Or perhaps I'm a moron. Firstly Is there ICM when you are heads up?

If not do you think people play exactly at 20BB tourney end game as they would with 20BB effective stacks in HU cash?

If not do you think a player gets somewhat stuck in "tourney life" mode as has been super important pre heads up. Or does the fact that you are likely flipping coins for a large chunk of your roll (or massive chunk possible if you satellited or are a degen) tightens the player up.

obv theoretically cash game HU = tourney HU with identical stack sizes. I really don't have much experience playing HU cash that short, but tourney players are generally too tight. This is as likely a result of ignorance of the mathematics of push/fold poker as it is a psychological thing IMO.

Any tourney I have made to HU is coin flip pretty much.

By the time you get HU you have been playing 5-7 hours and your getting alittle fried in the head.
I have beaten some pretty good Hu players in tourneys to take down the tourney.
But I am brutal when it comes to HU play.
So how does that work?
I think some people let there nerves get the better of them and sweat the difference in winning 1st and 2nd.

When I play HU I am facing a random person not some one I might have played with for 2 or more hours in a tourney.

This is true. But watch out for donkish rocks or calling stations heads up. They will really get you mad if they start running well.

No they are different because you can rebuy in cash game and the payout structure of tourneys is different from cash which is simply linear.

I totally understand that.
Im working on my HU play since I do see it as a weakness.

ICM is based on a few assumptions that aren't really true, but aren't far from true either:
1) All players are equally skilled
2) The blinds are in a random location

If these are true then the value of all your chips is the same. If you make a graph with chips on the x-axis and EV on the y-axis, it will be a straight line. This is not the case with 3 or more players (unless there is only a prize for first).

The result of this linear graph is that you should play the same way you do in a cash game. ICM is a worthless tool at this point of the tournament.

Yeah, you shouldn't really be applying ICM heads up, or anything like that if your opponent is far inferior to you skill wise. Or else you're just shooting yourself in the foot half the time.

By using shove/fold strategies, you are pretty much neutralizing a lot of the skill involved, and if your opponent has no skill, or any knowledge of these types of things, then they are just going to call you down very tight or very loose, depending on how they perceive they should play.


But I've noticed that most players will play the jam/fold game with you if you initiate it. Even those players who always limp into the pot HU, if you start jamming them, then they'll pick up on it and do the same thing. You just have to figure out if they're a rock or a calling station, because most players who don't know what you're doing is one or the other.

ICM is no longer applicable since both players are only truly playing with the smaller effective stack. Example:

player 1 20,000 chips
player 2 5,000 chips

blinds 200-400

the extra 15,000 chips that player 1 has really don't mean that much because they cannot be used. Player 2 is going to play a certain range and it is up to Player 1 to determine that range and play accordingly. It may seem that having the extra chip advantage eases the risk of ruin and getting eliminated and maybe so... but player 1 should be playing as if he had 5,000 chips and calculating his actions according to the effective stack, not his stack. Pushing ranges may be wider if player 2 is tight but he is also has such a low stack-blind ratio that he may call with a broader range (if playing more optimal.)

I think (and I may be wrong of course) that many people play their big stack, well, like their big stack bullying the bubble or stealing blinds...strategy changes a bit HU.

opinions?

I always play according to my stack size or my opponent's stack size.

This will frequently get me in trouble, if I allow my opponent to double up off me, but it gives me the opportunity to eliminate them more quickly, which is my goal in small sitngo's anyways.

So if my opponent has 10bb, or I have the same, I still play and push with the same hands, either way.


That's my personal prefererence when play small sng's. I realize that the cards usually dominate, and I prefer a quick elimination of my opponent rather than battling it out.

not once it gets down to HU. the only difference between cash and tourneys is that cas you can take your chips away whenever you want. from a theoretical perspective though cash HU = tourney HU. the only reason to adjust is if you think your opponent is playing differently because it's a tournament for some reason.

Yeah, but this is referring to situations where one or both players has 20bb or less. That's not going to be the case in cash HU.

my point is that you still play a 10bb stack in a HU tournament the same way you would play if you had a 10bb stack in a HU cash game.

ICM is simply a model that converts chips stacks in a tournament to $equity based on the payout structure. So, you can still use ICM when you are HU, you just wont have to make any adjustments from from purely trying to maximize your cEV, like in a cash game.

It is kind of like using a snorkel on dry land, you can do it, it just wont help you.

Clearly rebuying will allow for different metagame considerations in a cashgame that may not exist in a tourney. However, I stand by my assertion that you have the sole goal of maximizing chip EV HU in both a cash game and a tourney. This is exactly what the ICM would say to do so maximizing chip ev = ICM in this situation.

I don't fully agree because in a cash game or even a HU SNG, you have the chance of doing a rematch, which is certainly not available to you heads up in a MTT. You also often are facing players who are much worse HU than anyone playing HU cash/SNGs, and both players are normally properly rolled (so if you lose, you can play many others, perhaps against a different villain).

But, at the end of a MTT, especially a large field one, you are playing way outside your roll, with no chance of a rematch with this or another villain. So while with 10bb stacks there isn't much you can do, with deeper stacks and a skill edge, playing a "safer" style is preferable, even if each hand is slightly less +cEV with that style. I played one heads up at the end of a MTT that lasted over 100 hands because villain played incredibly straightforward post flop, so I just kept the pots small and eventually wore him down, and I guarantee that strategy results in me winning the MTT more often than had I been more aggresive preflop or post (even though that may be more +cEV for each individual hand).

You can still use ICM for HU play. However since its an winner takes all tournament now we get that cEV == $EV so the bubble factor is always 1. That is ever chip has equal value. Which is the same as when playing cash game. QED.