What I'm Reading

Friday, March 30, 2007

HU SNG

I downloaded Camtasia's free trial and messed around with it a bit yesterday morning. I recorded myself play a $6 heads up turbo on Full Tilt.

I feel like I played pretty well in it. The hand where I made 2nd pair with the Q5o was a little strangely played, and I don't think I really described it well in the audio (when I recorded it, it was about 10 a.m. and hadn't yet gone to bed).

Anyways, my opponent was playing really aggressively. If I bet out with the hand on the flop, it's very unlikely for him to call me without a hand. He does, however, bet here with air a decent amount of the time I would think.

At first I thought the turn check was a little more borderline, but the more I think about it, the less I think it is. I'm almost positive my hand is good here. He probably raises with a king preflop, and it's even more likely he bets it on the flop. I'm also pretty sure he bets any pair here on the flop, so unless that six hit his hand, he probably has absolutely nothing.

So my immediate options are as follows:
1) Bet out. By doing this, I gain some value from a six, but that's about it. I don't give him credit for a K, Q or 4, and I think a flush draw bets the flop. Of course, this six puts a couple draws out there: the spade draw and the straight draw. Even though I don't want to give a free card to a draw, my opponent's aggro tendencies make me think that he'll bet a draw. This leads me to the 2nd option
2) Check. A check loses value those times that he has either a six or a draw and opts not to bet it. However, I feel like that's incredibly rare. And since I feel that he's very likely to bet a draw here, especially since he's seen me show weakness preflop and then again on the flop and turn, he's going to bet a draw a ton. Checking also obviously allows him to bluff at the pot with air, where betting out would result in him just folding. Like I said, I've shown a lot of weakness in the hand and he's played very aggressively.

This line of reasoning is similar to the reasoning I had when I played the A2o against him, calling on the turn with just ace high. I think I maybe should've just raised him on the turn in that spot, since I was relatively sure I had the best hand and since he'd seen me try to induce bluffs out of him on multiple streets within a hand before. I think that if I think he'll fire again a large % of the time on the river, the flat-call isn't terrible. In retrospect, I think I should've raised though.

Basically, my intentions playing against this guy, once I figured out that he was going to be playing very aggressively, was to trap him when I could and picking up a few other little pots when I could while waiting for a hand big enough for me to be willing to put in my whole stack.

I'm definitely still working on my heads up game, and I think that I probably go too far with fancy plays sometimes heads up, and the A2 and Q5 hands might be functions of that (although I do still like my line with the Q5).

Part 1:


Part 2:

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

you wrote this at 6:31 AM...DUERMETE.