I'am a beginner and I decided to choose HUSNG hypers as my speciality.
I like this game in particular because it's 1 on 1 which seems like the purest form of poker and it's also cool that you get the opponent locked in for the duration of the match.

Now the problem is that I don't know what's a good place to start my journey. I looked at the stickies but I' afraid the content is now outdated and not lead to the best use of my time.

What should I do? I understand that study is an important part of poker and I like learning stuff in general but knowing what to study is hard for a beginner like me.
I know that there are quality paid resources out there, in the form of books,videos or coaching but my my ideal plan would be to learn enough with quality free content and as I win start investing with that money because frankly I don't have that much to invest.
So, in summary, here's what I would like to know:

1. Is there stuff out there that is free and that when studied and applied can really ramp up ones poker skills?
2. How do the best poker player spend their time? (ratio of study, practice, talking to others, other things?)
3. What are the chances losing my bankroll at 7$ hypers if I start playing right away?
4. What should I do to prevent this from happening?

Play, play, play.

The best thing you can do is play the game, find spots that you aren't sure about that come up frequently (think preflop spots, flop spots in particular) and post on the forums.

The free videos on the HUSNGcom youtube channel can help too, some of the Coffeeyay ones in particular will be very relevant today and help you with common fundamentals such as limping preflop and flop play.

When you're ready to invest and go to the next level, there's the two recent Lotte Lenya packs which are great and the CoffeeHUD.

But a free route, especially initially, is perfectly reasonable and fine, just play a ton of volume and make sure you enjoy the game. Attack the game with a curiosity for improving your decisions, not an obsession with results.

Thanks for the advice. I'll check out the videos before playing and see if they help.
I'll also make sure to post on the forums, I even created a challenge thread which you guys can check out here:

50€ -> +∞: playing HUSNG hypers, learning about poker and life

1. Yes, husng.com, search for heads up hyper on youtube and watch professionals play, etcetera. If you wanna improve the quickest optimal is probably to get a coach.
2. High study time in the beginning, low in the end, as per any market. You work hard to make it and then you squeeze as much money as you can out of it.
3. Very high if you dont know basic heads up strategy. (Dont bro)
4. Study, study study. Www.pokerbank.com, download equilab (free), pokertracker, flopzilla etcetera.

PM if you want more tips. Good luck

If I were you I'd start at 3's. Unless you have some sort of decent poker background if you start at 7's you'll probably lose early on as there's already a lot of regs a that level. At 7's you can still probably sit mostly recreationals and the traffic is good.

At 15s+ there's a player cartel on every level (assuming you play on Pokerstars), so you have to beat other regs to get in. It takes solid amount of play and study to reach higher levels these days.

From my own experience the fastest way is to join a stable with quality coaching like WinningFlips or Team 651. You'll probably have to prove yourself before a quality stable will take you in though. Stables generally ask 50% of your earnings for the first year, but long term if you intend to go pro it's probably still the most cost effective way as you will need a high number of coaching hours and hiring your own coach will probably get more costly.

I think Fydor_8's video pack is good bang for the buck starting early on, if it's still hosted at YourDoomPoker. It's definitely outdated but I think it covers the basics pretty well. That should still be enough to win at 7's. In order to get into 30s+ you'd serve well to get private coaching or join a stable. In order to beat other regs you need to be somewhat decent in GTO play these days and it can be tough to go down that path by yourself.

If you have more questions you can PM me.

Interesting. At higher levels I see a group of players that are always sitting awaiting for others to join but they don't seem to play each other.
Is that a player cartel? How is a cartel built?
Can I just tell them in chat "yo, I wanna join the cartel" and then it's done? Who controls this?

Yeah they are player cartels. Random recrationals have a tiny chance to ever play against another recrational because cartels control the lobbies.

You don't get in by asking. Like I said, you have to beat the regs in the cartels to get in. Different cartels have different rules for required chipEV and number of games. The first cartel you'd be battling is at 15s.

Yes and it seems they have some program to register automatically, there's no way they do it manually with the speed they do it.

By the way I tried to PM you but I guess I'am also too much for a newbie for this forums

http://sharkystrator.com/

Lets you automatically wait in line as well so regs basically never simulsit each other. From 15s+ it's mandatory to have pretty much, though of course if you're not in a division it won't matter.

Anyway, you should first focus on learning the game and becoming a solid winner at $7s. It's very achievable and probably not too difficult to have good success at small stake hypers. Even at $7s you'll get almost all fish games and the action is quite good. Once you get there, you can decide exactly what you want to do, whether it's battling into the divs, transitioning to spins, chilling at $7s and printing, or something else entirely.

Fwiw right now it's still not too hard to get into the $15s div, but still tougher than beating $7s fish and I'd imagine that group will get stronger over time.

So I suppose it's legal to use that program, right?

I want to progress as fast as I can and I don't think that happens by playing fish. I have only played 3 games so far (against regs and way higher stakes than I should play atm) but honestly I wasn't very impressed. Obviously with this sample I can't extrapolate much but I felt like I could exploit them because I could see they were obviously exploiting me and I don't think they would think I would be exploiting them because they probably have some other software that tells them I'm a newbie.

I realize exploiting people is how you win money, but is that still the case in 2018? Maybe they would adapt after a few games but if not, I feel like after some study I can start making damage to those regs.

