PlauZee's HU SNG Poker Blog

After months of consideration German Heads Up SNG Bjoerni89 specialist is finally approved as newest member of PokerStars Team Pro Online. Even tho most might know we have little history, I’m very glad about the news and wish him all the best!

Björn "Bjoerni89" Schneider

Bjoerni89 achieved already more than 2,7M VPPs and probably will get a new VPP record by end of the year (official VPP leaderboard). He 6-tabled isildur1 at 5ks regularly and made more than 600k VPPs in a single month only. His stats, with losses of $83k and -0.3% ROI, shown on the right by PokerOptimizer aren’t 100% correct, but even with that chart he’s up a lot considering his insane amount of rakeback.

After stevesbets has been Team Pro Online member two years ago, Bjoerni89 is finally the next HU SNG pro and member for the very elitist PokerStars team. I’m sure Bjoerni89 will do way better than his forerunner did and hopefully will benefit much from the new status.

Bjoerni89 stats by PokerOptimizer

The official news by PokerStars can be found at their blog: “Bjorn ‘Bjoerni89′ Schneider joins Team PokerStars Online”

Matt, mjw006 is another HU SNG specialist who is considered to become member of PokerStars Team Pro and hopefully will be approved soon as well.

Let’s hope we will have two members of the HUSNG community very soon!

Gl to both of you,
Chris

I just played a winning(!) reg who 3bet every hand he played from BB, more than 30% in total. No clue how this strategy might be profitable against any part-time-thinking player – no need to say that I crushed him very hard. I still stick to turbo HUSNGs only, no hypers, no “taking shots” to $300+, just a steady grind at the “micros” as they appeared to my some weeks ago which works very well so far. Because of tilting dumb HEM2 which can’t handle 4mans properly the stats on the right are still not 100% same like SharkScope.

stats of $60-$200 HU SNGs

I decided to give more coachings in future, not only basic HU SNG strategy coachings, but those about mindset, adjusting life as poker pro etc. Live coaching is now lowered to $150/h with some possible discounts for a bunch of sessions. Let me know if you are interested or need to know any more details beside those which you can find at my coaching page.

The post about basic strategy how to beat fishies is coming soon, I’m already working on it.

Gl guys & take care!
Chris

After playing some more games at my new favorite stakes, $60s to $200s, I feel way more comfortable taking those sweet micros very serious. My stats are fkn awesome so far and I really hope I can continue crushing those games without any bigger swings. I was 2-3 tabling most of the time, got enough action and therefor played less than 10 hypers so far.

I’m using HoldEm Manager 2 even tho it’s still packed with bugs which don’t seem to get corrected by any of those annoying daily updates. If you are using HoldEm Manager 1 and you are thinking about upgrading – don’t do it. At least not within the next weeks. Afterwards it’s worth the new features, but definitely not yet. The Stats are those from HoldEm Manager 2 which seem to be mostly(!) correct ignoring the fact that it can’t handle 4mans. That’s probably the reason why it shows about 100 more games than I actually played and $1k more profit I actually made and Sharkscope tracked.
I’m collecting hand histories while grinding for several interesting situations and plan to do “Biggest Leaks against Fish”-series at $60 turbo HU SNGs which I’ll probably publish by end of the week. I will concentrate on small ball strategy and how to grind down fishies step by step without taking big risks.

My best – and only – Slovenian friend finally started blogging at www.mtvdeuem.com. He wasn’t able to write some English sentences yet and stays blogging in Slovenian, but he promised to take some English classes and to switch to English by New Year.

I recently started a Facebook “fan page” which you can “like” to stay updated about new blog updates, live and online tournament news and photos from my poker trips. I kicked about 300 “fans” from my Facebook profile a while ago for privacy reasons and think those pages are a great opportunity to inform others about specific topics, but none of those private things.

Skrill offers another 1% cashback promotion from 1st of December until 22nd of January like the last one which ran in summer. Let me know if you want to know more about the promo or other possibilities at Skrill.

Stay tuned!
Chris

I never read in any blog about poker players taking a step back and playing seriously lower, not just for the moment after running bad or anything, but for longer time. After I gave those crazy $100s & $200s hyperturbos a chance in my first part-time-pro-sessions I realized I didn’t enjoy those games at all.

recent gift by a friend

I took some more days off to think about my situation and what might fit best for my goals and me. As you probably read in my recent posts I don’t grind much anymore. Therefor I need a very clear mindset, not only to succeed in university, but also to take poker as serious as possible in fixed bounders – mainly speaking about time and commitment to the game.

