I actually tried playing the HU games on FTP to build my roll up after I had to withdraw a significant amount. I started with $200 and played the $10 HU SNGs and had a winrate of about 70%. I only played 1 at a time and eventually worked my way up to playing the $20, $30, $50 and $100 games. I timed about 100 of them at various levels and found that it took about 16 minutes per HU match at FTP. Also I noticed a decrease in winrates as I went up in levels, but I was still able to sustain a 60%+ winrate over all levels. I played about 200 in total and grew my roll from $200 to $2,000 in a matter of 2-3 weeks (mixing in some 9 player SNGs and MTTs as well). I think it's a great way to turn a small roll into a big one with little risk for anyone who's fairly skilled in HU situations. I'd recomend HoH 2 for anyone who does this as it will improve your game tenfold.

As for $/hr, my numbers came out to about the same as yours playing $50 HU sngs, one table at a time. I had a journal which documented my progress, I initally wanted to play 1,000 matches but i've moved on to trying different things so I stopped at about 200. Here's the link: .

I think HU play is a good roll builder and it will improve your pokerskills a lot, but once you reach a certain stage unless you can 2-3 table the $100 and $200 games then there's more money to be made playing ring games and full-table SNGs, considering that at the higher stakes your opponents HU will be a lot more skilled too and anything more than a 55% - 60% winrate is optimistic at best.

Thanx godlike - that is very interesting.

One other great reason for a newbie to start with HU play is that when you move to 9-10 player SnG's your ROI will really feel the benefit of your knowledge when you get down to the last two..

as for HoH2, I am ordering it, but am a bit worried that it will jinx me

I used to play ALOT of turbo HU SNG's on UB. I don't have any numbers because I lost everything when my computer crashed, but I was somewhere around 70% win% through ~150 at the $20 and $30 level. After reading this thread I went and played 5 straight at the $10 level and won all 5. Maybe I'll try playing more of these. A few things I'd like to add though: It's very easy to lose 5 or 6 of these in a row. The swings are pretty big, for me at least. Because of this, the tilt factor is big. There's nothing worse than playing the first two rounds of one, and saying to yourself "I HOPE I don't lose to this guy, he is the biggest fish I've ever seen", only to end up losing, and then being refused a rematch. The last time I played alot of these I would just plug away and play maybe 20 or 30 in a day regardless of how it was going. I'm going to limit myself to no more than 5 in one day this time around.

Seems like a slow way to build roll to me, but I've never tried it. I am pretty good HU, but I just don't play it much, except for the end of SnGs.

Although I once won a $20 128-man HU tourney on Stars. (forgive my bragging, its biggest tourney I have ever taken down)

I play a lot of limit heads up on poker.com and pacific. It is a great way to build the roll if you can play it. Altho like anything else it amazes me that people will call you down to the river with nothing more than an overcard and a gut shot. But I guess it's those guys who make it all profitable.