Well, this is a HU idea against weak-tight opponents, but it seems to work fairly well.

Basically, I start off raising pretty much according to Harrington's recommendations (my new HU guru!). But if I notice that my opponent is consistently folding to raises (less than 20% calls), then I make a switch: In position, I just start typically limping with all premium hands, but I start raising the BOTTOM 30%. Of course, if they suddenly start calling, then you have to go back to a more solid strategy.

Also, if they do call (as long as you haven't been raising them to death with this), almost any face card is a scare card for them. At least for me, I'll just fold my 72o unimproved if my opponent makes a solid bet into me, but to a check, a continuation bet is often pretty promising.

As I say, I certainly don't recomment this idea against more aggressive opponents or those who'll call any raise, but it does seem to work against players who are a bit too weak-tight PF. And it leaves you your strong hands to actually play, where there's a pretty good chance that they might spike middle pair when you have top pair, stuff like that. That was really my reasoning behind this move: I just got tired of not being able to play my strongest hands in position against some opponents.

One other thing: I'm much less inclined to apply this strategy out of position, although it still has some potential. It just bothers me much less out of position to just get a limp-fold to my KJ.

Aisthesis,

What's your win rate HU? You obvious seem to have a strong strategic game, how severe do you find the variance?

Molina

I find the variance quite severe, particularly against hyper-aggressive players.

I'm stil hovering around 60% and am playing quite low stakes ($10 and $20 buy-in). I really do it largely as a welcome break from cash games, just to do something with a little more action and to sharpen my reading skills.

Interestingly, whether it's due to luck or something else, my win rates at the $20 level are significantly higher, I think because the players actually start to view this as money. The problem with the hyper-aggressive is that you have little choice but to want your A8s to hold up against QJ, and it's favorite, but not that enormous (and, at least subjectively, I always feel like if there's any way my opponent can win, he invariably will).

Due to the high variance (which may be less with greater skills and higher stakes), I think you have to get into fairly big games to make HU into a money winner that has some kind of real hourly wage (like beating minimum wage, for a start). I'm not really ready for that yet but do hope that I can get there. I generally feel like you need to move up the ladder from the lower stages to gain experience and build bankroll at the same time.