Since I quit my chase, I’ve been playing a lot more HU cash and faring quite well. I honestly feel like I’m playing the best I have ever played. The wide variety of games I’ve delved into over the years has had a positive effect on my cash skills.

Today, I played the tightest regular I have ever played in my entire life. He was so tight even in the face of enormous aggression that I had Max get on Skype and Teamviewer just to laugh at how ridiculous my strategy was. Here are the stats to show just how crazy it got.

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/7579/nit1w.jpg

http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/2024/nit2.jpg

If you look at the 2nd link, you can see my redline going up drastically for the first 250 hands. For those first hands, this was the gist of my strategy: 3bet all hands (yes, even 32 off suit), except those that can cold call preflop but don’t have much 3bet value. Since he was folding 77% to 3bet in the beginning, I decided I would employ this strategy until the normal adjustment of 4betting a lot as a bluff and value came. But it wasn’t happening. He still was folding to 3bet 70% of the time. At that time, my 3bet% was just as large, in the 70% range.

After awhile the madness ended as he slowly began to start calling more 3bets, and 4betting a thin value range as well as bluffs. At that point, I switched to a linear value range for my 3bets. But I still did not want to start folding.

Looking for other ways to play my weak hands profitably, I started to realize he was folding a lot to flop c/r’s, as well as checking behind midpair, bottom pair, and ace high. My new strategy? C/r nearly every flop until he started to cbet his weak showdown value. I continued to rarely fold preflop. This basically went on until I had to quit for dinner.

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It’s a lot of fun playing cash again. I’ve been away for awhile so hopefully I start getting more action. I’m willing to take on basically anyone at this point. I don’t remember feeling this confident since the spring of 2009, it’s nice to have some swagger back.

Last year, I did a list of the best HU SNG regulars. I think it was a good list of some great players, in fact most of the players are the same as they are this year. But now I have more experience, better knowledge of what is good and what is bad, and more history with everyone who plays heads up sit and goes. I am sure that this list is the most accurate you will find. All 5 players on this list are deserving of the title of elite player. And although I stand by this ranking, I do not think any of these players would feel like they would have much, if any, of an edge against the other.

5. Whassssuuuppp: I love Whas’s game more than anyone else’s on this list. He has a tremendously good balance of looseness, aggression, and stationy-ness. He adjusts incredibly well to his opponents, often changing his strategy drastically to adapt to his opponent. He’s a good hand reader, and understands theory well. I have a few knocks on his game. One, he can get way too stationy and make some bad calls. Two, he plays very exploitable strategies; he rarely employs a strategy that is theoretically sound. But ultimately, it doesn’t matter and even works to his advantage because people have no idea how to adjust to it correctly (I don’t because I can’t always figure out what the hell he’s doing).

4. Lotte Lenya/H2olga: I have to admit, I have only played Lotte a handful of times, mostly because I realized he was good and avoided him. He plays a sound, aggressive strategy and understands the math of SNGs incredibly well. I actually met him in London and I exchanged some high fives regarding our agreement on what to do on various hands me, him, and Melanie Weisner were discussing over drinks. After talking with him for awhile I realized he had a very high level of understanding about the game. He was one of the top winners last year and I wouldn’t doubt he will have the same success this year.

3. Iftarii: Iftarii is by far the best hand reader I have ever played against. I often cannot figure out what inspires him to make a call, but he’s often correct to make one. I said last year that Iftarii can get inside your head better than anyone else I’ve played. His overall strategy is good and he plays better OOP in single raised pots than any regular. However, I do not think his general strategy is as optimal mid-late game as the top players on this list. He seems to me to be too tight. It’s a small criticism but when your on the list of the best in the world it’s enough to send you to number 3.

2. Skaiwalkur/ R-quaresma: When I first played against Skaiwalkur, it was when he was just starting out. But after the match was done I posted in a poker forum that he was the best HU SNG player I had ever played against. And the handful of times I have played him since then I came away even more impressed. Already a very successful high stakes CAP game player, Skai plays the most optimal game out of anyone on the list. He is someone who clearly understands the math of poker at an extremely high level. His hand reading is solid as well, and really there’s not much more you can ask for in a player.

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1. Adonis112/livb112: Last year I didn’t rank livb accurately. Coming from a cash background, there is a lot of different things a HU SNG player can do that seem bad. Adonis was no exception, he did a lot of different things that will make a deep stacked player say “that dude sucks.” But after getting a lot more experience and understanding of shorter stack poker I realized that what I thought were mistakes are actually very solid strategies.

He plays very theoretically optimal. He is a superb hand reader. He plays endgame as perfectly as I can imagine it being played. He seems to win every pot against me but rarely gets caught bluffing. He has made over two million dollars lifetime. ’nuff said? The easy pick for #1, but the right pick.

So I’ve also decided to change my intentions for this year. I was easily on pace for SNE this year, however I was disappointed with the number of games I was getting in given the amount of time I was putting in. I was playing over 7 hours a day for the months of January and February and I found myself getting in only about 50 sngs a day. On Full Tilt, I was getting in over 200 games with the same amount of work, and my roi in stars turbos is not 4 times my roi in supers.

So I’m basically going to play on Full Tilt exclusively. I’m going for #1 in the Full Tilt Highest Stakes leader board in March, which if I accomplish it will give me a bonus of $10,000. Even though playing the higher stakes sngs puts me at a disadvantage, I think I can overcome it by working as hard as I have been this year.

Look for me to crack the sharkscope leader board in a couple months.

VPPs this month: ~305,000

VPPs this year: ~503,000

This month went as well as I could hope a month to go. I made money, I hit my VPP goal, and I improved. There’s not much more I could ask for. But I’m going to end my pursuit for the VPP record despite firing on all cylinders.

Why? Basically, I think my chances of making 3.4 million points is pretty good. But I think the chances of getting 3.4 million points and that being the record is pretty slim. There are a handful of people going for the record this year, one of which is 500,000 VPPs ahead of me and announced yesterday he is going to go for the record. With the possibility of the record dwindling, there are just too many negatives to keep going. For one, going for the record restricts me to only 6 tabling HU SNGs on Stars. There are a lot of times where that is not even close to my best option game selection wise. I’d like to play some on Full Tilt as well. There are also times where I don’t want to play 6 tables.

Still, there are going to be times where I do the exact same thing I have been doing. But by not going for the record I’m going to give myself more options, and I think this will improve my expectation. It’s somewhat depressing because I wanted the recognition but I’m going to try to get recognized in another way: By moving up the ladder of stakes and sitting with the best players in the world.