The psychological effect of being the 2nd

Definitely put some effort in your Hu game! Hu will have huge impact on profitability of your game and most of time in mtt hu you won't be against competent hu player. So even some tiny study effort can give nice edge.

Looking for HUSNG losing player

My friend is already crushing $30s hypers. I assume HU play in MTTs are similar depth as HU hypers. Feel free to PM shortchange for free coaching

Zilltine, it's too good to be true (what are you gaining from this? ) but I'll give it a try (sent you a friend request).

I think I'll do some search on internet about HU play, 'cause if I think about it, I've actually never read anything about HU play (not even mention learning). Thx for the hint ghaleon

PS another 2nd place ♠_confused:

Personally I have some leaks in my HU games as well.. I'm a STT player, and I am not enjoying the HU parts of the games with ~15-30BB effective stacks, where push/folding is suboptimal. It would be very nice with some articles or vidoes more directly aimed at this IMO I think the only thing available atm is diamond+ even though I'm sure there are some simple guidelines which can be used for more inexperienced players to up their ROI a % or two on the lower buy-ins.

Whether you win or place second in a STT or MTT usually doesn't depend on how well you play after you get heads-up. Usually the amount of chips you have when the third player is eliminated dominates, as well as the luck of the cards. If you have short stacks and both players are dealt good hands, all of the money is supposed to go in, and you just have to hope you win. Heads-up skill has little influence. If you outchip your opponent, then even if you lose you get another chance, but if your opponent starts with several times your stack then you need to win repeatedly to equalize.

Of course it helps a little to play well heads-up, but a common mistake is to study heads-up play to try to improve the first place versus second place finishes, but unless you are playing heads-up tournaments this is unlikely to affect things much. In fact, as Collin Moshman and I have pointed out a few times, if you want to place first, you need to accumulate chips much earlier in the tournament, such as around the bubble, or even at level 1.

Well imo improving HU play can give you decent edge when playing with 10bb+ stack depth in HU. It's not that rare for me to see regs in midstake stt to do pretty horrid games in HU. Like open shoving J6o with 13bb (because they are afraid to get 3bet probably) or defending by calling versus minraise with some 84s with 17bb. Games that are never going to be good in long run versus somewhat decent player.

Not to talk that many players are also way too tight for HU. Meaning you can take very exploitative lines versus them and basically grind them down with minraising close to any2 and still folding even decently strong hands to 3bet. This line can be very effective even with like 8bb or so in some cases.

Also to take into account that players in these stt games are still playing in HU situation way more often than players who mainly play like 90+ player mtts. Meaning it could be expected to see even more weak HU plays in average in mtt. Though I don't really have experience with mtt.

When playing versus decent villain it comes mainly to stack difference and card distribution. But especially for mtt player there is nice to have some HU competence as those games tend to be with top heavy price distribution and difference between 1st and 2nd tend to be huge in $.

If you play HU for 17BI, learning HU might give you wr of 54% against same player as you are which never learned HU. Thats 0.68BI everytime you go HU (correct me if i`m wrong pls). So if you go HU once in 70 games you add extra 1% roi

Originally posted by ghaleon
defending by calling versus minraise with some 84s with 17bb.

its not as bad as you might think. If 3 years ago it would be considered as huge leak, nowadays its quite standard to flat 74s or 85s. While 84s is bit to loose i wouldnt be surprised that flatting 84s vs MR has better expectation than folding. Especially given how bad MTT players are at HU postflop

Originally posted by Vito992
Zilltine, it's too good to be true (what are you gaining from this? ) but I'll give it a try (sent you a friend request).

i am gaining good lough at shortchange being a coach.

.

Vito, get my skype off of Zilltine if you can, I'm not familiar with these forums or how to contact you. If you're interested we'll see if we can't improve your heads up play some.