I’ve been playing a fair amount of HU SNGs lately. It all started when I saw a thread here about someone’s HU challenge where he would start with a $5 HU and go on up. I decided to try it out because I was bored and it looked interesting. I began it, played a $5, won it. I moved to $10, won it.
Now I had $20 won, so I could go to the $20, but the next would be $50, so I would need another $10 win. I played the other $10 first, won, but then lost the $20. That was it for me for that one night, and the challenge so to say. But I’ve continued playing these HU SNGs. Currently, I’ve won 10 and lost 3, for a 77% winning percentage.
Until about 10 minutes ago, I had been shut out in $20 matches, which is the highest limit I have played. I had played two, and lost both of them. I had one $5 win, and had won 6 straight $10 matches, until I split 1-1 today. Then I tried a $20 for the 3rd time and won it in my longest match so far, with 127 hands played. I came back from being down to 450 chips to win the match.
I’ve made $55 (not including the rakes, which would knock the total down about $7). I really enjoy playing these HU matches. Also, I’ve been getting quite bored with both ring tables and MTTs. I hope my enthusiasm for ring tables gets rejuvenated, but right now, I’m not having fun there. I’ve been feeling a little uneasy, and again, bored. Maybe a nice winning session will get me back into them, but I will probably only give ring tables a limited amount of playing time.
I played a $5 MTT today, but couldn’t get anything going. I could never get a good hand to play, so I had to start trying to steal and bluff a little. Those didn’t fare well and I was eliminated.
I also had a short session at $1/$2 limit. When I sat at the table, it seemed like a perfect fit for me. The players per flop percentage was under 20% and with a pot average of $5 (when it’s usually at least $10). My plan was to steal the blinds often, but that plan went askew. The player to my left was one that I had noted previously as being very aggressive in the blinds and a blind defender, so I didn’t want to attempt to steal from him.
Three seats from me (which would put me in a good steal position when he was the big blind) was another player I had previously noted as being a terrible player that rarely folds preflop. So again, another steal opportunity that I couldn’t really take. Then, about halfway through, a player came in to sit to my right that tried to steal every chance he got. So overall, I had little to no chance to steal the blinds, and I never attempted it.
On top of everything else, I couldn’t get a good hand to save my life. The only times I lost money, I was in the blinds. I believe I only voluntarily put money into the pot preflop twice, once when I completed my SB and another when I defended my SB with A8o by reraising the player to my right that had raised.
I knew he had nothing and I was able to take down the pot on a flop that came QJX. Altogether, I lost $0.25. I usually won’t leave a table when I’m down by such a small amount like that where it is easy to overcome, but I just wasn’t feeling comfortable plus I was very bored since I couldn’t get a hand to play.
Not sure if I’ll be playing anymore poker tonight. I’ll probably just get caught up in watching the NCAAs. My brackets did alright in the first round, though not that great. I was 24-8 with only one team that was eliminated in the first round that I had winning in the second round.
So I could have won at most 15 out of 16 second round games, but I’ve done pretty poorly today. I had Illinois over Washington and Tennessee over Wichita St. Both lost, but had very good opportunities to win and basically threw it away at the end of the game. I’ll have to see how the rest of my brackets fair through the rest of the second round.
