Your entering a live HU tournament and you get 10,000 in chips and the first blind levels go 25-50, 50-100, 100-200, 200-400 and so on. The blinds increase every 20 minutes.Compared to playing like a reg speed on Full Tilt where you start with 75 big blinds..how much will your preflop strategy change? I'm guessing we can call 3bets with suited connector easily because of the implied odds now, your not looking to get AK in preflop, and so on.Readless..If you have a hand like AK and you open, get 3bet..are you flatting or are you 4betting smallish to have your opponent flat and see a flop? You would both still have like 9k behind or so.I'd appreciate any input here like tips or theory in general because I am 95% sure I'm going to be playing a live heads up tournament in August with this structure and to be honest playing 200bb deep I will need to look into some things before I go as I have no experience playing this deep.
The kind of hands and frequency you want to be calling 3 bets with depends on your opponent's 3 betting percent and range. If he is 3 betting tight then you can really go ahead and just fold everything but your strong hands. Obviously pay attention to see if he ramps up his aggression when you do fold often though. But if he continues to 3 bet not that often then you really don't need to fight back.Now let's talk about the more interesting situation where your opponent is 3 betting "light". Again, you want to know what range that consists of and the frequency. I know it's hard to get "stats" playing live though. Some guys will polarize their range and some used a more merged/value range. Whether it's polarized with a range like AK/TT+ and small connectors /K4s type etc or it's merge with a lot of broadways (KQ, QTs, etc,) will heavily impact how often they hit a board like JT9 or 567 etc. Your goal when calling a "light" 3 bettor isn't to just try to make a hand and stack him unless he plays like a total nut job after the flop. Your goal is to find profitable spots to bluff to supplement your making hands. Don't just play for "implied odds" or "hit to win" . If you are deep, you should have plenty of spots and reads to apply some pressure. Now what hands should you be calling vs each of those ranges? There's still some debate on that but I think I've given enough info you can start to think about it on your own.As to your question about AK. It certainly shouldn't be your standard play to try to get AK in PF with 150-200bb but if your opponent is crazy enough then it could be. Also just calling a 3b with AK could be a little deceptive should an A or K flop and you put in a bunch of action. Your opponent could think you are full of shit as he might think you would 4b with AK.
^^^All this statement is great on a regular structure with say, 75bb deep, but once u go 200bb deep implied odds gets a lot of value and calling 3bets with good SCs is a must imo.
I don't think I actually said anywhere that at 200bb calling 3 bets with SCs was bad (whereas at 50bb I think it IS bad). I was trying to get across that you shouldn't just call to hit a hand and try to stack off your opponent. With 200bb you have position and a lot of stack left to mess around with. "Read" your opponent's range and how it might hit the current flop to decide if you can bluff profitably (taking into account your equity as well).
I'd say that metagame takes on more importance as the stacks get deeper like this, you want to use the smaller blind levels to set things up for later, not that this isn't something that's important in regular stack tourneys, but with the super high blind to stack ratios you get here you have more leeway to play around here.Don't assume the implied odds are there, and do too much chasing, you're not getting that many more chips in unless both players have huge hands, you'll be losing too many hands if you're calling too light.In terms of preflop play, given that there is more behind your moves, you have the opportunity to intimidate more, but this also leads to the potential for you to become trapped more, and in a lot of cases you'll find yourself flatting more as you don't really want the war to escalate too far for your given hand. The AK example is a perfect one, we might not want to stack off early in a match but we'll do it as the ratios go down and eventually be willing to get in ace anything, or worse, with huge stacks and the ratios high you don't want to get this hand in at all until the blinds climb enough. So if we take this and extend it, the larger the stack to blinds ratio, the more conservative you want to be in building big pots, and the smaller the ratio, the more aggressive you can be here.