[sweetjazz]

When I first started encountering heads-up play, I ended up in engaging in this strategy a few times -- a few times more than I'd like to admit now. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Now, I realize that such play is destined to failure unless I have a huge fold equity. So now I might occassionally try such a play if I was up against someone who I noticed folds a lot *and* I hadn't been involved in any overly aggressive plays (from the viewpoint of others) recently. Plus I consider board texture as well. I generally don't try to spew a tight player off a hand on an AKx board.

As far as playing against such players, I'll tighten up a bit before entering pots against them. And then proceed to call down a little more and value bet/raise a bit more. As you say, it is not too difficult to counter their strategy. In the short term, of course, they may win a few small Pyrrhic victories by getting you to fold the best hand when they had nothing, but that is more than made up for by all the extra bets you accumulate when they continue to try to push you off your hand, either by bluffing with air when you have a marginal hand or by spewing chips when you hit the board hard.

So I generally think your analysis is right on. I think there are some exceptional cases where you can overplay a missed hand profitably if the circumstances are just right, but I don't really think it is very critical to being successful at a game such as 5/10. I would say that 95% of the time you see someone playing that way, they are chucking EV like a hot potato.