So tonight we air our interview with Dani Stern aka “ansky”. Dani is one of the stars of G4’s “2 Months 2 Million” and one of the top online players in the world. You’ll hear during the interview all about the new show, his final table run in the $40K WSOP event this year and we pick his brain with some strategy questions.
Of course I have to make the interview about me at some point because let’s be honest the whole reason Bret and I do this show is to become better players. Toward the end of the interview I start asking Dani how a mediocre player can improve, I beg him to tell me that a TAG approach can still be profitable etc. But near the end of the conversation he realizes that I play full ring and he really drives home the point that heads up is the game to play at this point.
Of course I immediately object and give my pussy response of not liking the variance and not feeling comfortable in so many awkward positions. He flat out said something to the effect of “sack up” and play the game stupid. He made me realize that it’s so much easier to beat one player than it is to beat say 8 at a time when playing full ring. He also pointed out the obvious that if you are HU against a weaker player you don’t have to worry about a bunch of other donks in the hand mucking everything up and stumbling into a hand etc.
It started to make a lot of sense to me. It’s not like I’m newbie either. I’ve easily played over a million hands online. So I decided to say fuck it. I’m going to focus on Heads Up play exclusively right now. I’ll abandon my crutch of grinding away a billion tables making guaranteed money with rakeback etc and instead focus on using my experience of seeing so many hands and take guys on heads up…mano y mano.
I’m sure it will be painful but I do think it has the potential to be much more profitable. So yesterday I played almost 1000 hands HU. I probably ran good because I won 60% of my sessions but I still made some pretty big mistakes like 4 or 5 bet shoving AQoff against an unknown player to me. (Of course he had AK). Still I simply tried to focus on just a few things.
My biggest focus starting out is to pound from the button and to play very tight out of position. That seems to be common sense I know, but I want to make sure I’m not calling a bunch of raises out of position just to see flops. My goal is to play very sound fundamental HU poker and just take advantage of the lesser experienced players playing the lowest limits.
So go ahead and flame away and see if any glaring leaks are apparent from these limited stats. I’m guessing my 3bet % is too low but frankly I made a conscious decision to play very small pots out of position. Maybe as I get more comfortable I’ll be able to beef that number up a little.
10 Responses to “Taking Ansky’s Advice”
Leave a Reply
I like the idea EB! Give FR a rest for a while. As far as the 3 betting stat, 8% isn’t that low for 50nl. People get too wrapped up in their redline, and 3 bet % becuz they prove how “manly” you are (see pfc_ivan in 2+2), but at 50nl, 8-12 3 bet% is just fine.
Murph
I’m interested to see how experience multi-tabling FR equated to heads up. Keep the posts coming.
The upside (as you mentioned) will be the sheer number of hands you’ve seen play out.
Playing SNG, I’ve found that when it comes down to heads up (when I can make it there) the biggest pots come when you can identify and take advantage of a player that can’t get away from a hand (TPTK) to something like your bottom two pair or a made straight.
It often seems that once SNG players get to heads up, they often push too hard and then can’t let a hand go. Making the tough laydown seems to be harder than learning to maximize profits on winning hands.
Not playing straight HU, I don’t know if this will translate, but, for what its worth, I think you can bank some $$ if you can ID this tendency in a HU opponent.
IMHO.
. . . The earlier hand posted by Bret is a good example of what I’ve seen . . . HU playing where villain falls in love with a hand and makes the big payoff.
did ansky tell u that the rake on heads up is huge at the lower limits?
try maintaining :
VPBBSB: 80/35
PFR: 25%
i think this would be good for u
Folding TPTK hu pretty much is always massvie leak at 50nl, unless you are playing the nittiest of nits, and even then, its questionable. HU poker is not about waiting for straights, flushes, etc. If you do that, kiss your monies goodbye.
Murph
Head up SNG’s are probably less rake at that stakes, but there are some disadvantges that come with them.
Good, Heads up will improve your game. Play it for a month and you will not believe how far you game has come. Your hand reading skills will drasitcally improve as well learning when to apply aggression. I would not beat yourself up over Aq hand heads up depending upon dynamics and game flow he could show up with worse.
Hey EB can you tell me how you changed your fulltilt name?
I agree with the others that HU will drastically improve your overall gameplay. It’s a very tilty game though, so be careful when down a couple of buyins to keep playing solid poker. Also remember the one advice that overcomes all other HU advice “he never has anything”.
Also, I would look at this as more of a learning tool than a way to make big money. While the edge for players is huge compared to any other game, the rake at anything below NL200 takes a huge hit on your winrate, and the players around that level or better are mostly regs. The fish at levels above that are often winning regs at other games like ring, MTT or SNG’s, trying to mix it up with some HU.