[Cry Me A River]

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much more post-flop play (this is an understatement), much more read-dependent play - as with tactical decisions regarding specific hands, and strategical ones regarding specific opponents.

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Yeah, I kinda said that...

A couple other observations about Head's Up tourney's (I'm really enjoying them this week-end!)

You do play an awful lot of hands compared to "normal" games. A Head's Up tourney is easily worth 5 or 6 times the "experience" of a regular SNG/MTT of equivalent length (though I still think that experience doesn't fully translate 100% to other structures). If you have any passivity problems, Head's Up tourney's will cure ya (unless you hate money...). Head's Up tourney's will also work on your trapping/slowplay skills as well as your ability to avoid traps (Though it's not that tough when donkey pushes all-in into a T100 pot). An awful lot of games have a rythm like:

Steal/Steal/Steal/Fold/Fold/Steal/Fold/Steal/TRAP!/Steal/Fold/Steal

Where you basically pass the blinds back and forth until you both get a hand. Pot size management is key, particularly in marginal situations. Hands like middle-pair with flush draw, low-pair with broadway kicker become extremely important for chipping away at opponent's stack particularly with reasonable semi-bluffs and drawing hands with a lot of outs to improve on later streets (particularly hands that if they improve will punish villain - ie: A river ace that gives you 2-pair to your opponent's pair of aces). Perhaps the biggest flaw in the monkey's Head's Up game (besides general passivity, particularly PF) is the overbet bluff, exspecially if the entire rest of the tournament his bets have been reasonable when he's had a hand.

Comebacks from <T500 (at the $20 buy-in level) and less are very, VERY possible so never give up! Most players don't know how to close - They don't pressure the shortstack enough (particularly blind stealing) and they'll happily call your ATs all-in with JTo or Q3s. And once you've made it back to ~even it almost becomes inevitable that villain tilts his stack away.

There is a bit of an adjustment if you go back to regular SNG's - You play so many hands Head's Up you'd never touch in a regular SNG and you're so much more aggressive it's easy to turn LAG when you go back to full table games.