Re: I WIN
(note--this post is only moderately on topic and is mostly my frustrated ramblings)
GGB,
I think there is a point to be made about innate poker ability. I'm sure there are players around who, no matter how much they work, will never reach the top tier. I've taken up coaching local friends (friends who go to Stanford and are very bright overall) and they seem to lack an ability to grasp certain key concepts that are necessary for beating tougher games, with an emphasis on hand reading.
I am sort of struggling with the same thing about HU play.
As much as I've tried to improve heads up, I'm still no where near the top tier (in over 20000 hands of play--doesn't seem like much but try to find 20000 hands against high limit players) and I constantly feel outclassed. During that time I saw my winrate drastically fall as the limits went up, and I'm almost positive there's a greater factor than variance. It's quite frustrating because my ability to hand read 3-10 handed has been improving drastically as I play more and more hands, but I'm almost resigned to just sitting out as soon as a table gets HU, even against semi-donks who I should have some sort of advantage over.
Just purely numbers wise, I was +5BB/100 over my first 10K hands (10/20 - 25/50 HU) and I am 0BB/100 over my last 10K hands (30/60 - 300/600 HU--as a side note, I am down 40K in this breakeven stretch after getting crushed by my fish, EastSideSlim, at 300/600). Obviously I was running well in the first 10K, and obviously I'm running bad in my last 10K, but honestly I can tell that I suck.
So where do I go from here? I don't know, but I'm not gonna continue to dump money against even moderately decent opponents. I guess the only way for me to practice is to play against other 2+2ers, but the only 2+2ers I know who are fairly good HU can't find the time to play a lowly scrub like me for "fake" money. At the same time, I won't ever feel like a complete player unless I can fill this hole in my game.
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