What's up 2p2,

I was just curious if me thinking I can move up from NL2 to NL50 by May was realistic. If my starting bankroll was $50, what kind of a winrate would I need for this to be possible?

I'm currently in school for audio engineering and it's a fairly busy program, requiring me to spend random nights in the studios working on projects. But I've constructed some sort of a schedule that allows me to get in roughly 18-25 hours for playing, and 18-25 hours for studying poker. I was also wondering what you guys thought would be a proper allocation of my time as far as studying goes.

I really love playing poker, and have been a breakeven/somewhat losing player over the last 4 months but I'm ready to take my game to the next level and start investing in myself as a player.

Any help is greatly appreciated, and gl on the tables!

Hi, welcome to 2+2. There's a great deal of information here to help you on your journey.

TBH, I've never found setting a big goal with a time frame to be useful. Right now you aren't beating 2nl. I'd set a goal to beat 2nl first. It doesn't matter the time frame. If it takes you a year to get to 50nl, are you are failure? Not a bit.

Don't look any further ahead. Players that start setting goals of playing a level X by month Y end up moving too fast and losing all their money.

Thanks a lot for the advice venice. It makes sense I guess. There's no need to clutter up my mind when I should be focusing on the task at hand, which is to become profitable at NL2.

But hypothetically, let's say I have this friend. He's wondering if he can get move from NL2 to NL50 by May 2016 with the amount of hours he can put in being what is posted in the OP. Is that realistic for him?

seems like basic maths can give you an indication of how likely it is

call it 20 hours a week, let's roughly say there's 30 weeks between now and May

600 hours total, if we assume you're 8-tabling and getting 70 hands/hour/table, that's 336,000 hands

assuming you move up when you get to 25 buyins for each limit then you'll need to win at 3.5bb/100 hands at all limits to reach NL50 by the end of the 30 weeks

3.5bb/100 is certainly feasible (I'm a lolcasual and PokerTracker has me beating 25NL FR for around 4BB/100), but if you're currently losing/breakeven at 2NL, it's obviously going to take work

good luck

I'm going to be brutally honest, OP, and say that; no, I doubt that this is a realistic goal.

Beating nl2, and I really mean CRUSHING nl2 ought to be pretty straight forward and not that tough. If you are about breaking at that level then you have a lot to learn about the basics and probably you need to work on your mental game and avoiding tilt/not blowing off buy-ins with real bad decisions.

Moving from nl2 to, say, nl25, requires a lot of new skills. I'm tempted to say "a completely different skill set. That takes time.

Going from 25 to nl50 means really getting your head in it and focusing on making ~ 0 big mistakes and polishing that skill set that allowed you to beat nl25.

It could take you till May to really be crushing at the micros and by the time you get from that point to nl50 your game will likely scarcely resemble the game you play now.

To beat nl2 you just need to think value and not miss v-bets. You have to have the discipline to fold when you are likely beat and you have to just really not make big silly mistakes. The players at that stake generally sit around trading buy-ins with huge goofy blow ups. To beat them you basically just have to "skip your turn" at blowing off a buy-in.

To beat nl25+ you'll need to understand range construction, position, polarization, pot geometry, balance, and a lot of other things that are not quite as necessary at the micros.

At the micros you just have to have a basic understanding of starting hands and maybe a bit of positional awareness and then just value town fish and wait for the occasional fish to pop in to dump a stack off to you. That's not gonna cut it at nl50 IMO.

I wish you much luck and hope you pull it off.
Keep us posted on your progress.

Thanks a lot bloobird.

I play 6 max, and generally while 4 tabling (my most comfortable amount of tables to play), I reach 400+ hands. I can play 6 tables while doing alright, but I end up nitting out. On my bigger screen I can nit my way through 9 tables. Not that I expect this to shorten my process at all.

I really appreciate your brutal honesty donovan. That's exactly what I'm looking for so that I can readjust my goals.

To start off, my main issues with crushing NL2 is probably aggression. I have starting hand ranges down, can adjust according to villains stats, etc. I have great positional awareness. But when I open a pot and get called, I almost feel obligated to cbet if the flop hits my range at all, even when I flop nothing. After getting my cbet called for 2 streets, on the river I finally start thinking, damn my 2 pair probably ain't gonna cut it on this wet board so I just check. But I wish it stopped there. I feel so invested by the river, and since it's NL2, if my stack is looking somewhat down, I'll just call villains river bet cause I'm stupid. I've been bluffed many times (yes at NL2), and ended up being grateful that I called their river bet. But more times than not, I end up getting stacked. I know this is a leak of mine and I can play very solid, I just need to know how to attack this issue.

I'm trying to look for anyone that can guide me in the right direction as far as studying, training etc. I'm currently debating on getting a membership on deucescracked, and also have a decent list of books I want to read. My goal is to read 2 a month, just so I can spend 2 weeks on each book really analyzing the chapters and taking notes, and trying new concepts at the tables to keep them fresh in my head.

Even more importantly, if anyone's down to sweat the homie on their downtime that'd be awesome. I feel like no matter how many videos I watch, the actual progress I would gain from someone telling me live what I'm doing wrong as I do it would work wonders for my game.

Even if nobody can sweat me, can anyone guide me as to how to get sweated? Or what the process is? What should I look out for? etc etc.

