Heads -up Tournament play

[TAKEitDOWNwill]

Hi, Thanks in advance for all comments and suggestions as I really appriciate every ones help.

I was just wondering some stragaties on put someone away when you are heads up in a tournament. I have had some good success playing in ring games and tournaments. Mostly NL texas hold'em. However, I have seem to come close to the money many times before losing, and when I do get to the money and heads up I have been unable to finish my competitor off. Infact, this weekend I placed seccond in two of the three tournaments that I played. I feel as though my heads-up play is not bad and I felt as though I was getting cold cards on the end. In one case I started with a nice chip lead and the other we were about even. I know lowering your starting hand requirements, knowing your opponent, and some timely bluffs are essencial but what else should I concider when heads up.

Thanks again,
Will Daley

ps. sorry if I rambled a little

[zephed56]

You are probably playing too soft preflop when it's heads up. Put lots of pressure on the opponent by making reasonable raises first in. If you are playing on party, blind stealing is way more important than outplaying your opponent postflop. The blinds are HIGHHHHHHH!

You should probably play more hands(rarely fold, play anything but complete utter useless garbage), unless he raises preflop too high. Raise both good hands and weaker hands so you are not readable. If he rarely folds his BB, then you can start dropping the weaker hands. Try limping in with those sometimes.

If he folds too much preflop, raise a little too many hands.

Find a weakness in your opponent and exploit it. If he's overaggressive preflop, limp-reraise him all in. If he's passive, value bet, and take the free cards he gives you when you are probably behind.

I would suggest searching the recent archives for greg raymer (fossilman) and the stop n go. He posted in the Multi table tournament forums. I'm not sure what his exact username is though. I just searched the MTT forum for +stop +go and searched for posts older than a few months.


PS. Most of this is just useless rambling. Whatever, that's all I could put together.

[TAKEitDOWNwill]

thanks for the help...
I feel as thought in both cases I was putting sufficient preasure on the blinds. In of the tournaments I was taking them about 60% of the time and with junk. However, in the other tourney the villan was a move in specialist so I had to lay off the blind stealing because of the fear he would come over the top. Both times I was not getting any cards. Any suggestions for when the best you see is K2s when the blinds are about 15-20% of our stacks?