Heads Up NL Poker Forums

Here's my dilemma. I play full ring 200NL and start a lot of my own tables. I enjoy playing HU in this atmosphere and sometimes get disappointed when I'm HU with a fish and the table starts to fill up. So, I'd like to cultivate my HU game specifically @ HU to complement my overall game and further help my HU game when I start my own FR tables.

I've been having a couple of problems with this. The difference between playing FR players HU and HU plays HU is vast. I've been table selecting to try to get easier opponents because I'm relatively new to HU and also to maximze my win-rate, but it's been a comedy of errors. Often times I'll get an opponent down to 10bb or less, they'll get lucky and come back. Other times, I simply don't play as well as I should and get in a lot of tough spots and lose that way. Also, the rake is awful @ $50NL and I feel a sense of urgency to win because I have a limited time to get the fish's money before Stars or Tilt does. Most of the players I've played are fish and don't reload - I like the fish part, but not the lack of reload.

If I stay @ Stars or Tilt, I can try to stick with $50NL which I'm reluctant to do because I feel like I just keep digging myself into a deeper hole and I definitely don't want to try to move up to overcome the rake when I definitely have many holes in my HU game that need plugged. Alternatively, I could try to start playing HU SNG's. I've done well with the short sample size of $1 HU SNG's, but I just fear that this won't really help me cash game HU play as much as I want. There are many situations that come up in cash game HU spots that don't in SNG's. Specifically, you often times can get deep playing HU if you get stacked, reload, and then win several pots. You also don't have to worry about the blinds going up and all those tournament variables.

If I'm willing to go to UB or Absolute, I've heard they have HU cash game tables as low $2NL. This sounds great, BUT I fear I'll run into the rake issue again. Is the rake there bad even with 33% rakeback? Plus, I have to deposit to a new site. And, if I'm depositing at a new site for the first time, should I just play FR from the start @ $200NL and try to get the first time bonus? I've heard the bonus is very hard to clear. How hard is it @ FR $200NL and/or $100NL? How many games do they have running and how soft are they?

I'm just not sure what I should do. So, any opinions and advice would be appreciated. I just wish the rake structure wasn't so horrible @ low stakes and they offered lower stakes. I mean, they offer play money tables 24/7, and twenty five cent MTT's with no rake. Why do they make HU so hard to get into? Most of the players idling @ $50NL at both Stars and Tilt seem to be solid winning players. If I'm patient I can find a fish, but if a player wants to start learning a new game, this is the Internet, they should have entry points that are at LEAST very easy on your bankroll like $2NL, not $50NL ... and like I said, the rake is so bad, $100NL is almost where you have to start to beat that too

Anyway, sorry for the rant. Again, any thoughts welcome.

I'm in the process of rebuilding my roll and sort of wish they had smaller limits for HU as well, although I'd feel differently when I move back to 50nl since lower limits would likely dilute the games. During this process, I've played a goodish number of HU SNGs, and will say that they're only superficially similar -- there are spots that don't come up in HU SNGs that do in cash, but the opposite is true as well. As for the rake, 50nl HU is definitely beatable, although, yeah, it does add up to a pretty insane amount relative to the stakes. This tends to be true of micro anything, though, which is probably just the sites' best effort to monetize those players that they've been spending all that money trying to get to deposit (play money and rake free super-nanos are some of those things). I can't really comment on how Cereus' nano HU tables are raked, although I'd imagine that they are beatable games.

I suppose if you still were interested in HU SNGs, you could play the deep ones for a bit, although, again, due to freezeout nature it will have a fair amount of differences. Also, if you have problems playing short-stacks at your tables, you can always just sit out and ask them to reload. It might piss them off a bit, but whatever, really.

Absolute poker HU is raked $0.01 for every $0.20 in the pot, Max $0.75.
So basically it is totally unbeatable for <10nl.

Hey Phatty,

I play 100NL-400NL HU, mainly 200NL.

In march I decided to put money on stars after never previously doing so before and just messing around trying to build a roll for stars. Starting at 50NL, and played around 15k hands there, and while the rake is a concern its not really that important. There are a ton of fish, and if you play medicore you can easily get 5BB/100. With table selecting and playing your A game you can probably increase this to 10BB/100 as some of the top regs on stars do.

Btw stars has a TON of fish, so its not anything to worry about. Just play learn and practice.

Here are some of the winrates of the best regs at 50NL. They are crushing the games, and wayyyy beating the rake trap.

http://www.pokertableratings.com/stars-player-search/mrbriggs99
http://www.pokertableratings.com/stars-player-search/antowka


Also if I have been playing a short stack for a few mins and cant stack him I ask him to bring at least 50bb to the table. It might piss them off but you dont spew away a ton of money to rake when oyu can only win 20bb or something silly like that.