I started mixing hyper and turbo games to get enough volume against fishies at $200s and $300s, but failed pretty hard when it came to master my mindset. At least I reached the 600k VPP milestone that way, but it was very hard to take those low buy-ins serious, play my best game and not to tilt because of dumb fish moves the same time. During my break I read some of my old posts and found those about the bet between mtvdeuem and a student of me playing $100 turbo HU-SNGs (post 1/ post 2). I wrote about the reason why I thought my student KnutFH had very good chances to beat mtvdeuem, even though he had way less practice and skill than mtv. The reason why I thought mtvdeuem would fail was the same why I failed so far, because it’s so hard to play $100s as serious as $1ks if you played that much higher regularly before. It’s easy to say not to think about different buy-ins, to play a-game, not to play more than 2tables and stay calm and patient to grind those micros for easy money without big swings. In the end, I think my mindset is finally well prepared to play where I did about 1.5 years ago. I grinded $100s mainly, $200s from time to time depending on the action, 2man and 4man whenever they were available, and played some $60s as well. And that’s where I want to stay. Not only for next days or weeks, but for longer time, maybe even until WSOP 2012 – juiciest time for HU SNGs grinders.

since Nov, 10th

I think, one of my biggest strengths in poker business is the ability of self-reflection of my skill level compared to other regs and fishies. I always knew I was not good enough to fight regs at 1ks or above, but I always found my niche to get enough action from fishies. Talking about my skill, which is definitely good enough to kick some regs asses at $200s, my given situation and my goals I’m very sure 2-3tabling $60s-$200s, with main focus for the $100s, are perfect to grind. Stats always were a great motivation for me playing my best and grinding games seriously, so I decided to reset and publish my Sharkscope stats in order to creat a great looking graph and decent ROI which you’ll find here as well in future.

To cut a long story short, you’ll find me grinding $60 to $200 turbo HU SNGs next months with a non-blocked sharkscope graph.

Gl guys & take care
Chris “PlauZee”

After a very great performance by Pius Heinz he played an epic HeadsUp battle as well and became the one and only German winner of WSOP ever. It was great to watch the show, even tho it was fkn late over here in Germany when “November Nine” continued with last three players remaining at 3am.
I don’t know Pius much personally, I just had some drinks and spoke with him for a while, but it’s so great to read popular German newspaper websites right know. I can’t remember they wrote about poker without any prejudice before and I really hope poker will become little more social accepted.
Grats Pius, there was no one at the final-table who deserved it more!

It’s been a while since a played a longer session, like 3h+, but today it seems perfect to go for a longer grinding session. Not only cuz I have enough time, have finally set up my PC-stuff to perfection again, but cuz I’m finally in the mood again to grind and grab some easy $$$ from fishies. This post will be the try to post some in-game stuff, like thoughts, maybe HHs, but music I’m listening to as well. Let’s start with….. Swedish House Mafia. 8)

I’m playing $100 hypers only right now. They are very soft and so easy to grind. 1-2 tabling is fun and allows me to control things like music easily without losing the focus for my opponents. I’m using last.fm as I did while ago, no more trance podcasts as I did last months. Maybe soon again, but not right now.

HoldEm Manager 2 sux hard! Not only cuz I can’t use my HUD without editing a lot, but there are still fkn many bugs in. Especially EV-calculation and wrong tournament-winnings sux a lot. Did they really didn’t recognize that wasn’t working properly in the beta when they released their official HoldEm Manager 2-version??

lol. I’m playing about 2h including some breaks now. I’m up like 8 buyins and there were two guys already who told me it was an honor to play me. Uh, yeah. I’m the greatest! lol… That’s why I’m back grinding those micros…
Still nice to have very gently chats with some kind of “fans” so often.
I’m very glad I was able to take the step back from highstakes to those “micro” games. It wasn’t that easy for my mindset since it’s way less fun and thrill, but it was definetely the perfect time and best I could have done. And – no, I haven’t lost big before I took that step. Please feel free to read my recent posts if you want to know more about it.

And another update for HM2. omg. there are like 2 per day, just because they released their beta as official product. that’s so annoying!

Just a very short shootout supporting Matt, mjw006, who seems to have decent chances to become PokerStars Team Pro member for Australia after he won TLB Leaderboard. Here’s a very new and free coaching video he made to increase his publicity. It’s easy to follow and I think especially great for those players who play low to mid-stakes. Follow him at his blog at HUSNG.com where he releases new coaching videos like this one regularly: