There isn't anything specific I feel like writing about so I figure this is a decent option. I'll try to answer questions as best I can but I can't guarantee that I can answer everything.

I have a question!!

How does this relate to Heads-Up poker?

Something like half of my posts on 2+2 on the way to Pooh-Bah have been in this forum and heads-up is predominantly what I play now. If this is considered too LC something I won't be too stressed out over it getting locked, I just wanted to "give back to the community" as a few people put it while I was nearing 1600.

I think this is a pretty neat idea. I'm willing to take it seriously and appreciate your taking the time to do it.

1. How about a headsup bio - how you got where you are now

2. Could you outline (some of) the key insight(s) that you came across while learning headsup?

3. What do you think is the most effective way to go about learning headsup poker? We all know the basics: play, think, study, read the forum, post to the forum, etc., but what do you recommend as being the method of greatest marginal return? what are the most important things?

4. Hand reading - can you offer any insight into how to adjust for hand ranges within a match - what factors change an opponent's range and how?

I started playing poker doing 5 mans on Pacific and MTTs, it was pre-UIGEA so the games were a joke and ridiculously easy money. After the UIGEA passed I tried to switch to 6-mans and failed pretty miserably. I figured that with ~5% rake if I had any skill advantage it should show up pretty easily in my results. I started in the $22s with a $300 bankroll which in hindsight may not have been a great idea, but I ran really hot starting out with like 60% ROI over my first 75 games or so. I worked my way into 100s/200s within about a week and $2000 profit before I experienced my first real downswing. I've had a few really nasty once since but they aren't life tilting me as bad now that I'm starting to understand bankroll management and more specifically variance. I forget the exact stats, but jay-shark posted something long the lines of that if you have a ~58% winrate there is like a 30% chance that you will be down after 100 games. It took a while for me to realize that 5-20 games wasn't a significant sample size.

While starting out I considered "going pro" but I pretty quickly realized that if I force myself to mass games I start to lose the enjoyment of the game. I started coaching because it lets me deal with the parts of the game I enjoy (mostly thinking critically and fixing flaws) without having to mass games to get over the variance. I'm not putting in nearly as many hours as I was when I started out, but I suspect that being able to enjoy my college life will have more long term benefits than building my bankroll.

I've found that multi-tabling more games while over-rolled is much better for grinding out games because it beats the variance, but single tabling higher stakes is more enjoyable if I am going into it with a less serious mentality.

Probably the biggest adjustments I had to make were in adapting to the players across the spectrum from tight/passive to loose/aggressive. I found that I couldn't run over players with aggression if they were just going to go all in every hand. It was a pretty big transition to make from playing like a robot to thinking critically about my opponent's styles and finding spots where they were exploitable.

If you stick to any single thing you will be really limited in how quickly you can learn. At one point while learning I made an effort to reply to every post that had real content and it helped tremendously. I originally only replied to the ones where I felt safe and confident in my answer, but those ones weren't really improving my game. In the threads where I was probably wrong someone was usually quick to point it out and although it was embarrassing sometimes it helped me fix leaks in my game.

I also started threads every hand where I couldn't figure out what my ideal line was. It may not seem like a big deal because hands can be so different and the situations were generally unusual, but it helped to plug a LOT of those small leaks.

It took me a while to realize that taking notes could make a difference. My notes help me out where my read couldn't in about 5% of my games which isn't much, but it is significant considering the notes take about 3 seconds to type out.

Playing is a pretty obvious one. I watched some videos on Cardrunners as well, but I was kind of disappointed in their HUSNG videos. I never got into cash long term, but I did manage to pick up a few valueable tips from the videos I watched.

Your estimate of your opponent's range should be based on how loose/tight they are and how aggressive/passive they are normally in comparison with the line they have taken in the hand. Your estimate of their hand range should give you rough ideas of:

a) how often your hand will win with a showdown
b) how likely you are to bet them out, as well as how much would be needed to do so
c) how likely they are to bet YOU out on later streets
d) how much they will pay you off if you end up ahead by the river

Coming up with exact numbers in each scenario is borderline impossible because there are so many factors ranging beyond their hand their hand range such as metagame and psychology. However, the more experience you have in dealing with similar situations the better your assessment will be.

The best ways to improve your hand reading are actively posting on these forums and playing a lot of games. Having friends who are actually decent at poker could help tremendously. None of my real life friends have been able to succeed long-term in poker, but there are plenty of people on these forums to chat with on AIM and share bad beats and hand histories with. The experiences of actual hands will force a lot of the information into your brain, and having friends who play regularly can help you develop different perspectives that you may not have considered.

