Improving play in heads up pots

[MadMat]

Looking for some more general advice here, I've been playing micros for about a year now, started out at 05./.10 and worked up, and am now playing .5/1 or 1/2 depending on site and whats best for clearing it's bonus!

Every time I try to make the step up to higher limits(I'd really like to get going at 2/4) I'm getting my fingers burnt, at first I wasn't sure why, but after taking a step back and analysing my play I've worked out that I'm doing ok in games with lots of family pots, SSH and this board have helped me hugely to learn to play aggresive, calculate outs/equity pretty well. I'm making plenty in these sort of games!

However I'm repeatedly finding myself completely lost when I end up heads-up post flop. Hands like blind steals or another player 3-betting my PFR leaving us heads-up, spots you find yourself in more often as you move up the limits. this became very apparent to me when playing prima 1/2 recently when all the games were at best 3 to most flops and regularly heads up on the flop

So the question really is, where do I go to improve my player and hand reading skills? books to read? suggested games to play? would a spell at 6-max help? (I play full ring)

TIA

Mat

[kapw7]

PS 0.02/0.04 HU tables

[adsman]

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PS 0.02/0.04 HU tables

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And with that in mind, you could try challanging 2+2er's to a HU. I learnt SO much when we did the CHUMP challenge. And you can chat to each other about the different plays. Very valuable.

[xLukex]

Half the pots you play on 6 max are heads up. I think that would help more than .02/.04. I doubt there is any serious play there and it would seem to be a waste of time.

Go spend a few thousand hands at Party 1/2 6 max and see how it turns out.

[WalkAmongUs]

I am currently adjusting to 2/4 and I remember reading a poster here talking about a couple of things.

You have to get used to some of your good hands not making anything. When I played lower I was used to always winning at least medium-large pots or larger when I'd hit things like top two pair or bottom set or got pocket aces. Now a lot less of these hands are making it to showdown.

What this did was force my errors to stick out like sore thumbs. Now I'm no longer making up for my errors by winning bloated pots. At lower limits, the bigger pots make up for your errors and give you profit on top. If I make errors now, the pots i win aren't covering them.

The poster also noted how a lot of the times a passive line wins the most. I got used to being the aggressor in the lower limit games. At 2/4, the fish are more aggressive(not all by any means). Now the WA/WB line becomes very very useful. You have to know which players will hang themselves on their own aggression.

I found one of these guys last night and he proceeded to bluff off $150 over 2 hands to me and then I slowplayed a flopped Kings full and won a $130 pot off of him and another guy. Passive lines can be big money-makers in these types of games.

When you move up its very important to get comfortable playing pots with only 1 or 2 other people. The over-aggressives are your friends. Don't raise them.

[jrz1972]

As you move up in limits, you can't just keep pounding on people with impunity. In the low micros, you can value-bet fish to death and run over rocks. As you move up, the other players will start punishing you for this.

Like the earlier poster said, you need to learn to identify when to go passive. Sometimes that means just calling down with a good hand when a LAG is betting into you. Sometimes that means checking behind on the turn with overcards to induce a bluff on the river.

Basically, the players you run across in the higher micros know that they should be more aggressive in HU pots, and to them that often means "I should bluff a lot more." Give them a chance to make bluffing errors.

Also, if you're used to SSHE and the multiway pots that we all love in mirco full-ring, you need to realize that when the pot is HU after the flop, protecting your hand isn't all that important. That's a big adjustment when you're used to the SSHE-style. It's okay to give free cards if it keeps you out of spots where you might make a costly mistake or if it makes your opponent misplay later in the hand.

Like others have said, 10k or so hands of 6-max is very helpful for developing a sense for how these sorts of situations play out.

[SL__72]

MLL was great for this too... Too bad that died out /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[Hellmouth]

[ QUOTE ]
I am currently adjusting to 2/4 and I remember reading a poster here talking about a couple of things.

