Heads Up Micro Tournaments

Lately I have been obsessed with playing the micro-limit heads up tourneys on Poker Stars. Last night I won 10 out of 12 sit downs with pretty much ease. My strategy you ask? Well it was a mixture of hyper-aggressive plays and big lay downs. Basically my strategy was to raise every chance I could get unless I wanted to trap the person. And if they came over the top of my raises I would have to give serious thought to the hand and what I thought they had. I probably made some big lay downs where I had the best hand, but I would make up for losing whatever I did usually on the next hand with more hyper aggressive raises.

Not once did I put in all of my chips on a mediocre hand, that was one rule I wanted to stick by. I had lots of all ins through the night, but these were money making hands where I knew I had probably the best hand and that I felt my opponent would call me with a mediocre holding. In my many battles last night I found myself up against players who just seemed to be worn down by my aggressive play. After about 20-30 hands of this style of play most people just ended up folding almost all of their hands because they knew I would raise pre-flop. This gave me the "accumulator" mindset where I just want to get as many chips as I could. Even blind stealing started to be lucrative heads up because you see so many hands. With the blinds still small ($10-20, with $1,500 starting chips) I could literally win 10 hands pre-flop by just raising. Also with this style of play, if the folder actually felt like betting, it was a pretty good indicator by this time that they had a hand and gave me the opportunity of just letting them have that round of blinds (im nice sometimes like that).

Part of this hyper aggressive playing style is something I have picked up in Gus Hansen's book "Every Hand Revealed." In the book Gus basically describes every hand he played in the 2007 Aussie Millions and how he won the tournament. Reading this book just about destroyed my tournament play. I thought to myself "Well if Gus can play like this, I can too" and I was wrong. His style is almost like a calculated maniac with just amazing reading abilities. No matter how much I played this style in tournaments it just wouldn't go well. I was never able to get away from hands I thought I could win with and ultimately ended up losing with. Plus, im not Gus Hansen and I don't think I get as much respect at the table as he does.

Anyways my point is this. I have now taken a step back from trying to be Gus and now have a better understanding of bluffing. For the last several years I would rarely bluff, and I mean rarely. On a typical night at the pub I play at I would bluff maybe 6-10 times in a whole 4 hour session, and most of those were bluff induced. Now, after reading his book, I see a whole new light to this game and it works great in heads up play. The simple theory: Raise, Raise a lot. This serves 2 purposes. 1. If you raise all of the time pre-flop your opponent can never place you on a hand. Because you are raising with junk (and most of the time your opponent has junk as well) you would be surprised at how many people just throw away the hand without seeing a flop. You do this enough and pre-flop blind steals will really add up. 2. When you raise you are fluctuating your EV and your opponents EV, if you can do this to your advantage by letting the player bet into you when you have a great hand, and betting a player out when you don't have a good hand, this gets to be lucrative as well. My suggestion to anyone who wants to get into heads up play is read Gus's book because it will show you just how calculated you can be while walking that fine line of a crazy maniac hyper aggressive player that no one wants to go heads up against.

Anyways, im running out of time today, so I will be back at another time. Hopefully with more examples of my poker playing and some decent strategies and tips I pick up around the table.