Heads up Sit and Go Basics
Online poker offers many different kinds of sit and go tournaments. Sit and go poker tournaments start when the seats for the tournament are filled, and they run around the clock, seven days a week, all year. Casinos or live home games offer only a fraction of the tournaments offered by online poker, and they run far less often. Heads up play is arguably the most important part of poker play, and is seldom playable in live environments for small amounts of money. Online poker offers the option of playing small stakes heads up matches, which allow a player to work on the most important part of tournament play – the endgame. By honing your heads up game, you can become a much stronger overall card player.
If you are unfamiliar with heads up play, it is a much looser, feel-based game than standard tournament poker. You will be playing a much larger range of hands, and playing strongly from position is crucial to winning. Typical heads up strategy will have you raising anywhere from 50% to 90% of hands pre flop, depending on how often your opponent plays back at you. Within the first few dozen hands of the match, you should have a good feel for how strong or weak your opponent is relative to you, and you should adjust accordingly. If he raises a large percentage of the time from position, you should three bet him with strong hands, and occasionally with nothing. If he is very tight and passive, slow play might be an option, but be careful not to get trapped in the process.
Do not expect to win all your heads up matches, no matter how good you are. There is a large amount of variance associated with heads up matches, and a strong player should see a 5% to 10% return on investment over a large sample size. At the smaller stakes where you encounter exceptionally weak players, you may be able to see maybe twice as large an average return on investment. However, as you move up, you will see your return on investment shrink as your edge relative to the competition decreases significantly. Heads up is a great place to hone your poker skills and advance as a player.
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