I've switched to HU from cash 6 max games. Partially to give me something different to learn, maybe improve my game, partially because 6 max feels like a lot of grinding with little reward right now (mainly 50NL). I dabbled for a bit in NL HU cash games, but found a home in $55 turbo HU recently, where I'm marginally beating the game so far.

So I guess my question is, what should I be setting as medium term goals, like within the next 3 months (assuming 2-3 hours a night, 4-5 days a week)? I already feel like my hold em game has improved a lot, seeing peoples lines and learning more about bluffing. So my game has already improved, but I don't really feel like going back to grinding 6 max just yet. Should I stick with SNG's and try to work up a nice ROI, or should I just dive into HU cash now, and try to grind my way up the levels? Or should I just take my small amount of HU experience and use it towards grinding 6 max again?

I can't help but feel confused by all the choices, so I guess I'd like to hear what others have done in similar situations and what they think was the right thing for them and why.

I watched a couple of MasterLJ CR videos (nice), and noticed he briefly mentioned leading into players who weren't cbetting much. Can you give a couple of examples. Like should we be doing this more with draws, strong hands or air? Like is seen more as a trick to take down a pot where we think the villain will fold too much, or is it a way of taking initiative and building a pot.

Like say we call with 44 PF, and the villain PFR is like 35%, but only cbet's 40% of the time, do we lead more on a AK8r, AJ4r or 653r?

sbarber, usually u should donk into players that dont cbet a lot with hands that are vulnerable. I.e something like 89 on a 69J board where a lot of bad turns can come. AK8 as a standard i check fold. I like leading the AJ4r hand a lot because a lot of the time u get 3 streets of value from hands like A2 or QJ that probably would have checked behind the flop, but wont believe u'd donk with a hand that has them beat. Also i like leading 653 flops as well because even with the pair+str draw your hand is still pretty vulnerable.

vague answer, but in terms of calling a double barrel a lot of it depends on how well you know the villain. A lot of villains don't have it in them to bluff the 3rd barrel so you can call turn lightish with the intent of folding to a river bet. Vs more aggro/bluffy villains likely to bluff a blank river you need to call the turn a bit more tightly and call a blank river

skates your a genius for this thread, and as for pushing's comment..... I totally agree, IF you do call the turn you are committing yourself to calling a blank river.

I have heard recently that HU SNGs are softer than HU CASH, and I have some questions regarding that.

1) Are HU SNGs really softer than HU CASH?

2) I think it was Hince who recently said HU SNGs are about to get tougher (relative to other poker forms, I assume) because they are so attractive to sharks right now. Is this true, and if so, why have they stayed soft for so long?

3) Say the toughest sites (Pokerstars and Full Tilt, I presume) are 1 on a softness-scale, and the softest sites (whoever that is) are 5 on the scale.
How soft (1-5) a site would you have to play HU CASH on to get the same hourly rate you get playing HU SNGs on Full Tilt, assuming equal skills at HU SNGs and HU CASH?

I have logged about 20k hands at HU, and really want to improve my game. I watch videos, read forums, etc. In my first 5k hands or so I went up about 20BI at NL50. However, over my last 15k hands I've fairly rapidly dropped about 17 BI. When I review hands a lot of them feel coolerish or standard bad beats, but it's hard for me to say whether that's the case or not from a totally unbiased perspective.

As is, I'm a small winner at NL50, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me as I feel that I've invested a lot more time in my game than 90%+ of the players at NL50. Obviously it would be pretty impossible for someone to tell me if I were swinging down or just playing terrible without knowing a ton more about my game. But just for a quick look I'm going to post my pertinant stats and ask that people comment on the leaks they see.

20k hand sample at NL50:
VPIP: 42 PFR: 35
W$WSD: 51 WTSD: 32 W$SD: 56
AF: 2.88 AFq: 55.6 PF AF: 4.18 Flop AF: 4.35 Turn AF: 2.06 River AF: 1.56
3Bet: 8.4 Fold 3Bet: 59.5
Call PFR: 21.38
Cbet: 70.5

Do any of these numbers look really fishy? Looking at it it seems that my 3Bet percentage is quite low and my Call PFR stat is too high. Increasing the range of hands that I'm 3betting with would solve a lot of this. However, a lot of the players at NL50 are loose passives with 65/14 stats or weak tights with 33/25 stats. The loose passives don't raise enough to three bet them often and the weak tights are calling with a ton of their range so three betting wide seems bad against both. Either way, that one issue doesn't seem like a reason to be doing poor at NL50.

