Can You Actually Make Money Playing NL2 Poker in 2025?

Graphs located below! 

 

 

Introduction → Testing if NL2 is beatable 

When I restarted my poker grind on ACR around July 1st, I wanted to see how far discipline and mindset and following a winning strategy could take me. Starting from just $50. Most players think NL2 is unbeatable after rake, but I wanted to test that theory. Here’s my actual graph, results, and what I learned about bankroll management, tilt control, and why the “I don’t care” attitude has helped me build these results.

 

My Setup → How I structured Volume Between ACR and PokerStarsUS 

When we started this we also we're playing NL10 on a fenced in player pool daily not for a lot of volume, so we treated ACR as our main vehicle for volume. We'd play 2hours on PokerStarsUS and then 4hrs on ACR, it wasn't a perfect system but we did it! We made money playing NL10 and then used ACR as a training ground to just play our strategy no matter what. 

 

Discipline over Knowledge → What Actually Wins at NL2

I guess what really separates winners at NL2 isn’t knowledge it’s control. There are sessions where you run bad for 2k hands, but discipline is staying focused on execution, not results. I’ve learned to treat each hand as neutral data, not emotional feedback. If they call my B-X-B line with 4th pair, okay whatever. If they XR on a very wet board on the turn and we have a bluff catcher okay we fold. Basically not caring whatever they do we don't care, we are taking what the defense ( the villain ) gives us and when they are aggressive we just fold because they just don't bluff as much as you would be lead to believe. 

 

My Hand Review Process → Building Daily Consistency 

Another HUGE thing I did was hand review, if you do a bit of research and digging you can find out how to create a " My Reports " in pokertracker4, that's what we did, and we set it up for every pot that was over 6bbs gets logged into that report. We filtered it by pot size and then go down from largest to smallest, EVERY DAY BEFORE WE EVEN PLAYED. Now let me say it wasn't intensive hard work review, we replay all hands in report→ we'd look over them with fresh eyes because this is the day after→  just see if we made a deviation / bundler within the strategy. 

 

The “I Don’t Care” Attitude →Real Detachment, Not Apathy

Over time I’ve realized that the best poker mindset isn’t hyper-confidence it’s detachment. The “I don’t care” attitude doesn’t mean giving up; it means accepting variance and focusing on what you can control. Once you stop needing to win, your decision-making clears up.

 

Handling Tilt → Systems, Not Suppression

Yes do we still tilt, of course! We just have a system to get back on track quicker, its not about being emotional numb to the results its juts about having better systems in place to deal with them appropriately and re-center ourselves. We make a blunder/mistake? We take immediate ownership, we mark hand to review and then we move on. No yelling or blaming or saying they suck, we went through that phase and it just wasn't good, everyone sucks including me when compared to someone better? 

Results & Goals → Growing the Bankroll and Moving Up

So what are my next steps? Well we grew our ACR bankroll from 77$ to ~123$ in 13 days (graph below) so by end of month we hope to be around 200$, thinking about doing another staking/backing deal where we get some $ and use that to play NL10 and to grow our bankroll, we've done it on PokerStarsUS but life got in the way, on top of doubt. We repaid it all in full but we could've been at NL25 by now if we had the same trust in the system that we do now. 

Goal for this month is to hit at least 20k hands, For refence we are at 11k into this month so we should be able to hit that target ( 2hr session before 2-4hrs stream ) 

 

Takeaways → What This NL2 Grind Has Taught Me

Honestly if you can take away anything from this blog it is that Volume + Consistency + Trust in a strategy can take you far

I don't have a community of poker players I can consistently talk to, I don't think as myself as some good poker player either, in fact I don't even think I'm that good! I guess that thought process leads me to be harder on myself and spot as many leaks as I can

Gift and a curse I suppose! 

 

TL;DR

Find a winning strategy and stick to it

• Build a review routine and stick to it

• Don’t get caught up in results — be more process-oriented

• Volume is the only way

🎥 Link to our Bankroll playlist on YouTube is below

 

 

 

 

Dates are from 7-1-2025 to 10-14-25

VPIP 27 PFR 23 WTSD 29 WSD 55 bb/100 16.7

 

 

Some recent changes to our game look like this now 

VPIP 31 PFR 26 WTSD 27 WSD 55 bb/100 16