Life time (or significant number of hands) HU graph??

Thanks for doing this. Much appreciated.
Chrismystero is obv a knob.

What made you think people wanted a well about you? IMO your the worst poster in HU right up there with APXG.

My cash games are spread out between 3 comps but are pretty much a rollercoaster of .5/1 and 1/2 amounting to ~$2k over a ~6000 hand sample. I prefer playing SNGs because I don't have to deal with the variance of avoiding hit-and-run artists and shortstacks before finding an ideal match to play.

I posted the possibility of it in the other thread and didn't really get any responses to it directly. I didn't want to put a lot of effort into pre-writing something that people might not need any help with so I though this would be a better approach. Some players might appreciate it because I built my BR very quickly considering that I play casually with poker as one of my lower priorities in life.

Who is APXG?

I guess this kind of a noob question but im curious.

1.What kind of software do you use for HU sit n gos (if any)?

2.What do you use to track your win rates?

3.Do you think one could play for a living, Only playing HU sit n gos.

4.At level do you think playing for a living is feasible?

5.Do you use rakeback and does it affect your winnings by a good amount?

thank you for answering my questions if you choose to do so. Sorry if they are noobish.

1. Pokertracker but pretty rarely.

2. Sharkscope.

3. Yep.

4. This depends on how many tables you are playing, how many hours per day, and how expensive your standard of living is. With multitabling I figure it is possible at the $20 range assuming you put in a legitimate amount of hours. Single tabling probably the 33s or 55s.

5. No, I made my account before I knew about rakeback. I'd probably make like 8-10% more if I had it.

Edit: Missed a comma.

for serious?

Why do you block your stats on sharkscope if you are a winning player? (i've always wondered this about winning players)

1. What's your standard "raise from button" range for the first level of a HUSNG (10/20 blinds, 1500 chips/player)? Are you a raise/fold player, or will you call with some hands preflop?

2. How much would you say you adapt to a player's tendencies in a given HUSNG match? Or do you just play standard for the most part? Do you ever make plays that you normally wouldn't make specifically with the intention of making a note of that player's reaction to it?

I thought you weren't able to keep up with y our results with ss if you block your stats?

How 'bout this. [censored] YOU! My question was legit 'cuz I simply didn't how the Original Post applied to HU poker. Go [censored] yourself and *****.

Ty,

Chrismystero

PS: xSCWx, good responses thus far.

please descibe that $2k downswing in the middle of your graph. What buyin level was that at? Were you playing well the whole time? Did you change anything in your game during it?

Hopefully I can think of some better questions. My biggest problems have usually stemed from dealing with downswings so any advice in that respect is golden to me.

I find myself checking it after every couple games and playing around with all the different filters so I spend as much time looking at strange statistics as I do playing. I don't really care if other players see it, I just don't want to look at it myself.

It isn't very difficult to unblock, it just stops me from compulsively looking at results after a couple games.

I was really hoping to see a Pooh-Bah post on *this* topic.

After a disgusting number of games, I'm still not convinced I'm very good at recognizing player tendencies, much less exploiting them.

Everybody talks about how you have to pay attention to what your opponent is doing, and exploit their mistakes, but there just really hasn't been that much about specific mistakes, and *how* to exploit them.

There have been a few things here and there, but even a thread that was intended to be devoted completely to this very specific topic ("post common villain mistakes and how to exploit them" or something like that) was strangely devoid of real answers.

Of course, I realize the main reason for that is that it's all insanely situation-specific. It still seems like it ought to be possible to approach from a high level, though.

Eh APXG was actually really good at poker despite his inability to articulate it and his tendency to bicker about nothing.

Thank you for answering my extra noobish questions .
I have a few more if you dont mind

1. How many HU sit n gos on avg do you play per week? Month?

2. Do you mostly 1 table or Multi? If you multi how many do you play?

3. Do you find multi tabling relativity easy? If so how did you learn to focus on multiable tables?

4. How much is your coaching? And at levels do you recommend someone starts paying for coaching?

5.How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck would?

thank you in advance

Yeah, a poo-bah like this would be amazing. You should list each type of player, describe their characteristics and common actions (i know it varies a lot), and how to exploit each type of opponent and their characteristics.

I think that thread went down the tubes because it would serve no purpose to us and make our opposition harder if they lurk and notice these characteristics and problems in their own game.

i guess i was curious if you meant to come off as that big of a dbag or if there's an inside joke i'm not keen to

No. That thread was making progress, then someone came in and said pretty much I just said and that was the end of it.

Just relaying information.