looking forward to the next level up!

I lost AK aipf vs AQ for a full buyin (thats the first hand on the graph where the winnings and EV diverge a lot) and QQ vs KJ allin on Jxx, among other things.

I had been playing SNGs at the $215 level, and switched to cash when SNGs died after the UIGEA came in. That was late 2006 and everyone was absolutely awful. There's a pretty funny thread in MSNL here that someone bumped demonstrating how the game has changed. So I jumped straight in to 200NL, broke even for a little while learning to play cash NL, then was a 1K NL reg for a while. These days I struggle to beat 400NL, the games are hugely tougher. 100NL now is easily as tough as 1K NL was back then. I've pretty much given up on cash and have been playing MTTs.

Good project. And I agree - 1,000 hands is enough to learn a significant amount about each level. I do think its a little small though, maybe 2,000 would be better, but yeah 10,000 is definitely not needed. Maybe you should do a little more as you go up, mainly because variance is higher as you go up even at the micros, but also because the higher the stakes the more serious people take it. So maybe do 1,500 at nl5 then 2,000 at nl10, etc?

Also you have significantly underestimated how soft nl2 is. I beat it for 20bb/100 24 tabling fullring over I think around 100k hands. Chipstar did even higher for even more hands whilst 24 tabling. Im sure that a player of your calibre, whilst playing 8 tables, could learn to beat it constantly for more than 20bb/100.

1,000 is worthless in terms of looking at winrate. But it is decent to learn a little on how the level plays. If it was worthless then you shouldn't really be able to see the difference between nl2 and nl50 over 1,000 hands, well obviously you can see the difference in probably 100 hands.

Also be careful before you make prob bets on nl2. Read my response to OP - 15bb/100 is not only doable, it is extremely easy.

This is wrong and Ive seen it discussed extensively many times. If there was little to no difference then lobby stats for each level would be similar - they are not. And the average player stats would be similar - they are not. Also players would be able to sustain similar winrates at nl5 that they can at nl2 - they cant.

^^ I am finding 5nl a lot harder to beat . I beat 2nl for 15bb/100 in 20k hands . I have just played 20k hands at 5nl and my winrate is only 1bb/100 , so they are different . Play is tighter and more aggro at 5nl . Also at 2nl there was always at least 2 spew happy fish at every table . Not as many at 5nl from my experience so far . I'm in the process of doing some homework on my 5nl game before I go at it again .

Will hopefully get to the 1,000 hands at NL5 tomorrow, should be interesting.

I should probably mention I am playing all these hands at PokerStars. Also I'm buying in for 100BB, because that's what I'm used to.

Interesting thread. I also think 15bb/100 on 2NL is doable. Still, you lost a BI on 2NL

I agree with ohaithar and Exothermic. 1K hands means nothing.

I believe ChrisV's point on that you can quickly get a feel for exactly how a limit plays within a few hundred hands. So 1000 hands should be enough to propose a basic approach on how to beat it.

However the topic is called 'ChrisV demonstrates how' ... and not 'ChrisV suggests how', to form a theory is one thing, to demonstrate its effectiveness and results it needs more hands.

The topic is a little tongue in cheek, as obviously I have no idea at this point if I'm going to actually beat the games over 1,000 hands (as 2NL demonstrated, I certainly won't beat them all in terms of actual results, but I may not even beat them EV-adjusted either. Adjusting to new games in 1,000 hands isn't easy). I'm more noting what I think are the strategies required to beat the games, which I'm hoping is interesting free information coming from someone who has previously played and beaten NL 2000.

I certainly don't think I'm God's gift to poker or anything, I have at least two good friends who are clearly better at it than me and I am probably worse than most of the MSNL forum. That said I am definitely good enough to beat everything up to and including NL100 and giving a step by step overview of how each level is different is something that to my knowledge nobody has done yet. It's just going to be my opinion on how to play, take it or leave it.

Edit: Maybe I should give a quick poker bio. Have been playing poker in one form or another for something like 12 years now. Quit my job in May 2006 to play SNGs professionally, switched to cash in October 2006 after UIGEA killed SNGs, played 400 to 2000 NL for a few years, dropped to 200 to 400 as the games got tougher, started playing MTTs seriously mid last year. Have made something like half a million dollars at poker.

Thanks for doing this Chris... it'll be a great addition to the forum

However, in the interest of fairness... I should point out that verneer had a thread last year (in unl) where he went from 5nl to 50nl (I think).. and this year he's doing something similar in poker goals & challenges where he's doing it playing rush poker. But please don't let that dissuade you from continuing this, as different points of view are always welcomed.