Heads-Up and Back to Basics

As I mentioned in my last post, I decided to play some heads-up this week in order to improve my six-max game which I felt was getting a bit stale and desperately in need of a shake-up.

The focus of my one week sojourn into heads-up would be playing in 3-bet pots and to this end I had to do two things which generally aren’t recommended. First, since I was only playing at 50NL where good 3-betters are relatively rare, I had to seek out the best regulars to ensure that I was getting good practice. Secondly, I decided to 3-bet and to call 3-bets with anything remotely playable in an effort to put myself into as many difficult postflop situations as possible. Though I was certainly losing money by doing both these things, I think I can regard all the lost money as the cost of improvement. In any case, if what I learn wins me just one big pot when I move back to my normal game, I’ll have broken even!

So was the experience beneficial? Without having actually put it into practice yet, it’s hard to say. But I think I’ve certainly improved my game and added some moves to my repertoire. In addition to playing in many 3-bet pots, heads-up requires you to learn unusual plays like floating check-raises with ace-high for value and floating out of position. Both these plays aren’t really recommended in six-max and while I certainly won’t be using them with nearly the same frequency at six-max, they are some extra tools I have in my shed now. Heads-up also forces you to really read hands and ask yourself what your opponent is representing and what you can represent. This in turn lets you improve your bluffing frequencies and also your bluff-catching capabilities. On the whole, I think the week has been a worthwhile investment and I might try to play some more heads-up in the future.

I thought I’d describe one thing that happened this week that I thought was pretty cool – I sent a player busto! Basically, I sat opposite this player at 50NL who I thought was a good regular and who would therefore be 3-betting a lot (I had seen him sitting with a four buy-in stack just a few minutes earlier). A few minutes into our match, however, I soon realised that he was actually awful. His stats were something like 60/5/0.5 and he wasn’t even raising his own button let alone 3-betting. I almost quit him since this wasn’t the practice I was after but I decided that easy money was easy money and elected to play on. About an hour later, I was up seven buy-ins. He then surprised me by asking if I wanted to play higher (tilt anyone?). I of course gladly accepted and we went to 1/2 NL where I took him for three more buy-ins. The last time he reloaded he only bought in for $190.10 so I’m pretty sure he was busto when he lost that last buy-in.

Now, I know that all sounds really harsh and demeaning but for some reason I found it really comforting. I think it’s because it made me realise that there are other people out there who are really struggling with poker; it wasn’t just me. I think this can be easy to forget when you’re going through a rough patch and all you read about are people having insane months making tens of thousands of dollars.

To finish, I thought I’d write out my poker goals for the next two months. For starters, I’m going to stay away from six-max for just a little bit longer. While I’m eager to put all my new heads-up tricks into practice, I’ve decided to wait until I can change my PartyPoker screen name (on the 14th May). This should make things a little easier when I return since I’ll have reads on my opponents while they’ll have no idea who I am.

When I do return, I plan to grind 1/2 until I’m ready to make another (yes, ANOTHER...) tilt at 2/4. It’ll be uni holidays in July so I’m hoping to be ready by then. With more free time and less distractions, I’ll hopefully be able to really focus and make that shot at 2/4 my last. My goal in the meantime is to make 10K playing 25,000 hands at 1/2 at 10PTBB/100. I realise that 10PTBB/100 is a pretty ridiculous win-rate to aim for (if I played four tables at a time, this would equate to $160/hour which is unsustainable at 1/2) but I think it’s within the realm of possibility if I play well and run better. Even if I end up being unable to achieve it, I think having the goal will still help me in my play. You see, moving down limits is mentally very difficult as it quite literally is going backwards. It’s like getting dropped from a sports team and being told you’re simply not good enough. I remember last time this happened, I spewed really badly because I couldn’t take the lower limit seriously. I couldn’t believe I was stuck playing 1/2 players again and tried to show who was boss by four- and five-bet shoving Q9s preflop and shoving gut-shots postflop. Invariably, I ran into AA or top set. This time, with a goal that requires strict discipline to achieve, I’ll hopefully be able to rein in these spewing tendencies and play much better.