Mar 14, 2017  (If you don’t play heads-up poker, this article can still prove useful to you because the skill of understanding wide range situations will translate to most forms of poker.) Regular Speed Heads-up Sit & Gos. Starting stack: 75 big blinds Blind level length: 6 minutes. Regspeed HUSNGs offer the highest return on investment (ROI) potential. Jan 15, 2017  An alternative (and much better) short stack heads up strategy When a tournament is down to heads up, or you're playing a HUSNG, and you're down to 10BB or less, most regs' default strategy is to go into push/fold mode. What is push/fold mode? It's where the players limit themselves to either shoving all in or folding. In a position with 25-30BB, your small stack heads up strategy should include going all in with your top 75% of hands preflop. This will include two face cards, pocket pairs, high suited connectors.

• Short Stack Holdem
• Playing Short Stack Poker
• Heads Up Poker Short Stack Strategy

Last week, we discussed three-handed strategy for a single-table sit & go. This week, we will tackle heads-up play.

It's important to be able to play the endgame effectively in SNGs. When playing poker online in a standard single-table sit & go, for example, the payouts typically have 50 percent of the prize pool go to the winner and 30 percent to the runner-up.

At this point of a SNG, the effective stack is usually under 10 big blinds or it will be in short order. The shallow stacks tend to make the game simple and relatively easy to play. Generally, you want to be going all in or folding. Which hands you do this with depends on the tendencies of your opponent.

Facing an Unknown or Balanced Player

When you are facing an unknown or balanced opponent, it is best to utilize an unexploitable strategy. One strategy that has stood the test of time is called the 'Sit And Go Endgame' system, or SAGE for short. It was developed and introduced by Lee Jones back in 2006 and is still relevant to SNG strategy today.

Essentially, SAGE is a shorthand memory trick that helps you determine if a hand is an unexploitable shove or call. Here is how you use SAGE.

First, you must calculate the Power Index (PI) of your hand. Number cards are valued at the displayed amount 2 through 10. Then jacks are worth 11, queens 12, kings 13 and aces 15.

To calculate your hand's PI, double the value of your highest card, then add the value of your lowest card. If you hand is suited, add another 2 points. If you have a pair, double the value of one of your cards, add the other one, then add another 22 points.

For example, with , you double the value of the jack (11 x 2) and add the 7, totaling 29. With , you double the eight (8 x 2), add the 7, then add 2 more for suitedness to total 25. With you double one of the sixes (6 x 2), add 6 more, then add 22 for being paired to total 40.

Once you've calculated the PI of your hand, use the chart below to look up the number of big blinds in the effective stack to determine if your hand has a PI high enough to play.

For example, when the effective stack is 7 big blinds, you must have a PI of 26 or higher to shove and a PI of 30 or higher to call. This means it would be recommended to open-fold (PI = 25), to shove but not call with (PI = 29) and shove or call with (PI = 40) based on our calculations above.

This shorthand is game theoretically optimal for effective stack sizes 7 BBs or below. It starts to break down for bigger stacks, so I am including a second short chart with the percentage of hands you can shove or fold 8-10 BBs unexploitably as recommended by Max Silver's SnapShove app.

SAGE Chart

SnapShove

These are great defaults to use when you don't know what mistakes your opponent is likely to make. But when you know he is too tight or too loose, you can deviate from this baseline to exploit him even further.

Facing an Overly Tight or Overly Loose Player

SAGE would have you call a 7 BB shove with a hand like (PI = 30). This is great to know against a good player who is shoving hands as bad as (PI = 26), but not against a player who shoves too tight.

If you know this to be true about your opponent, you should call him tighter than SAGE suggests. If you can determine the bottom of his shoving range, just call him slightly tighter than that.

Short Stack Holdem

By the same token, the range of hands SAGE suggests to shove is profitable against a player who calls correctly. But if your opponent calls too tight, then you can shove even wider than the SAGE ranges.

Playing Short Stack Poker

Feel free to throw in a few more hands, especially those that contain big cards, but don't go overboard. There are players and situations where you can get away with shoving any two cards — but this approach can quickly become a slippery slope to Spew Valley, so be careful.

When facing a player who shoves or calls too loose, you can just stick to the SAGE ranges. The fact that he is getting it in with more garbage than you just improves the EV of every hand in your ranges.

Heads-up play is where the real money is in a SNG. But because of the short stack sizes, it can be one of the easiest parts of the tournament to play. If you utilize these tips, you should win at least your fair share of SNGs in the long run.

Next week, we'll wrap this series up with a discussion of sit & go bankroll management.

Also in this series...

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Heads Up Poker Short Stack Strategy

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Below eleven big blinds you should be in “push/fold” mode, never raising unless you are going all-in. Trying to be tricky and make a small raise or limp in with a big hand is only useful if you are a very strong player facing a very weak player, and even then many of the best players avoid it. If you just go all-in or fold when the effective stack is eleven big blinds or less, you will avoid making costly mistakes.

The major reason why playing push/fold is correct at this level is that with smaller stacks we can quantify the game and play perfect poker. Knowing that you are playing perfectly is a rare thing in poker, but when you are heads up with a short stack the math is not complicated and we have created charts that allow you to play perfect poker very easily. This can be extremely useful, whether you’re competing in a live tournament, or simply practising your skills online at a site like Party Poker. No matter how your opponent plays, they can not win money against these charts in the long run. Their best hope is to play exactly the same way and break even against you. Luckily for those of us who use these charts, most of our opponents don’t know about them and tend to make significant mistakes when stacks get short.

If you are on the button, you can push all-in with the following hands based on the number of big blinds in the shorter stack. We know these ranges seem very wide, but they are mathematically proven, and experts playing against them are unable to beat them.

When calculating a range to call your opponent’s all-in, the following chart is a good start and provides the same protection as the chart above. If you play this strategy, your opponent can only break even against you at best, and the vast majority of them won’t know about these charts and will make mistakes frequently. You can tighten up these ranges by about 5% if your opponent is much too tight, but otherwise it’s safest to just follow the chart once the stacks get short.

Calling Ranges

These charts provide a simple strategy that gives you a big advantage of your opponents when the blinds get big and the stacks are getting small. If you follow these charts you have the short stack portion of the heads up sit and go mastered.