Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: The Felt
Posts: 51
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Hi, how's everyone doing?! First post here. Great forum!
I'm pretty new to No Limit Holdem. Been playing since February in home games with my buddies. We play tournament style, no buyins with usually 6-10 people. We have a $10 buy in initially and depending on the # of people we pay out 1st, 2nd, 3rd.
In the beginning I was real bad. However over the last 26 games (I've been keeping track) I've managed to end up in the money a whopping 16 times.
My record is actually:
1st Place: 3 times
2nd Place: 10 times
3rd. Place 3 times
So you can see I've made it heads up almost half of those games! Only problem is I've only won 3. My heads up play sucks but seems to be getting better lately. Now I've heard that tournament style with rapidly increasing blinds is largely affected by "luck". So either I've been very lucky or I'm actually doing something right. Wooohoooo. What's your take on this?
I've read Riptyde's (hope that's right) post on heads up play and oddly enough that is the style I've been playing during the games that I've actually won. I've learned that you have to pretty much play anything and play it strong. Its been working wonders and I've learned a ton about the game this way.
Here's a blurb from my last tournament. I was wondering if anyone had any comments.
I was heads up with a guy I've never played before. I knew that he's a very experienced player though. We had about equal stack size when going heads up. Over 20-30 hands there were some massive changes in stack size.
I can remember 4 times specifically where I just won a big pot and had him dominated in chips. Like 4-1 or more. The next hand I would be dealt either AK, AQ, AJ, A10. No shyt. This happened four times. I'd win a huge pot have him on the ropes and then get dealt an Ace with great/good kicker. I figured heads up these are great hands and I would try and bully him right out of the game by raising, reraising, and then going all in preflop. He knew he was on the ropes too chipwise so I wasn't even thinking he'd have a hand. I figured he was just going all in with me to put himself out of his misery.
Turns out each time I got him to go all in with these hands he'd turn over a pocket pair. 55's, 99's, 1010's, and the time I had A10 he had AJ. He beat me everytime. I just couldn't hit a card. I'm pretty sure a hand like AK and AQ are about even odds with low pocket pairs. Maybe a slight dog. Am I wrong here? Should I have been more patient with a commanding chip lead? Or are these normally good spots to put your money all in heads up (when you have the guy dominated chip wise)?
Turns out he beat me in the end. I'm not too worried about the loss because I felt there were at least 4 or 5 hands that were coin flip decisions and he just got lucky and won everytime.
What do you guys think?
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