Heads Up Poker Strategy: Learning to Succeed in a Heads Up SNG

Heads Up Poker Strategy: Learning to Succeed in a Heads Up SNG
Heads up poker can be a very difficult game to learn. However, there is a lot of fun and potential income in learning this game. This article will aim at making you better at the heads up sng version of the game.
Heads Up Poker Bankroll
It is important to have a healthy bankroll so that you do not risk going broke. Bad luck is bound to happen to even the most experienced and skilled players. But how do you know how much money to risk in a game?
With few exceptions, newer players should never risk more than 5% of their money in a single game. Many experienced players, who experience less bad runs in poker than newer players like to risk no more than 1-2% of their bankrolls. This may seem conservative, but the mental stress that can be caused from experiencing prolonged bad luck in heads up poker can be devastating and turn winning players into losing players fast. Until you are confident that you are a winning player, which should be backed up with peer commentary and winning results, I would not recommend using more than 2% of your bankroll on any given match.
 Heads Up Poker Strategy: Preflop
Preflop strategy in heads up sng poker is very important since it sets up the rest of the hand. If you fail to take advantage of your opponent's shortcomings preflop, it makes it more difficult to have a fully profitable strategy throughout the rest of the hand.
The most important thing to think about preflop is that you should not eliminate any options from your decision making without reason. A limp, minraise or 3x the BB raise, even an open fold, should always be within your considerations until you are fairly certain one or more is rarely or never the best option against an opponent.
General strategy from the button should be aggressive. Most opponents are taken advantage of the most by playing aggressively from your button.
You want to be careful not to call too many hands when in the big blind, particularly when deep stacked. The deeper the stacks are in heads up poker, the bigger the advantage the player in the small blind has. Therefore, if a player is raising every single hand on his button, it is not usually the best strategy to call with every hand from the big blind (exceptions occur when the button player is very poor compared to the big blind player).
 Heads Up Poker Postflop Play
Postflop play is very intricate and difficult to master. However, you can turn yourself into a winning player pretty quickly by following these general guidelines and practicing yourself (results will vary by player):
- Stay aggressive
- Think through every decision, do not automatically make any plays, always think about what action you are taking and why at the table.
- Do not make emotional decisions while playing. In heads up sngs, you will often gain an advantage when your opponent reacts in an emotional way. Common instances this occurs is when an opponent loses a lot of chips in one hand, they often turn emotional and reckless, allowing you easy opportunities to win a lot of chips. Do not let this happen to you.
- Never give up. This goes along with the last point, do not give up on a match. Even if you only win 1% of the time you get below 100 chips, that extra win can be pretty valuable and certainly worth paying attention to an extra decision or two so that you're making the right choice every time.
- Play a lot of games. It is factual that players who play more often will improve quicker. As long as you're playing quality games, not emotional games or non thinking games, you will improve as a player much faster than the average person.
- Study videos, games, articles, hands and more. Self review and the discovery of new concepts and strategy is very important in improving. People improve on their own without much of this, but most of the best players and fastest learners have utilized any worthwhile information they could get their hands on to improve at a rapid pace.