And just to clarify...

While it's on my mind I thought I'd clarify a couple of points about posts I've made.

First of all the warm up warm down and note taking. The idea is very solid and growing on me quickly. The warm up is something I've really neglected in the past. I would fire up tables, and inevitably, be down half a buyin without any real need. Or I'd be up quickly, then drop it all. Because basically I just wander straight into a situation without properly preparing my mind for it. Setting goals, getting a notepad ready, setting out a game plan is all 5-10 minutes worth of work, but in the end takes away the guesswork behind how the first 10 minutes will play. Lets think about HU SNG turbos. If you played 10 in a night, and the first 2 you aren't really mentally prepared for, that might be enough to cause your EV to go from 10% to 0% for the night.

The notetaking is the next step, and achieves a few things. Firstly, you should write down a spot, whether it's common or one off where you are unsure how to approach it. So someone is betting full pot of every river with any hand, write it down. A tight player overshoves a dry board when you have top pair, write it down. Firstly, it motivates your mind to keep ticking over. If you haven't written anything for a while, are you really paying a lot of attention still? Then it also gives you some concrete things to review later.

Finally, the warm down. Firstly, look at your warm up notes, see if you did what you wanted for the session. Easy enough. Then look at your in game notes, and give them some deep thought. You don't have time to properly analyse while playing, so use the warm down to really think about and write out the answers or assumptions etc. If you aren't clear about it, ask a poker friend or post to a forum. This should be really strong for building your game. Now review any big hands, or tough spots and again put a plan together for how to handle those in the future, or post them to a forum. Finally, let it go. This is your dedicated time for thinking hard about the game, so do that and then close your mind off to poker. Don't spend work time/girlfriend/wife/sport/etc time worrying about a hand you played earlier.

So pretty happy to have these things as part of my game.

Finally, about the HU SNG's. Before I've gone pretty gun happy, 3 betting a lot, raising a lot, bluffing a lot. My game plan was to get it in against a weaker hand due to their frustration, but I think I'd be fairly neutral EV with these plays (like A9o would be against A5/AJ/33/QQ) and against some opponents, I'd close off being able to win this way. This is because they would patiently wait to get a hand, and then just call my shoves. Now, I'm taking much more the thinking approach. I think it does come down to a general weakness poker players, and especially HU players have. You want things now. So if someone is patiently wearing you down, you start changing your game to get it ended quickly. I've noticed a lot the last few days on Pokerstars that some players just do something completely stupid once they lose patience. Like I lost a few chips early to a decent player, then tricked him into bluffing against my flopped set. At this point I was only about 1.9K to 1.1K, with relatively low blinds, but he starts shoving every hand. I wait about 3 and get it in with A9 vs T7 or something. The point is this guy was playing solid aggressive poker, and was difficult to read, once one thing went wrong he gave up and hoped to win a coin flip. gg.

I think playing this way will see me build up my bankroll quicker than any other method at the lower stakes, then I'll have to either become a very solid player at the mid stakes HU SNG's ($55+), or move over to 6 max or HU cash again. But basically I'm setting myself the goal of reaching $3K bankroll again, then deciding what my future is from there. It will probably be starting at low stakes HU SNG's (20+ BI rule) and assessing what I play once I have around $1.5K. This could be a while, but I'm willing to put in the work, and honestly think crushing low limits HU SNG's will be quite easy.