Strategy for Heads-up Deep No Blind Increases Sit & Gos

Today I decided to play in a quick heads up SNG on PokerStars. Well, I wasn’t exactly paying attention to all of the details when I made my selection. I accidentally registered for a 200 BB deep game where the blinds do not increase. My brother had talked about his experience playing one of these. He said something to the effect of “I went all in 46 times before the other guy finally called.” I suspect my brother was exaggerating, but his quote does describe a certain type of play style that I think is really effective for this type of game: super tight with the purpose of “time-tilting” your opponent.  In other words, boring your opponent to death.

I would describe my style of heads up play as super trappy. This strategy works really well against bad players who will overplay big pocket pair type hands or bluff at really bad times. My opponent in this deep no blind increase game took this style to an absolutely extreme level. In almost 400 hands of play, his VPIP was a  mere 31 and his PFR was only 8, which is really low in a heads up game! He played a fit-or-fold game, meaning he folded a lot to preflop raises, would slow play strong hands such as top pair, and often times would check down two pair or straights where there might have been three cards to a flush on the board. In hands that went to showdown, it appeared as though he only played the nuts. In non-showdown hands, he either folded or would 3bet my raise preflop and bet every street. I believe his reasoning to be pretty simple, he wanted to create the illusion that when he was betting, he had a hand, and that he never bluffed. It definitely worked. I always gave him credit when he bet for two reasons: he did it so infrequently and also because I never had a hand when he did this. At first I wondered how someone could play so poorly, so predictably. I folded to every 3bet he made. I probably won at least 60% of the pots, a lot of times just from betting the flop with any two cards and shut down if he called. Then I wondered if I was playing a bot. I checked up on what other games he was playing–more deep heads up sit & gos in which he was applying the same style. After playing him for a while, I realized this was indeed a very good strategy because of the two elements that make this sit & go unique: we were playing deep and the blinds do not go up.

This style essentially means that he will never be putting in his money bad. It means that the match could go on indefinitely. At 200 BB deep, you could fold 266 hands straight before you’d be out of chips. While you would never want to do that, it means that you could play extremely tight and never really be at a huge chip disadvantage at any point. By keeping the pots small too, you ensure that the chips really don’t go in either direction very quickly. After about 30 minutes of playing I had him at a 2500-1500 chip advantage. This seems like a lot, but it isn’t. All it would take would be one big pot for him to get us back to even. Of course, that’s what happened. I raised from the button with JTs, he 3bet, and I called. The flop gave me a flush draw and I chased till the river, whereupon I missed and had to fold. Probably pretty dumb of me, but I knew that if he did indeed have a big hand, I’d have to have one too in order to get any big money out of him. So then we were back where we started in chips, except that it was really clear now there was no end in sight. That was his plan.

I should have been tilted. He has me stuck playing this game until he decides he wants it to be over. This should make me play wild and crazy, going all in at the sight of any ace or king. Then he has me where he wants me. He can get it all in with a great hand against a wide open shoving range. Even if he’s down to 70% of his starting stack, doubling up pretty much secures him the game, provided he makes some adjustments. And there it is, a way to tilt your opponent by giving them no way to end the game. Once I figured out what he was trying to do, I decided to keep trying to win small pots off of him. I focused on doing the same thing he was trying to do, wait for the nuts. In the back of my mind I realized though, that there would be no way to end the game without giving up some sort of edge. We’d either have to get into a situation where one of us has the nuts vs. a second-nut type hand, which would be extremely rare and that means that either one of us could lose. The other option would be to try to play bigger pots with him. This will increase the variance of the match , but I don’t think I necessarily win more often by doing this.

It took roughly two hours and 15 minutes (so much for wanting to play a “quick” match) to get it all in with this hand:

So what was I thinking? I had a pretty decent hand, but it ends up being a bluff catcher. He either has a flush there or a complete bluff. So why did I call, given that I had never caught him bluffing and I didn’t even think he ever did bluff? Simply put, I actually was tilted. Even if it was a subconscious level, I still think I wanted it to be over. How often was I going to flop top set and get action for it, anyway? I didn’t think I had him beat, but I was tired if playing. He bluffed, and it was over. In short, this was bound to happen. Eventually I was going to put my money in, probably out of frustration. He should have waited to have a strong hand in that spot. He’s never going to win by losing all of those small pots to me, so he should never be bluffing in a big pot like that.

Overall, I think his strategy works pretty well. He was multitabling a few of these games and therefore could play a super nitty game. This even works in his favor because that style in itself was pretty tilt inducing to never be getting paid off for big hands. I would not expect most games to last as long as mine did, but either way, they’ll probably last longer than the average sit & go. Having said that though, I doubt I will be playing another one. They are really boring.