I just need one other piece: someone to discuss poker with. I don't have anybody and I feel that it's hindering my progress.

Nah, the entire reg community is openly violating TOS and posting about it on the biggest poker forum in the world?

When you're a beginner, it's how it happens.

In which a newbie plays 3 games and boldly proclaims higher stakes regs suck.

Tip: you probably don't really understand what's going on, and everyone probably played fish game vs you anyway.

All the regs know the screennames of all the other regs. Everyone else is a fish. No software needed. Also, fish sit second.

Yes.

Somehow I doubt it, but good luck if you try.

Are you saying that I'm in the left peak of the following graph?

It is not that bad if you aware of the existence of such a graph.

yeah, knowing that graph is basically all u'll ever need.

I wonder if the Mexican freak who was sitting me all the time and insisting on rematches at the $7s today is none other than wlpb

I might have a 1% edge over that Mexican if I do my homework on his leaks, but the problem was that he was distracting me from playing with random others, over whom my edge would be bigger.

I guess, when playing at offpeak hours, I need to go through the lobby before each session, tag all 1-tabling players as recreational, and sit exclusively such tagged players instead of opensitting (which is viable when I have a stalker because recs sometimes opensit when the lobby is empty). Otherwise there's usually some semi-pro hanging out in the lobby who doesn't respect rematch refusals and tries to battle me.

While you might be able to get some games vs tagged recs at 7s, there is literally nobody you should be unwilling to play at those stakes, and letting some piss-poor 7s "reg" disrupt your grind isn't something you should do so easily.

If you're really struggling, use it as an opportunity to improve your game.

I know, but I posted that to point out that grinding $7s isn't exactly 'chilling and printing'.

HU requires a lot of thinking, adjustment and readjustment to particular 'regs'; default strategies stop working well once a history is developed with a particular opponent.

Generally, I believe that one should choose the poker format that puts them on as little tilt as possible, which will be different for different people because personality weaknesses are idiosyncratic. In a pro career, it's important to be able to grind for dozens of hours a week, and it's necessary not to fear the game in order to be motivated to sit in.

I think I'm in a tiny minority of those whom $3 Spin & Go Max* (4-tabling) puts on less tilt than $7 HU hypers (2-tabling) (the hourly standard deviations being about equal). The tilt profile is sometimes more important than the hourly winrate because the monthly EV is the hourly multiplied by the number of hours played per month.

* There's relatively little HU there because the auto-all-in phase often starts when there are 3+ players left or shortly after the start of HU.

It depends on the state of your game. While it's probably a good move to adjust some vs whoever's target sitting you at 7s, I doubt they really have the capacity to counteradjust properly and force you to get into some sort of adjustment metagame with them. Quite frankly, there are $30+ regs who aren't really doing that much, so I'm very skeptical that a guy too weak to even make the $15s div (who are probably beatable for 20-25 c/g, if not more, by someone competent) can be real trouble. I think it's likely you're just lost somewhere in your own head.

With that said, if you feel unable to keep a positive mindset towards hu hypers, it does make sense to try to find a more suitable game.

The strength is not always enough to get into a div. A large ($750+) BR is needed for that, as there's a risk of losing 50-100 BIs in the process of battling the weakest of the 15s regs who're stronger than the weakest of the 7s regs. Besides, the battle requires to sacrifice short term EV to potentially gain EV in the future (after entering the div), which is psychologically hard for some regs to do.

Meanwhile, a $400 BR is enough for a strong 7s reg (having a 35-chip edge over recs) to start sitting the weakest 7s regs (assuming an edge of 15+ chips per game) in addition to recs, in order to get more volume, though it's less +EV than to sit in the 7s and 3.5s lines at once, but perhaps some of the 7s regs don't realise the latter or want to get some practice of reg play before battling into the 15s.

Thus, at the 7s (or, in general, at the highest non-div limit), it's quite natural that there are some regs who're overskilled for this limit but temporarily underrolled for the battle into the div.

So, while I can imagine that it's relatively easy to print money 2 limits below the div (at the 3.50s at Stars), it's not so easy 1 limit below the div. I mean, the 7s aren't a gold mine - they're just as competitive as any poker variant at comparable limits.

Absolutely false, $7 hypers are far softer than almost any other game type requiring a comparable BR because there's a minimal amount of reg battling going on there. You get an absurd frequency of low rake games vs fish.

Further, while it will be true given time that there will be overskilled regs at the highest non div limits, that's not really the case given a brand new div with minimal time for changes to filter through the ecosystem. Right now the only "overskilled" regs are guys who got left out (not many), and for the most part those guys are quite lacking as is (they weren't even strong enough to get added into a div with some insanely weak regs in). Soon, anyone who really is overskilled will get in, while regs left out won't have had time to reach an "overskilled" point.

There is probably no other game in online poker where you can realistically make $10/hr off a $400 adequate roll. That should tell you something about the softness of $7 hypers now.

Learn how to calculate EV on decision trees with Flopzilla and Excel. Awesome way to improve.

How can one go about doing that?

Hi,

That sounds kinda interesting. What do think are reasonable winrates in HU hypers on 7$ and above nowadays? And how would you rate variance compared to Spins, 6max hypers or standard 6max cash games?

5% is pretty solid, higher is possible if your fish game is very good.

Variance is much lower than spins and 6m hypers, mess around with swongsim for a while if you're curious. Don't know enough about 6m cash variance to compare.