Just looking for some thoughts, open to constructive criticism.

Do you guys sometimes lead on the PFR ?
In which situations ?

skates pwns hu forum

great thread

Good stuff here, just wanted to add that opening 90+% of your button, while theoretically the best play, just doesn't work in practice.
Against almost everyone, just opening 80% or 85% doesn't hurt your winrate at all but makes it a lot easier to play. Even donks notice that you open EVERY button. Variance just goes up alot because you have to 4bet more pf, cbet more with marginal hands and double and triple barrel more.

For players that are new to HU cash, opening just 70% is totally sufficient imo.

ty for the answer

Where can I find some good HU SNG vids for free. There aren't that many on here.

There aren't any. Check the Coaching Advice forum. You might find a HUSNG player with vids for sale.

good thread.

Here's a general question.

$10 HUSNG. Blinds at level 2: $15 and $30. I've got $2500 and Villian has $500 after a big loss. He has pushed 3 hands in a row since being down. He pushes button and you look at pocket 2's in BB. Call or wait for better?

If villain were pushing ATC then you would be a very slight favorite which, in addition to the small amount of money already in the pot, would dictate a call. However, it's unlikely that he's pushing everything and it doesn't take much tightening of his range for this to turn -EV. So this is always a fold. Notice it's not about "waiting for better" as if calling is profitable but there will be more profitable situations later. It's about evaluating the EV of the current hand and realizing that it's negative.

How necessary us a HUD if your playing only a maximum of 2 HUcash tables?

What dippy? I'm like, instacalling. We're a slight favorite against even a decently wide weighted range.

Hi skates,
how can I apply mathematics in my game? Tips for HU SNG'er?
Thoughts on push/fold systems like nash equilibrium or SAGE?

Please send me program you created, I have sent u a pm a few days ago, but you ignored it.

skates,
Why weight his range. Do you think villain isn't pushing his strong hands? I played around in pokerstove and assigned villain a range of top 60% or so of hands then took out TT+ and strong aces (AJ-AKo, AT-AKs) and 22 is still a slight dog. Obviously depending on how you manipulate ps it can go from a slight underdog to a slight favorite, but the point is in these somewhat optimistic scenarios it's a breakeven call. What if villains range is tighter? I'm just thinking out loud here, not really organized thought.

Yea 22 is a lot closer than I thought, you're right. 44 is a clear call, heh... 33 is pretty close too. I was wrong.

TheSuperuser, I thought I replied, no? Maybe I got distracted? I'm not distributing my program. I made some improvements on it and got some weird results. It's currently for my eyes only .

I use the nash equilibrium ranges for 10BB or less. My play between 10 and 15 big blinds depends on the player. Some people I keep playing shove/fold against, some people I minraise against, some people I actually mix in limps *gasp!*. Find the Nash EQ chart and make it into a JPG or PNG that you can open and have next to your tables. Most plays become really natural.

As for applying mathematics in HUSNGs... all short-stack scenarios are pretty easily calculated. I think tools like pokerstove can help you with this. I wrote programs in java .

If villain is shoving ATC, 22 is just a 50.334% favorite.
Throw out the bottom 30% (T7o, J6o, and worse), and 22 becomes a 48.712% dog.
If villain is any tighter, 22 becomes a much bigger dog quite quickly.

The blinds aren't big enough to compensate for likely being behind, nor are they big enough that letting villain steal them puts him back in the game. So fold.

This may be too general a question. But in developing my HU game, should I start TAG, folding a lot with air, and work up my aggression as I gain confidence in the game, or start overly aggressive, and try to find which opponents/spots aggression needs to be toned down?

GOOD Advice...partial buyin and CHANGE = remaining money in account... They usually suck but quit you if they get lucky

OK, yet another question. You start with the absolute biggest effective stack possible in a HU SNG in the first and it gets smaller quickly in turbos. You can be down to 10-15BB effective stacks without much fuss really if you play it a certain way or if one play gets a good lead.

So I guess my question is what opponents do you have a bigger edge against later with smaller effective stacks, and which ones do you have a bigger edge against with deeper effective stacks? I think I have some ideas here, but would like to hear if people purposely slow down a SNG (by tightening up a lot) to get to a short stack situation against certain players.

totally not necessary