Are heads up tournaments profitable?

[Colombo]

I do these very frequently, pay a buy in and get 1k chips, winner win 2x the buy in. Although I am usually very sucessfull at these, I'm beginning to think that luck is such an important factor in these. Maybe because I play at paradise where the blinds go up every 10 hands to 100/200 and you start with 1k. It seems that one bad beat, especially in the bigger blind levels, or a run of dry cards in 100/200 is pretty much a guaranteed loss. Are these things really that profitable in the long run?

[Niediam]

Try playing on Ultimate Bet - the blinds go up quite a bit slower there.

[Cooker]

I did quite well for a while at the Turbo heads up tournaments at Doyles room, and those blinds rise every minute. Still, heads up, if a player moves in eevery hand, you could only beat him 60% of the time, so I think the profit margins on these things are going to be pretty tight once you factor in the rake.

[blackize]

For a while I only played heads up sit and gos. If you are good you can win 60%+ oh them. They are semi-profitable, but the skill required is probably better put to use in full table sit and gos or ring games. The only reason that I can see for HU SNGs being profitable is that they dont last nearly as long as a Full table SNG.

[LittleDragonWings]

They are for me. I love them for easy consistent money. I play heads up at stars.. and at the 10 level, each game averages about 15 min (range 1 min to 45 min.) Over ten ppl, you probably run into 2 really good players, 3 average players, and 5 poor/horrible players.


I like playing them because I get to learn betting patterns easier as you only have one person to analyze. "Oh, so that's how he played his flush draw?" "He plays his TPWK like this, and TPTK like that.." -- takes me about 5 min to place a player in a category and then play him appropriately.

Gives me a lot of insight on how ppl play and I win between 70-80 percent of them.. so it's win win for me /images/graemlins/smile.gif

Good luck !

[PokrLikeItsProse]

Anything where you have an edge is profitable in the long-run.

The only time you would avoid being in a situation where you have a slight edge is where you have bankroll considerations that might lead you to go broke due to variance (playing a single heads up freezeout for all your savings against someone you have a 2-to-1 edge against) or where you have the opportunity to give up EV for a higher EV situation later (saving the buy-in you would use in a heads-up tournament to pay for a normal tournament later where you have a much bigger edge later).