the swinginess of heads up

[geormiet]

I recently deposited at pokerroom to try out their heads up tables, and I've played a few thousand hands at the 10/20 and 5/10 games in the last two days. I'm a little dissapointed to be down a little, after my very consistent success at party private table heads up matches, where the rake is even bigger.

In a few instances, I was lucky enough to be playing with someone who had major faults in his play (e.g. never raised preflop, or played passively postflop) but most of the time, most of the opponents are extremely loose and aggressive.

When I am playing against the weaker opponent, it's probably one of the surest locks in all of poker. After a few hours, he will bust out very often, maybe like 75% of the time.

Against the tricky aggressive players, however, (those whom I believe I have an edge over, I have no problem with sitting out when I feel outplayed) I experience some wild swings. For instance, stretches where my opponent seems to make a pair time after time, and I can't come up with more than K high.

For those who play a lot of heads up, could you discuss the swings, when playing against an opponent where your edge is not really a big one? How much and how fast can you expect to lose, and over how many hands?

[schubes]

I play a reasonable amount of heads-up, sometimes at pokerroom in fact - maybe I've played you?

In my experience, passive players - whether loose or tight, are beatable with surprisingly low variance. I also often see players who refuse to back down once they've shown aggression, e.g. if you 3-bet them it will always be capped. I have more short term variance with these players (rapid 15 BB swings are common in a session) but I bust them with fairly low variance too.

The problem is players who are roughly aggressive enough but pay you off a little too much, bluff in bad spots etc. If we both start with ~30 BB I doubt I bust them more than %65.

If I lose ~40 BB against one of these opponents I tend to quit for two reasons: It is very easy to tilt in subtle ways after losing a decent amount heads-up. I am rarely playing my best game, and I may no longer have enough of an edge to beat the rake.

The other reason is related, if I have lost that much I likely have little bluffing equity - my opponent will call my raises with little or nothing to take shots at me on later streets. I have to tighten up slightly and flop a hand I can showdown, and so there is going to be an adjustment period where I am more likely to lose than win (but I still have +EV, make sense?)