We have collected some very helpful tips from playing some small stake heads up hyper turbo sit n go’s for you. Here we are going to share some of the midset tips you will need to be a winning player at these games, so buckle up, grab a drink and let’s learn some spots…
Don’t Be Scared of Thin Value
A vast amount of the time we are going to be playing against opponents that will let know if we are behind in a hand, so on this run out where we have the low straight on a dangerous board where the flush got there on the river.
We are going to want to bet our hands for value, like in this pot we can get called by two pairs, top pair, three of kind and if we get raised by a rivered flush or better straight then we have an easy fold. But don’t be scared to go for thin value bets in these games, we need to build a chip advantage to end the game.
Limp-in with Strong Hands
Min-raising, when stacks are deeper in the first few blind levels, is fine, but as stacks get shallower we can look to limp with a balanced range including hands we just want to play post-flop and hands we can call all-in wagers with, like these pocket nines.
It’s good to try and set up a dynamic with limps so that an aggressive opponent will try and take advantage of this as weakness, so try it with some hands you wouldn’t raise with first and if you meet resistance the next time you limp make sure to have a strong holding you can play with.
In our example, our opponent put all the money in with T4o.
Pick Up the Lead in Pots
Most of these heads up players that you play will not balance their check back ranges enough, so whenever they don’t bet a flop they will have a lot of missed hands.
We will want to counter this by protecting our equity even with hands that are very borderline bets, in this pot after the flop went check-check, we lead with our pair of 4’s
Our thinking here is that our opponent would have bet any King, Seven or flush draw on this flop, so we can protect against over cards and flush draws when our opponent has one diamond. We choose a big sizing for this bet and could have even gone for a full pot bet here.
On the river betting this hand doesn’t make too much sense, we are comfortable with our holding but now we just have a sheer bluff catcher, some 9x caught up and some slow-played hands had us already, but like we said those are nearly always betting the flop.
Our play on this river should just be to check call, we can’t get value from anything if we bet and get called other than a very stubborn Ace high.
So we check and our opponent tries to push us off the pot with the missed nut flush draw.
Tip
This is an important pointer whilst playing Poker of any kind think about what kind of hands your opponent will have before you decide if your hand is better as a bet for value or as a check to induce a bluff…
I used to too often play just bet, bet, bet style and never think about my opponents’ ranges in these spots and I still see many players doing this today, it’s a sure-fire way to miss out on tonnes of value when playing your hands.
Don’t be Too Scared of Scare Cards
In this pot we flop a huge hand in the way of three of a kind and manage to bloat the pot in position straight away, the reasoning behind fast playing this hand is that there are tonnes of hands that can call us, straight draws, pairs, flush draws etc. Any time we have a strong hand on a dynamic board like that we want to get some money in the middle.
Now a pretty bad turn card hits that completes some straight draws on the flop and then the River card completes the flopped flush draw.
But we can’t be scared to go for value with our big hands even on run-outs we don’t love, yes sometimes our opponent will just flip over a winning hand like a rivered flush, but that’s just the way it goes, there are still a tonne of hands that will call us like Jx and Qx.
In this hand we get called by J4 that flopped two pair, so a little bit of a cooler for them on the flop… but I wouldn’t mind seeing a fold by the River against our action of betting all three streets, it’s hard to imagine a hand that they will win against by the end.
It feels like sometimes they could get a chopped pot but I think most chopping hands that I have would check back either the Turn or River.
Tip
When looking to make hero calls on the River try and picture some hands that your opponent can have because this player lost this heads up matchmaking this call and I can’t think of any bluffs that I might fire all three streets with on this board apart from possibly something like T♣ 7♣ but we just don’t have enough hands that would fire all three streets here as a bluff compared to hands which would do it for value.
For value we can have straights, flushes, full houses, three of kind’s, better two pairs with hands like KQ, AQ, AJ, KJ, QJ… we just have so many hands!
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