Thanks again, 2p2

I have done some coaching and made vids\written articles for poker sites. I started a YouTube channel that hasn't gone anywhere but its just the type of stuff I'd have loved to see a couple years back.

I have two or three videos of me analyzing other players sessions.

People have recorded sessions and sent them to me then I record myself watching them, narrate my thoughts over them, and send them back.

Just search YouTube for Navonod (that's me on ipokerVIP, PokerTube, etc.) Poker, that is type in Navonod Poker and youll find my stuff.

Take a look at some of those videos, especially my analysis of other players sessions. If you dig it I'd try to do that for you. Maybe just let me use sessions for YouTube vids. Not looking to charge for it.

Lemme know what cha think

There is a GREAT concept of the month article in the Live low stakes forum about cbetting. I have completely taken this to online and it has worked really well. Start there if you're having cbet problems.

Bankrollwise I think it is possible to move from NL2 to NL50 in fairly short time but it requires a lot of skill. I have been playing 2 years on and off. I have studied a lot. At one point I was playing NL10 but I played break even. At this point I can honestly say that I'm beating NL2. People and their learning curves are different but I wouldn't set a goal to go from NL2 to NL50 in a specific period of time.

each to his/her own on this, but you have to know what you are expecting to get out of this experience.

you say that you enjoy poker, and that's a good start. however, suppose that a million hands later you're still grinding out an average winrate in the micros. will you look back and regret taking up poker when you could've been more successful if you devoted your effort to any other discipline? or would you still be happy because you enjoy playing and anything you win is a bonus?

that's not to say that this is what's destined for you. your success is almost entirely dependent on you, and there's no, say, win-rate/effort cap just because the games are comparatively tougher nowadays. I wouldn't put too much stock in who's saying how tough they find games they play in. In BQ the responses would be overall biased towards the games being tougher than they actually are because people who don't find it tough and move up quickly tend to post less

I'm having a tough time finding that article, any way you'd want to ship the link?

BTW, OP, I have a vid on cbetting on YouTube that I'm pretty proud of.
Maybe check it out.

I was still trying to stay under 15 minutes but feel I did a decent job of laying it out.

Thanks a lot for the offer donovan. I checked out your videos and they look great, but it seems like most of them are HUSNG. While I'm positive with your skills you can crush 6-max NL2, I just don't know how I feel about putting up videos of me playing on YouTube. If I was any good, sure thing, haha. Unfortunately asking help on moving up from NL2 isn't the best confidence booster.

I just found that now crow. Thanks a bunch, looks like it's gonna be a really good read.

I mean realistically, NL50 was something I thought might be achievable in about 7-10 months with great work ethic and lots of studying. After reading this responses, I might even ask what you think of NL25 in the same period of time? I mean, It's not something that I'm trying to put a time limit to at all. If I get to NL5 by May I'd still be playing poker just knowing that I got better.

I just wanna know what people's opinions are on someone studying/playing as much as I described in the OP, being able to make it to NL25/NL50 by May. Also what are the major differences between NL25 and NL50? Is that a bigger jump than NL2 to NL5? Or NL10 to NL25? Would a goal of reaching NL25 be much more realistic than reaching NL50 by May?

Lastly, addressing your comments on bankroll, should I for 25 BIs before I move up? Or more just to be safe?

I can't really ever regret taking up poker because my other passion is music and I already go to school for audio engineering and music business so it's not like I'm wasting any time by playing poker. I do the 2 things I'm passionate about, all the time. At the end of the day, my goal isn't to be some pro cash game player, 24 tabling high stakes, dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars everyday.

My main goal is to be able to not get a part time job once my school is done in May, just so I can pay off some small student debts and a credit card. Keep in mind, I'll be living at my parents house expense-free. So any income would go to debts and my bankroll.

What I'll always want to pursue is my music, but having a part-time or full-time job after college is done isn't going to give me the freedom I need to create all the time.


Thanks again guys.

As I am computer stupid, I don't know how to post link----------------------------


Go to Live low limit NL forum..... Go to "Best of LLSNL" sticky.............Go to "link to all past COTM" ( I think it's the first one)..........scroll down to August 2015 Cbetting by cbrewer4 and cAmmAndo

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...tting-1550652/

That's the cbet link. Insanely good read.

Also, I'm going to check out your cbet video after dinner. Just got a new puppy that's taking up pretty much every last minute of my time that he isn't sleeping.

I think skill gap between NL2 and NL5 is pretty small. Things get a bit tougher at NL10. I believe NL25 requires even more skills and gathering them takes a long time. I don't know how much you have played already and what is your skill level. These skills develop over time. I guess you have to play hundreds of thousands of hands to be able to crush NL25.

What comes to the bankroll management I would suggest keeping at least that 25 buy-ins. Variance is a bitch. I have often played with too short bankroll and it is a mistake. Also when your bankroll drops lower than lets say 20buy-ins you should drop down to a smaller stakes. I didn't and I ended up losing a lot.

I just watched my cbet vid and it doesn't live up to my memory of it, which I think is often the case w creative works. ;(

But, it does get some good info across IMHO just that I repeat myself too much.

OP, thanks for the link and do check out my videos on "session critiques"
I'm positive I did a couple on exactly micro stakes 6 Max.

If you have specific questions feel free to PM me.

GL

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