You have to get used to some of your good hands not making anything. When I played lower I was used to always winning at least medium-large pots or larger when I'd hit things like top two pair or bottom set or got pocket aces. Now a lot less of these hands are making it to showdown.

What this did was force my errors to stick out like sore thumbs. Now I'm no longer making up for my errors by winning bloated pots. At lower limits, the bigger pots make up for your errors and give you profit on top. If I make errors now, the pots i win aren't covering them.

The poster also noted how a lot of the times a passive line wins the most. I got used to being the aggressor in the lower limit games. At 2/4, the fish are more aggressive(not all by any means). Now the WA/WB line becomes very very useful. You have to know which players will hang themselves on their own aggression.

I found one of these guys last night and he proceeded to bluff off $150 over 2 hands to me and then I slowplayed a flopped Kings full and won a $130 pot off of him and another guy. Passive lines can be big money-makers in these types of games.

When you move up its very important to get comfortable playing pots with only 1 or 2 other people. The over-aggressives are your friends. Don't raise them.

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This is EXACTLY the problem I am having as well. I moved up to 1/2 about 13000 hands ago. The first 10k were all at the party beginners tables so I didnt notice any difference in play and the pots were Huge. The last 3K were not good. Suddenly the pots were smaller and I could no longer dig myself out of the holes I was creating. Ive been thinking a lot about it in the last week and I think that by being so aggressive I'm not getting enough value out of my hands. The players that can are reading me too easily. Ive been feeling that all my crap hands show and all my good hands are folded around on the flop. So the last few weeks have put me into a -150BB downswing. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

I moved back down to .5/1 and am currently crushing it again. I can easily make 7BB/100 at .5/1 so I think that I am going to recoup my $300 that I lost at 1/2 and then take another shot. I'm also currently rereading SSHE (for the millionth time) and then Im going to read HFAP (which I have never fully read) and the new King Yao book. Then take another shot at 1/2.

Greg

[jrz1972]

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I moved back down to .5/1 and am currently crushing it again. I can easily make 7BB/100 at .5/1

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Part of your problem may be that you don't have an appreciation for what a sustainable winrate is.

[Redd]

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I moved back down to .5/1 and am currently crushing it again. I can easily make 7BB/100 at .5/1

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Part of your problem may be that you don't have an appreciation for what a sustainable winrate is.

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This is truth.

[WalkAmongUs]

One of the key things for me is that at lower limits my winning hands did two things:

1) made up for the money lost by my errors
2) made money above and beyond making up for my errors

Now my winning hands are winning less so they are no longer performing function number 1.

This in turn has made my errors in play glaring and has forced me to plug leaks.

at .5/1 you can have big leaks you never notice because they get lost in these huge pots you win. at 2/4 making mistakes DIRECTLY leads to LOSING MONEY. If I make 4 BB worth of mistakes and now my AA only takes down 2 BB I'm in the hole.

Now, I'm not saying 2/4 is a hard game to beat. I'm simply saying it forces you to consider different lines and to polish up your game.

[bottomset]

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I moved back down to .5/1 and am currently crushing it again. I can easily make 7BB/100 at .5/1

[/ QUOTE ]

Part of your problem may be that you don't have an appreciation for what a sustainable winrate is.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is truth.

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yeah and if by some stretch of the imagination, you actually could sustain that, you would absolutely destroy 1/2 and 2/4 at the very least .. and would make more by playing them

[kapw7]

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Half the pots you play on 6 max are heads up. I think that would help more than .02/.04. I doubt there is any serious play there and it would seem to be a waste of time.

Go spend a few thousand hands at Party 1/2 6 max and see how it turns out.

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I think you are wrong. HU 0.02/0.04 gives you the chance to play a WIDE variety of opponents HU and very cheap. There are passives, agressives, maniacs, idiots etc. and it's not at all uncommon to play tough opponents.

Party 1/2 6 max is not what I would call serious play.