In the Money

Heads-up Play

From In The Money: Strategies for Winning Texas Hold'em Cash Games
by Antonio "the Magician" Esfandiari

Heads-up play is greatly different from full-ring games or even shorthanded games. If you are just starting out, you may be wondering why you even need to know how to play heads-up. Certainly, if you are playing cash games in a casino,you are almost never likely to be playing heads-up. It is too expensive for casinos to spread such games.With the popularity of poker, it does not make sense for a cardroom to use a table and a dealer on just two players.

Having said that, I would urge every player no matter what his or her level of experience to rack up some hours playing heads-up. There are a number of reasons for doing this. First, if you play tournaments, you will eventually find yourself in a heads-up situation. Even if you are not that experienced, there are so many single-table sit-and-go tournaments offered now—both online and in casinos—that you will inevitably find yourself in a heads-up situation. Next, heads-up play is gaining in popularity. Any aspiring poker player should have a well-rounded game so that he is prepared for any new challenge. There have been many well-publicized heads-up cash games in recent years. In addition, the Golden Nugget held the first ever National Heads-Up Poker Championship featuring 64 of the best poker players in the world in a single-elimination format. I reached the final 4 in that event, and I can attribute that success to my early poker playing experience.

That brings us to the last and most critical reason for playing heads-up poker. It is a great way to gain a lot of experience in a short period of time. Whether you are just starting out or trying to get your game to the next level, playing heads-up offers you a great opportunity to improve your game. You really learn the value of hands. As we will learn shortly, you will be playing a great variety of starting hands. You will see a lot of flops, and you will learn how tough it is to make really strong hands no matter what you are holding in your hand.

When you are playing heads-up, you are totally focused on one opponent. You are forced to study his every move and mannerism. The game becomes much more about your read of your opponent than your cards. Since it will be difficult for either one of you to make hands consistently, the player who can better read his opponent will be the winner in the long run. This is tremendous practice if you aspire to be a No Limit Hold ’Em player.

There is so much maneuvering and finesse in no-limit play even in a full-ring game. Heads-up play is all maneuvering and finesse. It is an ideal training ground. If you want to survive, you will quickly learn to implement more of your game than just playing your cards. If you only play your strong hands, you will not win too many hands. You will have to know when your opponent is weak and vulnerable. You will have to know what your opponent thinks of you. You will have to learn how and when to fight back when attacked. You will have to know when to push on the gas and when to throttle back. You will have to know when to trap and when to force out. You will have to know when to check, fold, and avoid traps. In short, you will have to constantly be sizing up your opponent and outmaneuvering him. Once you develop these skills, you will be a force to be reckoned with at any Hold ’Em table.

Now that we know why heads-up play is worthwhile, let’s talk about some of the specific strategies relevant to heads-up play. The first thing to remember is that starting-hand requirements go out the window. Almost any hand is playable for the right price. Aggressiveness takes on added importance. Reading your opponent is critical. The one constant between heads-up play and full-ring games is that position is still paramount. In a full-table game, the best way to make money is to fold. Inexperienced players tend to play way too many hands. When you are heads-up, though, folding is the best way to go broke.

If you have the button, you should almost never fold preflop. Since you are going to have position throughout the postflop betting rounds, you do not want to surrender that advantage easily. Think of heads-up play like a tennis match. When you have position, you want to hold serve. If you can consistently hold serve and break your opponent’s serve periodically, you will do fine. You want to be aggressive when you have position, but not stupid. Your primary focus should be on your opponent. You need to know how strong or weak he is in order to play properly.

If he is weak, you can be aggressive no matter what you are holding. In fact, I would suggest that you do bet aggressively no matter what you are holding in that situation. If you consistently do this, it will make it very difficult for your opponent to know what you have. If you think he is strong, then you have to slow down in order to avoid being trapped.

When you are playing heads-up, any pair is a strong hand. If you flop bottom pair, don’t think, “Oh no,” but rather “How sweet.” It’s hard to make a pair, and you probably have the best hand. Let me give you an example of how powerful a pair can be. I was playing in a $20–$40 heads-up no-limit game. My opponent had about $12K in front of him, and I had him covered. I was on the button with 5-7 of hearts and raised to $140. He called. The flop came 2-5-8 with two spades. He bet $250.What should I do here? Folding was not even an option with middle pair in this situation. So my choices were to call or raise. What would raising accomplish here? Well, maybe he was on a stonecold bluff with a hand like Q-J, and I could prevent him from drawing out on me. What if he had two spades, though? He was certainly not going to fold a flush draw because our stacks are too big. So I did not want to make the pot any bigger with second pair if he’s on a flush draw. Plus, what if he reraised? I would probably have to give up on the pot. I really could not see any value in raising in this situation.Now if I had nothing, it might be correct to raise,but since I had something, I thought it was just as correct to call. So I did.

