Continuing on from part 1 of this post about playing Turbo Final Tables we move into short-handed play, we picked a few key hands for us to study.
Re-bluff in spots where it’s hard to have a hand
In this pot we now have the chip lead after winning a big flip with Ace-King and our opponent limps in the Small Blind.
We have a few options of how we can play our hands here with a lot of ICM pressure on our side with a tiny stack of 4BBs still alive and one of 9BBs.
So with any decent holding against a limp from our opponent, I would look to raise, however, with such a bad hand of T7o we decided to check back this time…
We see a flop of K K 9 now this flop is almost impossible to hit and if our opponent did have a hand with a nine in it, for example, they would most likely look to play small ball and get to showdown.
They start with a check and although I can see us betting here to bluff which is a decent play against players that will just fold if they have nothing, this player in the small blind seemed fairly capable so against a bet they may opt to bluff raise and we have no option but to muck our hand then.
So, we check back and take a turn card… which comes an Ace.
Our opponent now takes a stab at the pot, but hold on… the board is K K 9 A, if our opponent had any part of this board like 99, AK, KQ, AJ, AT, A9 etc I can see a raise pre-flop in the playbook most of the time…. this makes for a great re-bluffing spot.
We make it 3x the min bet raising to 7,500 and our opponent quickly mucked their bluff.
Open Jam Value Hands
I used to play final tables and get in weird spots where I would raise and someone else would just take the spot and go for the 3-Bet all-in with a bad hand just in the hopes they could get the steal through… the thing is they will have equity when they do this giving them a decent shot at winning the pot with there equity or with a fold from us.
It’s important to just pick a percentage of your range and just move all-in with these hands, it’s known as mask jamming. This means that we might make this move with T9s, 44, or even hands like AQ.
We will keep our opponents guessing which hands they can call off with and we don’t let them make the last move where we then have to call off and win.
This hand is a perfect example, we have pocket fours UTG and the Big Blind has 18BBs whereas the other stacks both have around 6-7BBs.
We can comfortably raise all-in to apply tonnes of ICM pressure to the larger stack and even when they call us with hands like AQ or AK we are flipping against those hands.
Limp-Stab in Pots Heads Up
This can be a pretty profitable strategy against many opponents, it allows us to play for a minimum cost and we actually gain a lot of information from our opponent, checking back pre-flop lets us know they don’t have a big hand and then if they check the flop our bets will get through a good deal of the time.
This strategy will allow us more play than if we look to min-raise the button as stacks will remain deeper for post-flop play.
It’s a good idea to remain balanced with this though and limp very strong hands too, this way we can’t just get raised off our limps if our opponent believes them to always be weak.
Don’t Be Scared to Press Call
In heads up play good opponents will be pushing a wide range of hands from the button, in times gone past I may have mucked a hand like KJo here to a 15BB all-in and against some tight opponents, I still might from time to time.
However, if you think your opponent is aggressive enough to have some hands you dominate and here I thought that would be the case with K9s+ and KT0+ JTs+ QJo+ definitely in his range here, calling with KJo is a must.
Some of the time our opponent will turn up with a hand like AJo and KQo but this is rare and pretty much the only hands we don’t want to see, even if we are against 22–TT or any other Ace high hand we have good equity to close out the match here. 
Good Shape Indeed
As it happens our insight to our opponent’s ranges is pretty spot on and they flip over QJo and we hold up and take down this tournament win!
If you are unsure about your heads up ranges, there are plenty of resources to look up and work on your game but a good starting point is knowing the NASH heads up push fold chart for sub 20BBs.
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