help with playing heads up < 20BB (1 Viewer)

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I keep getting down to the final two in some of the home MTTs I play in, late in the tournament of course so we're both at 20-ish blinds.

I have absolutely no clue what to do here and even coming in with a 2:1 chip advantage I can't close it out. I need help with pre-flop (fold/limp/raise/shove/3bet ranges), flop situations, and bet sizing.

GTO/balance is not important against these opponents. Any advice or pointers to other resources would be appreciated, thanks!
 
When you get to heads up, position becomes ultra important. Im raising in position atleast 75 to 80 percent of the time preflop. That rate is not really possible with only 20 bbs, but still you should definatley be more aggressive pre flop when you have position.
 
Are you consistently coming in second in these spots? My best advice would be to set yourself up to a target SPR to make your post-flop decisions as easy as possible.

Also, I think more information would be helpful such as your limping, raising, and 3-betting/shoving ranges. If we knew these then it would be easier to get an idea of why you keep getting the same outcome.
 
Are you consistently coming in second in these spots?.

yes.

Also, I think more information would be helpful such as your limping, raising, and 3-betting/shoving ranges. If we knew these then it would be easier to get an idea of why you keep getting the same outcome.

the problem is i don't really have any heads-up. that's what I need help with :)
 
Treat most aces as pretty good hands, ditto with KT, KJ, and KQ. Pocket pairs are obviously good unless you get shoved on while holding deuces or treys preflop. Really when you get to about 20 - 25bb heads up and you're both at about the same stack size, it'll come down to one or two hands. If you can get it all-in preflop with AT - AK, you're most likely either ahead or flipping. If you somehow ram your AQ into AK, that's just a cooler given the stack sizes.

Post-flop, top pair is crazy good, and even middle pair is worth something meaningful. If you get some heat though with something less than top pair against typical opponents, probably better to let it go unless you're pot committed. Generally though with these stacks, if you raise preflop or call a preflop raise and you hit top pair, you pretty much have to go with it unless you have a super good live read.
 
agree with above, open your range. 3 bet more often. rarely (if ever)limp.

get on poker stars and practice some heads up play. lots of sit and go's. While play money online and real money heads up are not very similar. You will get some experience widening your range and see you don't always need a set or two pair to get your chips in. Often Ace high is good in heads up play. 20x moves get easier in my opinion. push or fold
 
Another important question that should be addressed is: do you find yourself getting blinded out often? Fold equity is going to be an important factor in heads-up play as well.
 
There's really no substitute for heads-up practice. Yes, in general, you need to open up your range and be more aggressive, but HU play is really about honing in on the weaknesses of your individual opponent and exploiting the hell out of them, and the way you get a sense of that is by playing HU against a lot of people.

With some players, that means stealing the blinds almost every hand. With others, it means setting traps. With others, it means 3-betting liberally. When you have only 20 BB left, going for big 3-bets is likely to be one of the better strategies, especially against someone who's raising a lot preflop, but it just depends. And of course you can't just 3-bet over and over or you'll get snapped off. You could almost say it's a bit of a dance.

Key thing: don't be afraid to gamble. You do not have a lot of options, that short-stacked and up against just one other player. As a friend of mine likes to say, "You've got nowhere to hide" when you're HU. For most of a tournament, tight play is generally good because every hand you're not involved in gives the other players a chance to bust each other out, but once it's down to two players, they simply have to duke it out.
 
There's really no substitute for heads-up practice. Yes, in general, you need to open up your range and be more aggressive, but HU play is really about honing in on the weaknesses of your individual opponent and exploiting the hell out of them, and the way you get a sense of that is by playing HU against a lot of people.

With some players, that means stealing the blinds almost every hand. With others, it means setting traps. With others, it means 3-betting liberally. When you have only 20 BB left, going for big 3-bets is likely to be one of the better strategies, especially against someone who's raising a lot preflop, but it just depends. And of course you can't just 3-bet over and over or you'll get snapped off. You could almost say it's a bit of a dance.

Key thing: don't be afraid to gamble. You do not have a lot of options, that short-stacked and up against just one other player. As a friend of mine likes to say, "You've got nowhere to hide" when you're HU. For most of a tournament, tight play is generally good because every hand you're not involved in gives the other players a chance to bust each other out, but once it's down to two players, they simply have to duke it out.
I agree with all of this, but it’s tough to get heads up practice. It’s not terribly useful to play heads up with my buddy, because we know each other’s tendencies so well.
So tell me if I’m wrong here:

I know free poker is stupid. But I feel like I get decent heads up practice playing the tournaments on the WSOP app, and getting down to heads up. I know it’s questionable because it’s free poker. But I think the heads-up play is a little more legitimate, and worthwhile as practice.
Thoughts?
 
When you get down to headsup, even play money experience is better than none at all. All the silly players shoving their whole stack for 60bb are gone at that point and you're on average playing against someone who has, at the very least, a slight amount of knowledge and strategy. That adds up over time.
 
I think it would be more than worth it to invest a small amount of money into an online poker site and play heads-up SnG’s. The practice will do you a lot of good and you won’t have to worry about the silly antics of free poker players.
 
When you get down to headsup, even play money experience is better than none at all. All the silly players shoving their whole stack for 60bb are gone at that point and you're on average playing against someone who has, at the very least, a slight amount of knowledge and strategy. That adds up over time.

It's true. My first major heads-up practice was with my (ex-)wife, playing just for kudos on the table in the living room when we didn't have much else to do. Despite the fact that I knew her really well, we were playing for nothing at all, and it was only ever just us, it was great practice. There's a certain flow to heads-up play that's worth learning even if you only learn it against one opponent at first, or terribad opponents.
 
thanks, guys! i think practicing online, even play money, is good advice. that's how i started out and it didn't take long to learn what the whole fuss about "position" was :)

haven't gotten around to it, yet (especially sucks that pstars locked out us WA state players) but I finally closed one out, binked one of the aforementioned MTTs last night :) 1st paid $160, $130 profit, so nothing to get too excited about, but I'm 3rd/2nd/1st for the first three this year.
 
thanks, guys! i think practicing online, even play money, is good advice. that's how i started out and it didn't take long to learn what the whole fuss about "position" was :)

haven't gotten around to it, yet (especially sucks that pstars locked out us WA state players) but I finally closed one out, binked one of the aforementioned MTTs last night :) 1st paid $160, $130 profit, so nothing to get too excited about, but I'm 3rd/2nd/1st for the first three this year.

That's awesome! Keep up the good work!
 
Honestly, I would simply develop a plan to crush HUNL. For me, it would be:

1. Study the theory behind HUNL. Doug Polk has some decent vids on YouTube, as does Splitsuit (James Sweeney), only to mention a few. This will get you started;
2. Memorize default charts for both positions, and then know adjustments based on BB<20;
3. Watch some pros play. There are some expert free vids where you can get a feel for the ranges they use. Again, Doug Polk is one of the better ones I've found but he is a polarizing personality so I'm sure that may elicit some comments from the crowd here;
4. Practice. PokerStars works for me. You can either play dedicated HUNL or you can rock cheap 9-person SnGs for a bit and you'll get some good practice;
5. This is the most important: repeat steps 1-4. It is an iterative process.

In general, I've found that subjectively the aggression factor increase is non-linear as you go from 9 to 6 to...3 to 2 players. Once you get a peek at some of the RFI ranges at various (shallow) stack sizes, you'll be shocked. You'll also get sucked out on a lot playing these looser ranges but with enough volume, you'll see the light.

Of course this is just my opinion and I'm admittedly relatively new to this whole thing.

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