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Server Time: 8/29/2008 9:02:48 PM PACIFIC |
 Help - I suck at heads up, jdavidk, 23. Jul 2003 13:15 | ||
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| I have been playing quite a bit at pokerschoolonline.com and have been doing rather well in the satelite tourneys (10 players) but every time it gets down to one on one at the end of the game I just suck! any advice? | ||
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| Re: Help - I suck at heads up, Mike812, 23. Jul 2003 13:18 | ||
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| I find that head to head battle is more of psychological battle. I usually mix it with playing a little bit of playing aggressive and conservative. I usually bluff alot and win some pots like that. But when I do get caught in a pot, I usually fold to let the other person know they caught me. My strategy is to get the other person to call me when I have a monster hand thinking I'm bluffing. There are many diff techniques, but that is just one of the ones I use | ||
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| Re: Help - I suck at heads up, Wren, 23. Jul 2003 13:40 | ||
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| David - listen to Mike - he's a killer heads up player! IMO, he outplayed me in the UPF tourney, but I ended up getting lucky :O) BTW I wrote a decent post on heads up play quite awhile back. I have it on my hard drive at home - I'll repost it when I get back from work. | ||
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| Re: Help - I suck at heads up, stdioh, 23. Jul 2003 13:47 | ||
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| Heads up play is more art than science. The most important aspects of it are adjusting your play to the style of your opponent and being able to change gears if your opponent is wise to you. You also want to make sure you aren't playing too tightly as you are paying a blind every hand. Most newish players who play a decent tournament and start to suck as it gets shorthanded or heads up tend to fold too easilly and are easy to bully out of their chips. | ||
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| Re: Help - I suck at heads up, jdavidk, 23. Jul 2003 14:51 | ||
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| on 23. Jul 2003 13:47 stdioh wrote: > Most newish players who play a decent > tournament and start to suck as it gets shorthanded or heads up tend to fold too > easilly and are easy to bully out of their chips. so it was YOU i was playing!! LOL That is exactly what happened today | ||
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| Re: Help - I suck at heads up, noiseboy, 23. Jul 2003 13:53 | ||
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| One thing to consider, is that if you are heads-up against someone who has more experience and is better heads-up than you, is to just play really aggressive in general. The way a good heads-up player will destroy you is by putting you on the defensive. If you don't allow that, then you have a fighting chance. There are some good articles on heads-up on pokerpages.com. | ||
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| Re: Help - I suck at heads up, Slate, 23. Jul 2003 14:08 | ||
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| Experience or Aggressive Players will steal your blinds. I was playing a live $50,000 tournament, it was my first BIG money tournament live and heads up. I went to the final table with 100,000 in chips and the next highest had 20k. It was a limit tournament. I have been to the final tables many times in NL but this was a High Stakes final table in a Limit Tournament and I have not met that combination too often in a live game. Anyway first payout was around 40k and 2nd dropped down to 20k. These was a big difference between the places. When the last 9 players were seated one guy said lets chop. I of course said no because I had mega chips. Anyway it got down to 2 of us and my chip stack had dwindled to equal his. I was so worried about my placing I was playing super super tight and getting my blinds stolen. 4000-8000 blinds it adds up quick. Turns out this guy kept betting every hand and I would fold. When I had good cards I went up and sometimes I won and others I lost. Finally my chips were gone and I got 2nd. What did I learn? 1 - Dob't get too involved with trying to limp to the finish. 2 - This guy bet every hand. There is no way he is getting good cards every hand. 3 - Heads up you sometimes have to play marginal hands and take a stand and see what happens. 4 - Be aggressive and study the player. I can safely say that was the last time that happened to me. But I take it all in stride. If I learned something from it than I am happy regardless of my placing. | ||
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| Re: Help - I suck at heads up, Machinegun68, 23. Jul 2003 14:24 | ||
