Making a final table is a great accomplishment, but making it to heads up should be your goal. Finishing second will produce a nice payout, but unless you make a deal, first place typically pays nearly double. It’s not often that you’ll have a chance to actually win a large field MTT so you’ll want to prepared to take it down if and when you finally do make it to heads up.
GENERAL STRATEGY
Again, much of your strategy going in will be affected by stack sizes. If you have a huge chip lead, there’s no sense in waiting for a big hand. You should be attacking your opponent at every opportunity and looking to go all-in, especially with pocket pairs and random ace hands. If your opponent is playing a push/fold game, be prepared to defend with a wide range and close it out. If you get down to heads up with a short stack, YOU will be the one playing a push/fold strategy. Waiting for strong hands to go all-in with will drain your stack, so, unfortunately, you’ll have to take some chances and probably get a little lucky.
PLAYING THE PLAYER
If both you and your opponent come in with relatively the same stack sizes, you’ll have to play some poker. Some hands will inevitably turn into a leveling war but that’s no excuse to play foolishly and start spewing chips. Pay attention and learn how your opponent plays in common situations, such as how they size their bets, what hands they 3-bet with, how often they continuation bet on the flop, how aggressive they are on later streets, and more. All players have leaks, regardless of how big or small, and playing heads up is about finding and exploiting these weaknesses.
For example, your opponent is very loose and aggressive, you’ll want to slow play some of your made hands and look to trap and induce with your monsters. You may also need to make a few hero calls on the river, but don’t call with weak hands just for the sake of calling – make sure you’re ranging your opponent and that they have enough bluffs in their range to justify a profitable call. Against tighter opponents, you’ll want to increase your own aggression to take down more pots without going to showdown. If your opponent is a calling station, you’ll want to check your weaker hands (bluff less) but widen your value betting range. Know who you’re playing and adjust accordingly.
Regardless, you’ll still want to play as many pots as possible. If you constantly fold preflop, your stack will drain quickly. Remember, your opponent will rarely have a hand also, so most times, aggression will pay off. Furthermore, playing more pots increases your chances of hitting a monster and trapping your opponent. You don’t have to play every hand, but you should be playing most of them. Your opponent will miss the flop a lot – around 60% of the time, so don’t be afraid to continuation bet with a high frequency. Remember, your opponent only needs to fold 33% of the time when you continuation bet half pot, regardless of your hand.
THOUGHTS ON STARTING HAND SELECTION
If you’re on the button (small blind), you should be raising at least 33% of the time. If you start raising half of the time or more, your opponent will undoubtedly start 3-betting you light and you’ll have a decision to make. You want to avoid leveling wars if at all possible. As for hands, you should be raising all pocket pairs, broadways, random aces, and suited connectors from either position. If your opponent is folding at a high frequency, either preflop or on the flop, you can increase your opening range to include hands like Q8, J7, K9, etc. Limp all other hands except absolute trash. Postflop, you should be looking to mix it up to prevent predictable and exploitable play.
CONCLUSION
Through this series, I hope you’ve learned enough to help get you become a profitable MTT player. Obviously, the work doesn’t stop here, but this master series should be enough to at least get you on the winning track. For the next lesson, I’m including a bonus article that will help lead to more advanced play and concepts.
