What are key heads up lessons?

[aujoz]

I've just started playing 10+1s, after finally "getting it" (in terms of playing well) at the crazy easy 5+1s. At the 5+1s, I won about 86% of heads up, while at 10+1s, I win only 46% or there abouts.

While it's not from a massive sample, this tells me that there's significant room for improvement playing heads up - for a newbie like myself, what basics are worth learning?

[nthn2fancy]

i used to be sick headsup, now i'm pooshing too much. i have to work on it, majorly work on it.

[HesseJam]

Unless you come into the Hup with a huge chip lead the vast majority of the time a winning rate of 86% is not sudtainable.

your 46% doesn't tell me much unless you have been at heads up 200 times and on average on even chip count. However, at the 10+1 your average opponent does not play well heads up.

BTW, I run a 63% winning percentage on the 20s over about 200 heads up situations. That's good, I thought. But then, I had a look at the stats and discovered that I came in with the chip lead about 60% of the time. And I had way better than average starting hands. And I hit the flop better than average. And I was lucky a lot.

[PartySNGer]

You need to feel out your opponent in the first 2-3 hands as well as how he's played on the bubble. If he's very aggressive and pushes a lot, loosen your calling requirements to include all but the worst Ax and pair hands, and big kings and maybe even QJ-QT. If he's tight, then tighten your calling requirements to big aces and med. pairs up. You are much better off vs. a tight player and you can usually grind down the tight player by pushing many hands. Also note that it is better to push a hand like 76s than K4o.

If he's at all tight, raise.