As most players experience, heads up is a completely different ballgame. My experience (I have played and won a lot of sit & go's with six players) is that you just have to keep the pressure up.

In general: never call! Of course you don't want to be too predictable, so once and a while you mix in a call. The general idea is to raise a lot and back out early with real garbage if you are reraised (always check out those raises in the beginning: is the guy a bluffer?). My experience is that it is just too difficult for most players to reraise you with something like 62 offsuit. So in general, their actions are pretty well readable:

- call: he wants to have a look (follow up with a bet regardless)
- reraise: decent hand
- fold: they do this a lot. So get your money in first!

Remember that something like Q7 is the average hand in heads up play. The other guy gets his share of garbage and the idea is that you profit more from the average hands. In the big hands you always have to be a bit lucky, but many times you'll take a big chip lead by keeping up the pressure, which means you can even win the game after a very unlucky loss in an all in situation. The guy with the smaller stack is permanently in an all-or-nothing-situation. Use that fact, especially preflop. Kick in a few allins. Try it out. You´ll see it works.

- Ed Hoogenkamp

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