TexasHoldemPoker-UK

[Pokefast]

Hi

I'm fairly new to holdem ( about six months ) and i'n the last month i've started to play tournaments ( exclusively 10 or 35 seat sit and go's ) i've played in about 12 now and have only finished outside the money once. ( which i'm quite pleased with ) however i'm yet to win one. I seem to struggle when we get down to the last 4 or 5 and especially so when playing heads up. Has anyone got any advice on heads up or shorthanded play?

Many thanks

Pokefast

[Andy]

The key to heads-up and short-handed play is AGRESSION! Usually by the time a tourney is short-handed, the blinds+antes are well worth stealing so you want to be raising agressively when you have a hand even if you only grab the blinds+antes.

As the number of players in the tourney descreases, you need to loosen up your starting hand requirements a bit and get into a higher, more agressive gear.. It's fine at the start of a tourney to be practically nut-peddling when the blinds are low and people are often playing like maniacs (esp in a rebuy tourney) but as the blinds+antes in relation to your own chip stack increase, you need to loosen up. Never more is this true than when the tourney is at the final few tables and drawing to a close since the blinds+antes are likely to be a much larger portion of your chip stack than they were a few hours before.

If you do manage to get heads-up, generally speaking you need to raise almost every hand where you are on the small blind and see how your opponent reacts. I'd be raising even with junk most of the time just to keep an aggressive table image - you can always fold to a re-raise. When on the big blind, it is often good to check if the small blind completes or just call a raise in order to disguise your hand from your opponent. If you raise a completed small blind, they will often fold as it is a fairly sure sign of you having a strong hand. Raising a bet by the small blind is not so bad if you have a nice hand as they are also fairly likely to have a good hand.

When you are at the final table, you will have a pretty good read on all your opponents I would expect so you need to adjust your play to suit each one. Loosen up against any maniacs and tighten up against the other tight-aggressive players at the table. When heads-up, spend the first 20 or so hands experimenting with calls/bets/raises/folds from each position and see how they react - if you can get them sussed quickly, heads-up will be quite easy to win more than half the time.

I wrote the 'Heads-Up Play' pages of the site a while back - it might be worth reviewing those for anything I have missed here