NL2 is the tightest nits on the planet.
Here are the table stats of my NL2 session last night
No clue what planet bloggers are on calling NL2 "fish"
There is literally ONE player with a VPR over 15 at this table.

17/0
30/0
6/6
9/3
9/6
9/0
15/15

What's your experience?
I am easily the biggest fish at 2NL with a VPIP of 25

27/17
35/20
21/15
8/2
16/12
14/12
10/0
25/8

I'm 20/10
Am I the fish ?

Kind of context-less, sample size-less.

But knee jerk advice: if you’re playing 20/10 full ring at NL2, you’re playing too many hands and coming in passively with too many hands. You’re playing the role of rake payer. Stop that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What's a rake player?

Not rake player. Rake payer.

Generally, if you have a large gap between your VPIP and PFR, you’re taking a lot of passive actions preflop. A great way to maximize the amount of rake that you pay is by being as passive as possible before the flop. Calling instead of folding or 3 betting.

For obvious reasons, there’s a correlation between how many flops you see and how much rake you pay. If you’re playing a strategy that requires you to see flops and hit hands in order to win, you’re going to find it near impossible to beat the rake. Unless of course your opposition is truly awful.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you’re sitting tables like that, then you’re not even trying to table select.

If you cant find the fish than you are the fish...

Yes - playing 20/10 you are a massive fish

I actually play higher than 20/10. Sometimes 30/25

Playing 2NL is for entertainment, not to make money.
So, I am not going to only play one hand per hour.
Total waste of time.

I am happy to be the 20/10 fish, but there are nothing but NITS at 2NL
Not even sure why they play.

Nope, not bothering with that at 2NL. Not even sure how it's possible. Play 50 hands and then switch tables after HUD is accurate? I only play 50 hands for a given day.

Farging what?

Not to mention, it's going to depend on what you mean by "fish" based on the stats you gave, a lot of those players are "fish." If you're looking for a table that you just run over, and never have to adjust anything aside from the size of your bank account, you're looking for a slot.

Not table selecting and decrying the absence of the aforementioned fish is suspect.

So is 20/10

OK, I'll ask it again, exactly how do you table select?
1) How many hands do you play at a table to get reliable HUD?
2) What VPIP are you looking for, and from how many players?

Here is my perspective based upon your initial post:

POKER IS ABOUT PEOPLE. We have to try to employ different strategies to win money against different types of players.

NITS SHOULD NOT BE THAT DIFFICULT TO PLAY AGAINST! Take their money 90% of the time and GTFO of the way if they play back against you.

In the first set of stats which you posted, you find yourself at a table where half of the players play less than 10% of their hands. My opinion is that you should run all over them. You should constantly steal their blinds with really any 2 cards and expect them to fold 90% of the time.

The 2 players whom you listed as 30/0 and 17/0 ARE fish. They are too passive. You need to figure out how to exploit that.

The only player who has even close to SOLID stats is the 15/15 and even that is weird because there is NO gap. That's odd.

At the 2d table, you've got 2 players who I would characterize as tight-agg, 16/12 and 14/12, I find 21/15 to be within what is an acceptable range so as to call the player a fairly normal player with fairly solid stats. THE REST OF THE PLAYERS ALL FALL OUTSIDE WHAT YOU WOULD NORMALLY CALL TIGHT-AGGRESSIVE - therefore they are all fishy in way or another and to one degree or another.
For instance 35/20 is too loose to be considered TAG, 25/8 is too passive.

My point is that we need to figure out what kind of player we are playing against and then develop a strategy for extracting money from that particular player.

With regard to your last 2 questions, go back to the main page for this forum (Micro/Full Ring). There is a very thorough discussion of this subject matter that I think you will find helpful. It is "Official Stats and Graphs Analysis."

Won't this make my VPIP like 50 and make me an aggro fish ?
VPIP must stay around 15, I thought

Well this is what I mean when I say poker is about people and we need to figure out how to take money from the particular opponent we are playing against. A whole bunch of people have written a whole lot on the subject of "GTO/ Game Theory Optimal" Play. Look it up. They know way more about it than I do. But I do know that while there may be a so called optimal way to play, that doesn't mean we should always play the so called optimal way. That idea is called "exploitative play."