The turn peeled off the 10h. He fired $900 at the pot right away. Then it was time for the think tank. What hand could he have there? If he really had the top pair he tried to represent on the flop, why would he bet so much on the turn? Shouldn’t the overcard scare him a little bit? So I thought that took his having an 8 in his hand out of the question. Could he have hit the 10? Maybe he bluffed at the pot with J-10 and got there? Maybe he flopped a set? Most people have a tendency to check when they flop a set, so I took that out of the equation. In the final analysis, I thought it was most likely he was on a draw with a slight chance that he hit the 10.

Knowing that, what was my move here? Even though I was fairly certain he was on a draw, was there any value in raising? What if I raised and he moved in on me? Did I really want to call off a monster pot with third pair? What if he is stone-cold bluffing? Do I want to shut him down and prevent him from firing at me again on the river? Again, I think the right play here was just calling. If he was on a draw and got there, well, that’s poker, and sometimes that is just the way it has to go down. If he did not get there, then the advantages to me were huge, and I thought that more than made up for the fact that I was letting him draw.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the theory of this hand. If he had a hand like 6s-7s and I raised him, he could very well have moved in on me, or at a minimum called to see the river, considering he had a ton of outs. The last thing I wanted to do is open the door for him to move in on me and prevent me from seeing the hand to the river. This is a critical difference between limit and no-limit play. There will be times in no-limit play when you are sure you have the best hand, yet you do not want to raise and allow your opponent to reraise and shut you out. Now what if I had raised here and was wrong in my read and my opponent really had a set, but I was so sure in my read that he had a draw that I called that all-in bet. I would have been drawing dead. Yet if I just called the turn and the river, I would have saved myself $8k.

So, all things considered, I called the turn bet. The river brought the Qd. The final board was 2-5-8-10-Q, with no flush on board. There was an outside chance at a straight if he was playing J-9. My opponent bet out $2,500. Once again, I visited the think tank. He definitely did not have the 8 he represented on the flop, because he clearly would not bet that much with third pair. I was also fairly certain that he did not have the 10, because again I did not think he would bet that much with an overcard now on board. So what were his likely hands?

He either flopped a set, made some kind of funky two pair, hit a queen on the river, or was on some sort of draw. Of all of those, I still felt most confident that he was on a draw and missed. I decided to go with my gut and called the bet with fourth pair. I still thought my fives were good. “Good call,”he said. I never did see his hand, but obviously he was drawing to a straight or a flush and missed. By calling on the turn rather than raising, I gave him another opportunity to bluff at the pot instead of risking the possible reraise on the turn.

Remember that in heads-up play, any pair is huge. You want to play every hand if you can. Put your opponent on the defensive. Always keep him guessing and never give up. Fire, fire, fire. Keep firing at him, and you’ll force him to take a stand when you have a strong hand. Build it and take it. Build it before the flop and take it after the flop. Remember, making a hand is hard.

So now that we know why and how you should play heads-up, where can you get heads-up experience? As I mentioned before, brick-and-mortar cardrooms are not going to offer heads-up cash games. Most online sites, however, will offer heads-up games ranging in price from play money to very high blinds. Anyone can find a game to suit his or her price range. However, playing online does limit your ability to read your opponents, which is one of the critical reasons for playing heads up. I would suggest that you arrange as many heads-up matches with poker-playing buddies as you can. These do not have to be expensive matches.

Be creative. Play for things other than money. When I was just starting out, I would play my roommates to see who would take out the garbage or do the dishes or vacuum the apartment or any other chore that needed to be done. With just that much at stake, we would play for hours on end in real grudge matches, fighting for every chip. Try it, and I guarantee you will never regret it.

Always remember that the strategies and starting-hand requirements for heads-up play are greatly different from a full table game. Learn what you can from heads-up play, but do not forget to switch gears when you head back to a full-table game.