Heads-up Play

heads up play can be an easy way to make money on online poker. The key to winning heads up is playing aggressive and confident but not stupid. playing stupid and making dumb calls will lose you the game before you get a chance. Pre flop raising isnt as big of a threat in heads up but can be an easy way to steal the blinds. also remember that only 2 people are playing so the quality of your starting hands is always better than normal. starting at the lowest limits, play heads up matches until you have 10x the next limit(ie. play the $5.25 game until you make $105 and then move up to the $10.50 tourneys) my final tip is to keep a list of "fish" on your buddy list. If you completely slaughter someone in a head up match, add them to your list so next time you see them at a table, heads up or not, you can play again. after a while, you will have enough fish to always find an easy game.

anyone playing at The Fishtank and that wants a "fish list", reply or pm me. the buddy list feature is down right now but i have a list of fish from every heads up limit available.

I agree that being aggressive is the way to win heads up competitions. It will take a long time to get 10x your buyins from them though because some monster hands that may be flopped and you have no way of knowing that they flopped them. Bad beats are also very common in heads up, so even if you get the right read on your opponent, you couldquite frankly get outdrawn.

The best way overall to win at heads up matches are by frequently raising your opponent preflop (but not every hand or you will not be able to keep buying the blinds), and giving yourself an "all in call" mark. My theory of an all in call mark is where you decide you will take the chance of calling your opponents all in no matter what cards you are holding and hope to get the cards to fall your way. Once you have decided on a limit for you mark (say 2100 and your opponent has 900) then bring them all in until they call. If you lose, keep on takikng blinds and muscling over your opponent until you get to that mark, then bring them all in again...you will end up winning the all in eventually. May good flops fall in your favor.
Yappy.