Talking about Heads-Up Sit’n'Go’s (HU SNGs) and especially about playing them seriously in the long run is often connected with the following aspects I found most important while playing and improving. Hopefully my thoughts will help you seeing some aspects of HU SNGs from my point of view.
Climbing the Ladder
When you are finally ready to climb the ladder and want to play 115s regularly, you’ll realize the differences between 33s, 55s and 115s pretty fast.
I haven’t played 33s or lower a lot and started playing HU SNGs regularly with 55s. I needed some time to stay away from good or even better regular players, wrote down the names and one day finally had something like a table selection. It was a learning process, but didn’t take that long as I thought it would.
I read a lot of poker books and there’s only one I really can recommend improving the HU skill: “Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em: Expert Advice for Winning Heads-Up Poker-Matches”. It’s definitely worth it and in my opinion a good way to improve the skill way faster than only by playing and practising – what you still have to do A LOT of course.
Bankroll-Management
Even though I never had any real idea about bankroll management while playing 55 buyin HUs and moved up to the 115s I find the following article written by xSCWx pretty readable: “Bankroll Management“.
One of the most important aspects about your bankroll-management is the right amount and date of your CashIn/CashOut what somehow nobody is really talking about. For some players it make sense to have a very huge bankroll at their poker provider to feel more comfortable, for some like me the opposite make more sense. You have to find your best way how to deal with it, but you should consider the following aspects:
- Missing interests of a big bankroll
- Psychology dealing with “Play Money”
- Development of USD/EUR-change
- Slower moving up with small bankroll
- Aspects of playing scared money
- Variance of your game
Return of Investment (ROI)
Winning at HU SNGs is all about the Return On Investment (ROI). If you think not only in cash, but in winning percentages you will very soon realize that HU SNGs is a very nice way winning with poker constantly.
Thinking about ROI shows very obviously that it doesn’t make sense to be all-in preflop with a small pocket pair against two overs in the long run. If you manage to have such a situation every time you play it’s still not bad of course and you won’t win any money. Keep the rake in mind you have to pay for every match you play. Playing a 115 HU SNG include 5 bucks rake and therefor you have to win more than 52,3% (rakeback not included) of your games in the long run to be profitable. Doesn’t sound that much, but you will very soon realize that there’s only a very small percentage of players who are really able to win serious money playing HU SNGs. Good reason to take it as a challenge 
Respecting your opponents
It’s not easy to stay calm and friendly every time a (weaker) opponent suck out on you. I still have problems to handle it from time to time, but learned to be more friendly to my opponents. You have to love those players who sit against you and are in with all their chips only to suck out against you with a chance of 10%. It tilted me hard months ago until I finally realized that this is the only reason why they come back sooner or later, maybe to gamble on a 10% chance again, maybe on a 40% chance. I know who will win the money in the long run, that’s all what count!
Treat your opponents with respect and they will maybe sit you again instead of another reg. It’s a matter of business, but of manners as well. You will sooner or later realize how to deal with other regs. Thinking about ROI it should be pretty obvious, I guess.
Dealing with disconnected players
I always steal the blinds from the opponents when they are disconnected or sitting out. It’s not a matter of manners or something and I’m always wondering when my opponent is getting angry about it. I’m very sure they would do the same and I never start to complain about it.
There’s an interesting post by stevesbets I agree to 100% which I found one day and is worth reading it:
“To steal or not to steal (hu sng style)“ (steves blog is offline – so the short form is: just take free chips if you have no kind of deal with your opponent)
4man HUs
I can remember the time when I took a shot at 115s from time to time and but was scared money almost every time. I mostly sat down at the 4man 115 buyins and was wondering about the idea of teaming up and sharing the prize money. I couldn’t see any advantage doing so, but didn’t have any problem playing against a team, because I had to win two games either way.
By now I play a lot of 4man HU SNGs at higher buyins teaming up with other regs. I couldn’t see any disadvantage about a year ago when I played against “HU teams”, but I’m very sure I got a decent advantage now. I’m even more motivated to win my match and almost never play worse than my A-Game while teaming up with friends who are watching.
Beside that teaming up with others generate more action automatically. Non-regs sit way more often at 4man games when there are 2 players in already and not just 1. They wanna play, take a shot and gamble as fast as possible. Variance is another reason what makes teaming up very attractive, because it lowers the heavy swings of the 4man’s automatically.
First published on 12/03/2009.
I’m going to add more stuff from time to time.
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