The heads up rush

There's nothing in poker as exhilarating as heads up play. What a rush! I'm a heads up junkie :-) What makes it so exciting is that you have less information to work with than in any other poker scenario. Information is what you need to succeed, and you're essentially information-starved. How fun is that? That's actually not a rhetorical question. It has an answer - it's a lot of fun! That might not make a lot of sense, but it's true nonetheless. If you can somehow glean what you need from such meager seeds, you end up feeling like a god.

Last night, I played two 8-game tournaments, instead of my usual one. The reason was simple - I hit the rail so quickly in the first, I had plenty of time left over to play a second. I was glad I did, since I went from worst to first. That second tournament had a truly memorable heads up contest - it lasted an astonishing 82 hands. My gut instinct tells me that must be in my top three heads up stretches; let me check the archives ... I was too conservative; that 82 hand stretch is the longest heads up battle I've ever had. Here are the top 10:

82 2014/0917/b
74 2012/0831/a
67 2012/1102/a
61 2012/0929/b
58 2012/0827/a
53 2012/1001/a
51 2012/0719/b
49 2012/0829/d
48 2012/1027/a
48 2012/0828/d

buy_in entry_fee num_players num_hands place winnings

 45000      5000           6        35     6        0
 45000      5000           6       157     1   175500

delta: $75,500
8-game tournament balance: $490,000
balance: $9,937,770