The new marathon heads up standard

As I've had occasion to mention, sit and gos on PokerStars underwent a lot of changes during my hiatus from playing them, which included all of 2013. One of the things I haven't mentioned is how much harder it is to have a heads up marathon. Let me rephrase that - the length of what can be considered a heads up marathon has been dramatically shortened. Back in 2012, the lengthiest heads up battle I waged was an astronomical 74 hands. That simply can't happen these days, for a couple of reasons. A major one is that players these days only start with $500 in chips, instead of $1,000. Another contributing factor is that these days, antes are standard; not only that, they escalate along with the blinds.

Last night, in my fifth and final tournament, I had a marathon heads up battle when gauged in light of the current PokerStars realities - 34 hands. That's the lengthiest for me yet in the modern era.

buy_in entry_fee num_players num_hands place winnings

 45000      5000           6        25     1   175500
 45000      5000           6        14     4        0
 45000      5000           6        14     4        0
 45000      5000           6        38     3        0
 45000      5000           6        51     1   175500

delta: $101,000
tournament balance: $2,638,840
balance: $9,521,539