Played in a $5/$10 game tonight where the game broke unusually early, but one rec player stuck around. He's a very fun player to have around and didn't seem like he wanted to leave so early, so I asked if he wanted if he wanted to play heads up. He agreed - but the HU match progressed to the point where he wanted to button straddle. Now, instead of being $5 on the button and $10 bb, it became $20 on the button and action started with the $10 BB (who would now be OOP both pre- and post-flop).
He was shortstacked (40-80bb) most of the night and didn't want to buy in for any more. To me, this necessitated adopting a super polar raising range from BB, limping majority of range, and folding everything else. I was okay limping hands like 96s, KTo, etc. because postflop was relatively easy to navigate. Played almost like how you'd play a HU hyper vs. weaker opposition, but now you have to consider that you're OOP the entire hand instead of just OOP pre-flop.
Obviously, more studied players can exploit this. Let's say 80bb effective, BB is $10 and Straddle (BTN) is $20. How do you adjust vs. theoretically strong opponents?
My thoughts:
Spoiler:
Obviously, it's hard to balance both a limping and raising range pre-flop. As a result, I like polarizing the raising range to make it relatively simple:
BB limp: Top 33% or so.
BB raise: 88+, ATs+, A3-A5s, ATo+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, 43s, 32s, random suited garbage (T4s, J3s, etc.)
BTN check vs. limp: obviously ATC, but also check some stronger hands to balance (weak unsuited aces, middling SCs & 1gappers, KTo, etc)
There should be tons of material on this since it’s the same as when action folds to the blinds in a full game.
I think you could raise a lot more hands. Not sure exactly which hands should be limped/raised/folded. I don’t have a lot of experience here.
Can’t believe I didn’t think of this. Yeah it’s the same as BvB action (but with shorter stack depth than 100bbs). I’ll look at how tournament/SNG players play BvB.
