SnG's Strategy

Been playing a bunch of HU and 4-way shoot-outs lately. One thing that I noticed is the level of aggression is VERY high. To offset this, I've adopted a winning strategy (so far) that employs Dan Negreanu's lessons. Keep the pot small pre-flop!!! It almost never pays to play pre-flop super aggressive, in my opinion. Disguising big hands and re-raising after c-bets seems to be a much better chip extraction method.

Why? Pre-flop, in a HU's game, if you raise 3x BB, a call gives you almost no information about your opponent's hand. Calls tend to be a lot looser (or they are slow playing HUGE hands -- which is my style when facing super aggressive players), and you run the risk of facing a pre-flop re-raise and having to read a player's cards blind to make a call. I think one of the worst plays in poker is calling an all-in pre-flop. Going all-in pre-flop is certainly a strong play, that can be wise when used infrequently. But, the more you can avoid pre-flop all-ins (unless you have AA), the better your results will be over the long-term if you have above-average skilz. Which is the point of poker, no?!? I much prefer dictating the action and forcing/facing the all-in decision AFTER the flop. It gives you a lot more information about where you stand and creates additional fold equity, as many players will be forced to throw away strong starting hands after a wrong flop that they would have gone all-in with pre-flop (e.g. AK, AQ, JJ, TT). In this way, it reduces the randomness of HU action and brings more skill into the game.

Plan on developing this line of thinking in subsequent posts. Next installment: HU post-flop play.

Bankroll: $3,923