This can be my delayed Pooh-Bah post - "The Well"

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A stranger is being shown around a village that he has just become part of. He is shown a well and his guide says "On any day except Wednesday, you can shout any question down that well and you'll be told the answer."

The man seems pretty impressed, and so he shouts down: Why not on Wednesday? and the voice from in the well shouts back: Because on Wednesday, it’s your day in the well.

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There isn't anything specific I feel like writing about so I figure this is a decent option. I'll try to answer questions as best I can but I can't guarantee that I can answer everything.

[chrismystero]

I have a question!!

How does this relate to Heads-Up poker?

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I have a question!!

How does this relate to Heads-Up poker?

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Something like half of my posts on 2+2 on the way to Pooh-Bah have been in this forum and heads-up is predominantly what I play now. If this is considered too LC something I won't be too stressed out over it getting locked, I just wanted to "give back to the community" as a few people put it while I was nearing 1600.

[pokercurious]

I think this is a pretty neat idea. I'm willing to take it seriously and appreciate your taking the time to do it.

1. How about a headsup bio - how you got where you are now

2. Could you outline (some of) the key insight(s) that you came across while learning headsup?

3. What do you think is the most effective way to go about learning headsup poker? We all know the basics: play, think, study, read the forum, post to the forum, etc., but what do you recommend as being the method of greatest marginal return? what are the most important things?

4. Hand reading - can you offer any insight into how to adjust for hand ranges within a match - what factors change an opponent's range and how?

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1. How about a headsup bio - how you got where you are now

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I started playing poker doing 5 mans on Pacific and MTTs, it was pre-UIGEA so the games were a joke and ridiculously easy money. After the UIGEA passed I tried to switch to 6-mans and failed pretty miserably. I figured that with ~5% rake if I had any skill advantage it should show up pretty easily in my results. I started in the $22s with a $300 bankroll which in hindsight may not have been a great idea, but I ran really hot starting out with like 60% ROI over my first 75 games or so. I worked my way into 100s/200s within about a week and $2000 profit before I experienced my first real downswing. I've had a few really nasty once since but they aren't life tilting me as bad now that I'm starting to understand bankroll management and more specifically variance. I forget the exact stats, but jay-shark posted something long the lines of that if you have a ~58% winrate there is like a 30% chance that you will be down after 100 games. It took a while for me to realize that 5-20 games wasn't a significant sample size.

While starting out I considered "going pro" but I pretty quickly realized that if I force myself to mass games I start to lose the enjoyment of the game. I started coaching because it lets me deal with the parts of the game I enjoy (mostly thinking critically and fixing flaws) without having to mass games to get over the variance. I'm not putting in nearly as many hours as I was when I started out, but I suspect that being able to enjoy my college life will have more long term benefits than building my bankroll.

I've found that multi-tabling more games while over-rolled is much better for grinding out games because it beats the variance, but single tabling higher stakes is more enjoyable if I am going into it with a less serious mentality.

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2. Could you outline (some of) the key insight(s) that you came across while learning headsup?

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Probably the biggest adjustments I had to make were in adapting to the players across the spectrum from tight/passive to loose/aggressive. I found that I couldn't run over players with aggression if they were just going to go all in every hand. It was a pretty big transition to make from playing like a robot to thinking critically about my opponent's styles and finding spots where they were exploitable.

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3. What do you think is the most effective way to go about learning headsup poker? We all know the basics: play, think, study, read the forum, post to the forum, etc., but what do you recommend as being the method of greatest marginal return? what are the most important things?

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If you stick to any single thing you will be really limited in how quickly you can learn. At one point while learning I made an effort to reply to every post that had real content and it helped tremendously. I originally only replied to the ones where I felt safe and confident in my answer, but those ones weren't really improving my game. In the threads where I was probably wrong someone was usually quick to point it out and although it was embarrassing sometimes it helped me fix leaks in my game.

I also started threads every hand where I couldn't figure out what my ideal line was. It may not seem like a big deal because hands can be so different and the situations were generally unusual, but it helped to plug a LOT of those small leaks.

It took me a while to realize that taking notes could make a difference. My notes help me out where my read couldn't in about 5% of my games which isn't much, but it is significant considering the notes take about 3 seconds to type out.

Playing is a pretty obvious one. I watched some videos on Cardrunners as well, but I was kind of disappointed in their HUSNG videos. I never got into cash long term, but I did manage to pick up a few valueable tips from the videos I watched.

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4. Hand reading - can you offer any insight into how to adjust for hand ranges within a match - what factors change an opponent's range and how?

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Your estimate of your opponent's range should be based on how loose/tight they are and how aggressive/passive they are normally in comparison with the line they have taken in the hand. Your estimate of their hand range should give you rough ideas of:

a) how often your hand will win with a showdown
b) how likely you are to bet them out, as well as how much would be needed to do so
c) how likely they are to bet YOU out on later streets
d) how much they will pay you off if you end up ahead by the river

Coming up with exact numbers in each scenario is borderline impossible because there are so many factors ranging beyond their hand their hand range such as metagame and psychology. However, the more experience you have in dealing with similar situations the better your assessment will be.

The best ways to improve your hand reading are actively posting on these forums and playing a lot of games. Having friends who are actually decent at poker could help tremendously. None of my real life friends have been able to succeed long-term in poker, but there are plenty of people on these forums to chat with on AIM and share bad beats and hand histories with. The experiences of actual hands will force a lot of the information into your brain, and having friends who play regularly can help you develop different perspectives that you may not have considered.

[kosher]

Life time (or significant number of hands) HU graph??

Thanks for doing this. Much appreciated.
Chrismystero is obv a knob.

[cwar]

What made you think people wanted a well about you? IMO your the worst poster in HU right up there with APXG.

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My cash games are spread out between 3 comps but are pretty much a rollercoaster of .5/1 and 1/2 amounting to ~$2k over a ~6000 hand sample. I prefer playing SNGs because I don't have to deal with the variance of avoiding hit-and-run artists and shortstacks before finding an ideal match to play.

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What made you think people wanted a well about you? IMO your the worst poster in HU right up there with APXG.

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I posted the possibility of it in the other thread and didn't really get any responses to it directly. I didn't want to put a lot of effort into pre-writing something that people might not need any help with so I though this would be a better approach. Some players might appreciate it because I built my BR very quickly considering that I play casually with poker as one of my lower priorities in life.

Who is APXG?

[Peacedout]

I guess this kind of a noob question but im curious.

1.What kind of software do you use for HU sit n gos (if any)?

2.What do you use to track your win rates?

3.Do you think one could play for a living, Only playing HU sit n gos.

4.At level do you think playing for a living is feasible?

5.Do you use rakeback and does it affect your winnings by a good amount?

thank you for answering my questions if you choose to do so. Sorry if they are noobish.