Scottishben's heads up guide

Scottishben’s heads up guide

Many players have asked for a heads up guide. I am not the best heads up players in the world but in heads up matches I win about 75% and have a decent record if I reach heads up situations in sng’s. This guide is written from the point of view of a head up match where the blinds start real low and don’t force any action. It will be less relevant if you are talking heads up after a biggish tourney as the blinds will probably force the action a lot sooner.

There are 2 main stages of a heads up hand

1) preflop betting to 1st reraise on the flop
2) rest of the betting on the flop, turn and river

in the first stage it is not particularly important what cards you hold. You could actually make a profit never even looking at your cards. Now don’t get this wrong you are not going top want to fold AA or KK preflop but you can often bet on hands like 27os. You are looking to steal blinds but not to any great extent as the blinds are not really worth anything at this stage. Your main game is trying to exploit betting tendencies. If your opponent calls a moderate bet pre-flop with little then make him suffer from that when you have something. If he folds to moderate bets then do smaller bets/call when you want action and routinely bet on little. You should be prepared to fold plenty preflop if you feel that he is willing to invest plenty chips post flop or call biggish bets with little preflop as that way you will probably have much better hands when decent amounts of money are risked. That deals with standard bets but what about big bets…. Generally speaking I will fold these if I don’t have a monster AA, KK simply because I reckon that I will win games 75% of the time and calling such a bet where it could easily be 50/50 (eg AKs v 22 or JJ v AQ) makes that average pretty difficult. If you feel you are outclassed by your opponent then this kind of play is much more acceptable.

There is a rhythm to heads up preflop, get into the rhythm and exploit it. If you are not getting the rhythm you are acting in ignorance which is never where you want to be. Watch for subtle changes and adapt if need be.

OK on the flop. Some players will fold if they don’t have anything. These players are easy to exploit so long as you don’t make what you are doing (generally betting with nothing) too obvious. If you feel that they have a hand and you are making a good profit stealing pots with bets on the flop then you should often fold or just call bets sometimes even when you hold top pair. If you are up against someone who normally bets on the flop then there is some margin in check-raising or even slow-playing. It is important to remember that you will often not be making that many chips just by stealing the pot though so don’t get too excited. Even if your opponent bets, say on a flop of A84rainbow a re-raise with nothing is an excellent play as often your opponent doesn’t actually hold the cards and sometimes will even fold a paired A if they don’t lick their kicker. A re-raise will make them more cautious of betting on nothing in the future and will win you a decent number of chips. I prefer doing this kind of play when I have something to chase however. That way if their Ax just calls me (worried I have a better kicker but not about to fold the hand) there is a chance of me catching something that will win me the hand if they don’t fold. Something like if I hold 2s5s in the hand given if there is a spade on the board. That way if a 4 comes I have a straight and if 2 spade come I have a flush.

I would finally say that slow playing on something small like top pair that can be outdrawn is much more viable as a play than in a normal game. This is for 3 reasons 1) there is a much bigger margin of hands that they would play and on many of these hands there will sometimes be fewer ways for them to outdraw you 2)they often wont read you as having the hand that you do so will often call. Similarly they are more likely to bet on nothing “representing a hand” 3) it has psychological effects which can be exploited e.g. stopping them betting on nothing on the flop etc.

Anything after this and you really need to look at your cards. If you are making a solid profit in section 1 then you don’t want to get too involved in section 2. Reads that you can exploit against a player when there are others in the pot normally hold true in heads up. If there is something that you can exploit BIG then engineer hands to get to that possibility. Something like someone has difficultly folding top pair etc or will risk all his chips when he has the bottom straight when there are both higher straights and flushes on the board. If you are not making a big profit on section 1 then you have to be a little more involved. This can mean creative but really slowly eating away at your opponent’s chips is a better way to go if you can.

Beware of betting too much with less than the nuts. If there is a possible straight and you only have top pair or even 3 of a kind try not to be too much. Call rather than reraise on the river. That way if you are beaten you wont lose big. Sometimes you can rely on reads and bet big anyway – sometimes you will call them when they represent a straight in the believe that they don’t have it but capping hands when there is a moderate chance of being beaten is how you win heads up tourneys.

If you are up against someone doing a lot of heavy betting then you may have to take a stand against them. Depending on the blinds and the size of their bets will depend on what you need to make a stand. If you are good you want to avoid anything near 50/50.

When the chip stacks are unequal then the nature of the game changes. If the blinds are reasonably low then anything over 1/3 or your opponents stack and you don’t need to worry, it might affect marginal decisions, you wont have the chips to advertise to set up big pots or to chase on certain hands but you can more or less play the same way. If you get less than 1/3 of your opponents chips then they have you against the ropes. Thus you want to try real hard to avoid this position. If you get into this position you will often have to make a stand on a particular hand. Fortunately you will often be called but you can find yourself going out 40% of the time and if you win having the same amount of chips as your opponent. How you play here depends on how your opponent is playing but it will be a struggle for you to get back in it.

When the blinds are getting higher you need to get more aggressive. Often in sng’s when you get to heads up you are up against someone who plays a tight game and cannot change pace for heads up and aggressive play will win the match for you without you having to get clever or anything. If they catch a few monsters (AA, trips on the flop etc) then you might lose the odd game but normally you will win easily. Occasionally your opponents will be able to change their pace or will have got where they are through aggressive play. If the blinds are still low you can play tight and kill them with a hand but if the blinds are high you cannot concede many pots to them and may have to settle for a showdown where you only have a small edge eg a2 v kqs or something like that or a low boarded pair v a good draw. As the blinds get higher you need to start making more and more hands “fatal hands” ( hands that if called will lead to someone being knocked out). This is particularly true if you are short staked. When you are short stacked and the blinds are high then if you play a hand you have to be willing to risk all your chips in it!

If the blinds are high and you are about even staked then you probably want to avoid actually playing many hands on the flop as the pots will be hard to fold. Similarly you have to be more wary of playing trash if you think you will get called. Focus on the rhythms of the game and if you are gaining chips carry on with what you are doing, otherwise start betting big and forcing action.

It should be stressed that heads up is completely different from other poker. You need to approach it the same way you would approach playing tennis after playing badminton - it is that different.

Very good guide but.... I HATE YOU i was just writing up a heads up guide of my own! Dammit, i shuld of done it last night. I spose i could still publish it but yours has most of the important stuff in it.

If i were another memebr of the forum i would not read this beccaus i beat him in heads up remember? so i am the better player! :P gotta use my bragging rites as often as possible sorry bro

It is a good guite featureing all that you really need to know about palying heads up. With heads up you really have to manipulate your opponent too win. as soon as you can crack their betting/bluffing atterns they are yours for the taking.

I couldn't agree more on this. I'd say it's all about rhythm post flop too though. You wind up seeing so many of each other's decisions (pre and post) in such a short amount of time that you both end up detecting those minor variations in the timing of bets and checks, which can reveal a lot.

I played my first couple of heads-up sng's the other day, and was on both ends of the spectrum. One game I would have his rhythm down and be all over him, and the next game my opponent would always know when to put me in a rough spot, or would always know when I had trash that I didn't want to play.

And even though I broke even, I knew I needed some work maintaining my rhythm in situations, and needed to work on when to break rhythm too.

Learning to anticipate the cards more is one thing I'm definitely going to work on before the next one I play. Sometimes tricky flops or really good hole cards (after looking at garbage for umpteen straight hands) would throw my timing off. And that really shouldn't be happening unless of course you intended to.

But with hands coming at you at much faster, it aint so easy to constantly stay on top of all the possibilities.

Excellent guide btw.