Heads up hand advice if any

waller03

Last night was heads up in the £3k bounty hunter. I had a 2-1 chip lead and after some tightish play i got shoved on holding Q 10o. I called and flop came Qs 8c 10h..turn 4c river 9c and lost to the nut flush with the other player holding A7c and then bust out in 2nd with A5 all in against 33. Was i right to call with the Q 10 or should i have waited for a better spot? Needless to say after the flop i was gutted after the runner runner.

BorinLoner

It's not really great, to be honest. The best way to play heads-up is to win small pots and gradually wear your opponent down.

You don't give us much information on how it's been playing, so it's really hard to give sound advice on how you should have played. However, risking the call with QT is far too hopeful. You're only ahead of the average hand by a small margin and he figures to have a narrower shoving range than simply any two random cards. If you have the chip lead, why give him an easy double-up?

When you make this call you're very rarely going to be ahead and you're hoping to get lucky. You're gambling.

waller03

In Response to Re: Heads up hand advice if any:

It's not really great, to be honest. The best way to play heads-up is to win small pots and gradually wear your opponent down. You don't give us much information on how it's been playing, so it's really hard to give sound advice on how you should have played. However, risking the call with QT is far too hopeful. You're only ahead of the average hand by a small margin and he figures to have a narrower shoving range than simply any two random cards. If you have the chip lead, why give him an easy double-up? When you make this call you're very rarely going to be ahead and you're hoping to get lucky. You're gambling.
Posted by BorinLoner

I was calling evey hand in the SB and he was raising pretty much all the time. Maybe down to tiredness i had enough and just called his shove as was sick of him stealing every pot. Perhaps if i called a hand earlier i might have been up against his 7 2o lol. I was still happy though and pretty much fell asleep on the sofa as soon as it ended. i went into the final table as the short stack so quite happy with the result either way. Next time a cup of coffee might be in order )

BorinLoner

There have been books written on heads-up play, so I can't give you a comprehensive strategy for every situation you'll face heads-up. The one thing I must tell you is that you should really raise every single time you have the button. Usually a min-raise is best but do it every time, regardless of your hand. Your heads-up game will improve immeasurably if you do that.

I've encountered plenty of people that shove every hand heads-up. Take it as a compliment, since it means they don't think they can outplay you. The best strategy is to stay aggressive when you're on the button and wait for a good hand to catch them out with. Against these players our ideas of "a good hand" have to be stretched a bit and could easily include KT, KJ, KQ and any Ace. Not usually any low pair, though, as we'll usually be racing with those unless we're really lucky and he shows J2 or something awful like that.