In fact, I think it is fair to say that you should only play the so called optimal way, if your opponent is also playing the so called optimal way.

It is important to know what optimal play looks like so we can recognize when our opponents are deviating from it.

Once we recognize that an opponent is deviating from optimal play then we need to figure out how to exploit that particular opponent.

These nits that you are playing against are not playing so called optimal poker.
These nits that you are playing against are going to open up a little bit and play more hands when they realize that you are raising them too much.

In other words, you are going to try to exploit them by raising too much and in response, they are going to try to exploit you by playing more hands than they normally would.

---------------
Also, basic math, this is a very basic concept in GTO:

if you raise 3bb, and both blinds fold 90% of their hands, and you do this 100 times.
Big blind 3 bets you 10x and you fold = -30bb
Small blind 3 bets you 10x and you fold = -30bb
both blinds fold 80 times and you win (80*1.5bb = 120bb) 120bb.
Net Total = +60 big blinds.

And this doesn't take into consideration the times that you actually have a hand when they 3 bet you.

You should literally be raising any 2 cards if they fold 90% of the time. It is a massive moneymaker.

Donkeys should be punished. Punish those Nits until they react and start changing the way they play.

-----------------
Also, 15% total range is not necessarily optimal or the best and just so you know it would be a very tight range. That's not saying it would be a bad thing. I'm sure there are many very good players who play this tight. You will also find bad players who play this tight and, you'll also find many good and bad players who play more hands than this. I think what is more important is keeping the gap between vpip and pfr down to a reasonable amount. That's just my opinion, read up on this yourself and ask others. In case you are curious, I just finished playing a lot of hands and I was at 19/15. I am not saying that is ideal either, but I am satisfied with those figures and I felt like I played well today. On another day, my table may get shorthanded and/or I may have a bunch of maniacs at the table and my stats could end up looking a little different.


Good luck out there. This forum is a great place to ask questions and learn.

Magnum

You cant judge a player well unless you have plenty of hands played against them.

You should literally be raising any 2 cards if they fold 90% of the time. It is a massive moneymaker. .


Hope it is a massive money maker? You make 3bb. ... Big deal....

I have tried to offer you non-critical suggestions regarding 1) how to play against nits and 2) what is a reasonable vpip.

The way you started this post is by asking whether you are a fish. Usually, you know, if you have to ask a question like that, it is a good indication that you may be.

I think a better characterization is that you seem to be a beginner. You are exhibiting shallow thinking about this game. Level 1 thinking. This can be cured through education and experience, which can be a very long process. This forum is a great place to ask questions and receive advice from excellent poker players from all across the world and hopefully shortcut that learning process. This forum, and those great players, have helped my game a lot.

I have seen a number of glaring problems with the way you think about poker. Many of these are easily fixable.

You play 50 hands a day.
You don't table select.
You arbitrarily vary your play between an idealized 15% vpip and 20/10 and 30/25.
You refuse to think about how to play exploitatively against extremely tight opponents.

You exhibit indifference to whether you win or lose money - this is perhaps the greatest sin of any poker player - read Sklansky on this subject, read Doyle on this subject. You say:
"Playing 2NL is for entertainment, not to make money.
So, I am not going to only play one hand per hour.
Total waste of time."
(Online play is 50-60 hands per hour, or more, per table). (1 hand per hour would be less than 2% of hands).
This comment not only demonstrates indifference to winning or losing money, it also demonstrates a misunderstanding as to what tight play should look like.

You scoff at the idea of steal-raising versus extreme tight players because "you only make 3bb, big deal."
(Just to point out - you actually only make 1.5bb when you steal raise and they fold). I actually LOL'd when I read this because I think I demonstrated that it has a positive EV of 60bb per 100 hands, through simple, basic math and GTO theory.

I will close with a famous quote and I wish you luck at the tables.

"There is a principle which is a bar to all information, which cannot help to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."

The great thing about poker is that you can play it how you want to play it and other folks can play it the way they want to play it. Good luck out there at the tables.

Magnum

Great post.
Right I meant 3 cents
not worth the risk
I'd rather fold