Heads Up - Twice As Nice

So after two months, one snapped humerus bone, three hours of surgery and four loser's bracket victories, I finally found myself as one of the last two left in a yearly heads-up tournament. Having come through the loser's bracket, I now had to defeat my opponent twice heads up as this was a double elimination tourney. A dubious prospect, since this was a guy who had rather handily dispatched his opponents thus far, a guy I knew to be unafraid of making moves with any two cards and with an uncanny skill for reading his opponents' hands. Plus, the guy had had his arm broken in an ill-fated arm wrestling match during the day the tournament was originally supposed to conclude. Fate should reward that kind of suffering, no?

Well, fate might, but I won't.

Starting even in chips but at a disadvantage strategically since my opponent could play as loose as he wanted to with a match in hand, things didn't quite get started as I hoped. I made some raises, forced a few continuation bets in and folded, folded, folded when I didn't connect and was re-popped. I've detailed before that one of the things I like best about heads up is playing each and every hand, the action aspect of it all. What's not so fun is a succession of god-awful hands like 2,8 where your raise is called, a deuce flops and your c-bet is tripled. Not exactly the kind of sweet action I enjoy.

Fold, fold, fold.

Pretty soon, I was down to about 1000 chips (5000 in play) and in serious chip envy. You know, the kind where your lone big chip has about five friends, where each and every smaller denomination chip has left town and made the deficit seem insurmountable from sheer stack size alone. That's where I was.

Well, heads up is its own beast, layered with skin ready for discard. All it takes to adjust is to slide out of one mode and into another. Add that to the chipleader's inevitable desire, once ahead, to never double up his opponent and give him life and aggression is often well rewarded. I began firing at pots with pot-committing raises and saw the glances at the few chips I had behind. My opponent ceded the small pots, not willing to commit the chips to get me back in it all at once. In fairness, he probably had garbage hands, like most are. But while he was conceding blinds and small pots, I was listening to the most delightful sound of new chips clacking on top of old. Slowly, I rebuilt. Five hundred more. Seven-fifty. Soon enough, my double up to 2000 was complete, albeit done in a grinding fashion.

And patience was finally rewarded. After a pre-flop raise into me, I peeked at JJ and pushed. My opponent made a crippling call with K,J and I seized control of the match and a few hands later, it was over. We were even.

As we began the second match, I felt that the pressure had shifted the other way. No one wants to lose two in a row, especially a confident, competitive player. This match was therefore less aggressive, more cautious on both sides, as we both now had the opportunity to win the whole thing. Small swings on either side of level were the norm in the early going, as pots hovered around 10% of the overall chip count (500). And then, cautious as things had been, it exploded.

In my favor.

And again, it was a monster for me. KK. My opponent raised preflop (25/50) to 150. I re-raised to 450, he called. Flop came Q high, all diamonds. He shoved, I called. Neither of us had a diamond. He had QJ. I held up and he had a scant 600 chips. It was that quick. Again, a few hands later the match ended, when I drew out a flush against his all in.


A long time coming, and it felt good.

More poker coming this weekend, I'll keep you updated.