Sweet Short-Handed Play

I decided to pass on the 180 person sng’s and stick to the single table ones. I started with a nice warm up, a $5+.50 nine person sng and finished 3rd. Then I decided to track down one type a friend of mine had told me about, a six person $12+1 sng. So I sat down, played it and took 1st. Well that was sweet so I decided to try another, and took 1st again. Well, since it was now double sweet, how could I possibly resist one more? So I fired up yet another one and this time took 1st again!

I always considered myself to be a decent player at a short-handed table, and a pretty good heads up player at my level of play. I’m not sure if this confirmed that theory or if I just happened to find myself up against some really bad players, especially heads up. In fact, every time heads up started, I found myself to be out stacked by about 3:1 and in one case by more than 5:1. Fortunately for me, they usually would let me at least limp in from the small blind, and most of them did not seem to realize you could do more than a min raise. And a pot sized bet—forget it! I found a formula that worked well there, any raise of 4x the BB would get a fold about 75% of the time, a pot sized bet, usually on the turn or river (assuming there had been previous betting) would buy you the pot about 95% of the time, and a raise or re-raise of 3x their original bet got folds to me 100% of the time.

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues. It’s probably just Variance tossing her hair back and giving me that seductive stare, just trying to lure me onto a path of destruction and –EV play. What can I say, I’m weak and I will follow her for a while. If I’m lucky, I may have actually just found that sweet spot for my level of play. Time will tell!