I went pretty deep in the $500 heads up matches, finishing in the top 64. Here’s a blow-by-blow:
Round 1
My first two opponents were ridiculously soft. I polished the first off in minutes, then waited over an hour for round two.
Round 2
I was so busy playing other tables that I didn’t even notice we had started up again. My opponent was happily stealing my blinds. But I got there before too long, and he was so terrible it didn’t matter. He never bluffed and always revealed exactly what he had with the size of his bets. Somehow, the match still lasted forever. It had a lot with his 87s beating my ATo all-in pre-flop, then his QJ beat my KK, then he flopped a higher flush than I did. I still came back and eventually pulled off a little suckout to win with K5 > A8s.
Round 3
This was the toughest match of the day. My opponent was very aggressive, and I found myself on the defensive, which is not a good place to be heads up. It was tough to play back at him without cards, but I managed my image well and pulled off some well-timed check-raise and 3-bet bluffs. Eventually we got it all in pre-flop on a flip and my 99 held vs his AJ.
Round 4
Initially, this guy was solid but overly tight. I grinded him down and got in some good value bets. My favorite one was when I raised 43s on the button, and he called in the BB. The flop came K32, and he checked and called a bet. The turn was a K, and we both checked. The river came a Q, he checked, and I bet like 65% of the pot. He called with A5. Ship it!
I think that tilted him a bit, which actually led him to play better in some sense because he got more aggressive. I called a raise with KJ on my BB and checked and called a K64 flop. I was planning to check-call down, but then a 5 came on the turn. Not wanting to see the board check through and turn ugly, I led out for half the pot. My opponent shoved, and I called him instantly. His T8 was much weaker than I expected to see, and I knocked him out on that one.
Round 5
This guy was not good. I googled his name and one of the hits was literally for a ranking of “Most Passive Online Players”. I swear I am not making that up.
Unfortunately, he was calling everything pre-flop and hitting every flop. He also wasn’t that passive. He raised his button a lot and tended to bet or raise whenever he got a piece of the flop. Eventually I raised JTo on the button and he called. The flop was 983 with two diamonds (I had Jd). He checked, I bet, and he min-check-raised. He’d been doing that a fair bit, and while it meant he had something, it didn’t necessarily signify a monster. I shoved, but he tanked and eventually called with K9, which held up.
The fact that he had to think with K9 was a good sign. I’m sure he would have played T9 or K8 the same way, so K9 was very much the top of his range. If he was thinking of folding that, it means my shove was definitely good. Sucks to keep getting so close, but the FTOPS has always been like that for me.