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Heads up play.
Hi folks.I've been posting here and there for a wee while now and have deffo noticed an improvement of sorts in my game.However,I really like the heads up side of things and I was just wondering if any major changes need to be made to compete successfully at this form of the game?Any responses would be much appreciated.
Comments
The biggest change you need to make for heads-up play is to widen your starting hand range. On six, nine or ten handed tables you would never dream of opening the betting with 63 or 24 but its perfectly acceptable in heads-up play. The fact is you can't just sit around and wait for big hands or you'll simply be blinded away. Your opponent will know that since you raise so infrequently that you must have a hand any time that you do, so he'll easily fold. The rest of the time he'll just be able to bully you.
Hand selection is more important in the big blind than on the button. On the button you should be willing to open with absolutely any hand. In fact, it's so important to be aggressive from the button that I would advocate raising every hand on the button. This is the perfect way to balance your range and your opponent will never be able to see a free flop against you. He's much more likely to have a weak hand than a strong hand, so raising every single time will force him to do one of three things:
1) Fold to your raise. - You'll take down the blinds without any fuss.
2) Call and play a flop, out of position with his weak hand.
3) 3-bet with his weak hand and risk being 4-bet out of the hand or being called and having to play a big pot, out of position with a weak hand.
All those results will be good for you in the long-term. (Depending on if you're able to play well through the streets)
It's a good idea to make your bets smaller in heads-up play than you might do when multi-handed. Remember that when you open from the button in multi-handed play, you have two players to get your bet through and that's the reason why you might make your raise a little bigger. In heads-up play you only have one opponent to get your bet through and in fact you will frequently want them to call to allow you to play flops in position against them. My raise from the button is almost always a minimum raise. You want to give yourself as many bullets as possible and you'll have weak hands more often than strong ones so you want to make your bluffs as cheap as possible. Your bets through the streets should generally fit a pattern of being around half the pot, too. This will again allow you to make your bluffs cheaper, as long as you bet the same with your strong hands. It's important to never bet much less than half of the pot, though, as this will be perceived as weakness.
From the Big Blind your starting range does matter, at least a little. It's best to give up all the total junk like 72, 83, etc. but you should be playing any hands that have reasonable drawing potential. So hands like suited-one or two-gappers, unsuited connectors, two high cards and any pocket pair are going to be in your range. Remember that if your opponent is opening the button with any two cards - as we've suggested they may be - then the average hand is Q7. This means that anything better than Q7 is beating their range. As I say, aggression is very important in heads-up play, so we need to be able to 3-bet from the Big Blind. Given that, in order to get used to 3-betting, I'd suggest 3-betting from the Big Blind with any hand like J9, Q9 and better, any Ace or King, any pocket pair and certainly any premium hand. This will mean 3-betting between a quarter and a third of the time. With hands like suited connectors, one-gappers, etc. we want to be able to see the flop, so a call is reasonable...
Heads-up play is all about the meta-game. That means that the play is going to be driven as much by what has happened in previous hands as it is by the facts of the hand at the moment. The meta-game is basically every part of the game that isn't a solid, quantifiable element like how many chips you each have, your position, the size of the pot, pot odds, etc... So your image, your view of your opponent's tendencies, how aggressive you've seen him be, timing tells and things like this are the meta-game and they're more important in heads-up than in any other format of the game. Learning to perceive these things correctly is going to come with experience: Which opponents are 3-betting with only strong hands, which are 3-betting with a wide range, which are calling to disguise their big hands, etc...
It's very difficult to give a guide to playing after the flop. Pre-flop, it's a pretty simple game most of the time but after the flop is when the skill comes into the game. You'll have to incorporate alot of tricky plays into your game for later streets as well as learning how to gain maximum value from different types of players.
1) Open up your starting hand range.
2) Be aggressive in position.
3) Keep your bets relatively small.
4) 3-bet with a relatively wide range.
5) Pay attention to your opponent's tedencies.
Method is sound but is just bad and pointless unless we stick to the golden rules. We still need to know why we are betting and why we bet the amounts we do, in line with projecting a range.
More importantly than anything in HU (IMO) is to make our range completely unreadable, which is easlily accomplished by maintaining a perma aggro approach. Combined with having a sound feel for oppos tendancies.
Glanced over borinlosers post and agree very much with scaled down bet size. Could type pages and pages on this but like everything, it comes with experience. As soon as you find out where your edges lie and become comfortable playing a non hand dependant game you feel it click..then you look for more edges
If there is no edge vs oppo, dont play