blonde poker forum

Not a specific hand question, but a more general theme...

I got heads up with a player in a small buy-in STT the other evening as a 2/1 shortstack. Not to worry, I eventually clawed back to roughly evens by winning lots of small pots.

At this point my opponent suddenly found a new gear and went into Kill Phil mode. All-in on probably about 80% of the hands. Folding the rest. No flops seen.

I did manage to fight fire with fire with a few all-ins of my own to get some chips back, but I couldn't work out what my minimum calling standards should be from the BB.

Any ace-big or medium to large pocket pair is pretty much an insta-call, but beyond that where do you stop?

Eventually I 'trapped' him by limping  in with 33 and calling his all-in. He flipped K8s and made his king to win it.

In retrospect that's a pretty bad call by me, since K8s v 33 is about as pure a race as you can get. I probably passed hands that were much stronger in relation to his holdings.

So, what's your minimum calling standards in this situation?

Playing 33 like that is horrible if he pushes with ANY 2 cards he is 46% against your 33.

Depending on stack depth i am looking for at least a 60% edge, A9+ KJ,KQ 55+

There are unexploitable short stack heads up all in charts up somewhere on the internet. I forget where though, sorry.

It was a Stars 9-seater so there's 13,500 in play.

The jousting started at 100/200 and went on to the 200/400 level, so going all-in pre-flop isn't necessarily a bad play - after all if I've got a 4k stack and I raise to 1200 pre-flop it's going to be a pretty bad fold to an all-in response.

It was the frequency of the all-ins that got to me. He obviously made his mind up he didn't want to see any more flops, and that was it.

I often go with the theory of Q7 being the average Heads Up hand, and i look to push with any Q wiht a kicker over 8, and any King with a kicker over 6.
Also any ace, and any pocket pairs over 5s.

I will often fold 22, 33, 44 if he/she has raised as they are favourite with any 2 over cards and they could have a higher pocket pair.

Thats great if they are going to call you, however if you keep picking up the blinds with your Q7 but get called eventually by the AQ you are screwed!

Yeah but this is in a situation when the size of the blinds are forcing moves from the small blind position/its worth going all in due to fold equity.
If you state as above, couldnt you say that about any hand.

such as, If you have A 10 and move, eventually you get called by AJ, AQ, AK and you are screwed.

No, because flushy would obviously spike his 10!

Always.

My point is just pushing HU doesnt work, if it did thats all people would do! Obviously if the blind/stack ratio is low then you are forced too.

it is.. and if people aren't moving in frequently when its HU, they are almost certainly missing out on huge pockets of equity.


welcome to the end game of 90% of the sngs played on the internet each day

Fair enough i dont play mant 6/9 handed SNG's! Outside of the blonde $5 ones and thats usually headsup on 50-100 with 9k each, lol.

What i do play is the HU SNG's and then the requirement is even lower, although of course you have 50 bb's