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| I am a beginner, but I've been doing pretty well heads-up recently. If it's a reasonable player and not an absolute maniac, it's much easier. I usually play tight/very aggressive and I found this strategy does not work as well heads-up as it does short-handed. What I do is ratchet everything up a notch. I will raise ALOT pre-flop, not only with good cards like I do normally but also with more questionable cards (medium suited connectors, low pocket pairs, even something like JTo). If it is No Limit I will go all-in a lot. I basically take my very aggressive play and ratchet it up to hyper-mega-ultra-aggressive. I find I can bully the other guy out of the pot a lot of the times. However its quite risky! Heads-up basically just takes a large pair of stones. I also will ratchet my very tight play up to somewhat loose. You simply cannot let the other guy steal blinds consistently. (However, you want to try to steal his blind by raising pre-flop as much as humanly possible.) Like somebody else said, Heads-up is essentially a psychological game. It helps a lot if you know you opponent well and he can't really read you (as is the situation in my home game when I go heads-up- I actually prefer heads-up if I have a big advantage. It keeps other loose players from consistently sucking out on you.) Be TELL-LESS. Always, always, try to keep the other guy reeling and on the defensive. Exude an air of confidence. Raise for all kinds of reasons. If you want to call, raise. If you want to fold, call. I would only fold something like 72o or 83o if I was in the small blind and was raised pre-flop. Maybe this is too loose? Like I said, I am a newbie but these tactics have worked very well for me Heads-up. Let me know if any of this is crazy policy and I'm just getting lucky! Thanks. | ||
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| Re: Help - I suck at heads up, Risky Business, 23. Jul 2003 14:52 | ||
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| You have to be comfortable lying through your teeth, comfortable with losing a few cheques when you get called on it, and most importantly, comfortable with doing it again on the next hand. But the other posters have summed up a lot of info for you. | ||
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| Re: Help - I suck at heads up, Machinegun68, 23. Jul 2003 21:38 | ||
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| Woo-Ha! I just got back from playing in my weekly game, which ended up being heads-up, me against a semi-loose player, $1/$2 (we wanted to keep it friendly being heads-up and all). We both bought in for $40. Tense, all-night session of folding and blind stealing, right? WRONG. Game over in 45 minutes. I pocket $80, a seriously large win for me. I used the strategy outlined in my previous post and ended up winning big. The other guy won a total of 4 hands: 3 times I was in the SB and folded to him (which pissed him off of course), and once he legitimately beat me with Queens when I missed a nut flush draw and attempted to bluff (don't do it often, but it works usually because I have cultivated a tight image.) ***I was just getting cards though. Sometimes this is the only key to heads-up play- who has the cards? I got the following hands in just 45 minutes of play (I'm guessing we played maybe 20-25 hands, if that) AA, A9d, A3c, KQh, QJs, KTo, JTs, TT, 77, 55, 56s I also got K6o and K2o in the Big Blind and won large pots with those (I know they're garbage hands though) This kind of run has to be just pure luck. Pocket Aces alone- a 220-1 hand in just 20 or so hands! I raised before the flop, then slowplayed them of course on the flop after seeing K-6-Q rainbow and made him fold a huge pot on the river. And all the high suited cards! And he had absolutely nothing. He actually folded in the small blind several times, and folded when raised pre-flop a couple of times, both something which I had never before seen out of him. Loose-Ultra-Aggressive especially works when you get or flop the nuts every time! :-P Thanks for letting a beginner brag about his dubiously "skillful" heads up play!!! :-) | ||
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| Re: Help - I suck at heads up, NiceFella, 24. Jul 2003 13:32 | ||
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| Heads-up play has some interesting odds situations you must learn. Before either player has acted, there are 1.5 small bets in the pot. To open with a raise requires 1.5 small bets -- thus the raiser is getting 1:1 odds, so if you fold more than 50% of the time, the raiser is making a profit just by raising every hand. I have beaten many novices with this simple play style. Therefore you MUST call with the better 50% of all hands, and occasionally reraise. Likewise, realize that if you are first to act, your opponent will be holding any two random junk cards, and if you have one of the better 50% of all starting hands, it is correct for you to open with a raise simply because you probably have a better hand. Learn these top hands. If you are holding any ace, any king, a queen or jack with a decent kicker, a connector 98 or better, or any pair, then you are ahead of the game with a hand that wins a heads-up showdown 51% of the time or more. These hands are worth playing, and you must play aggressively. Note that being suited is practically irrelevant when heads-up. You're not trying to draw to a flush or straight. These are rare miracles for which the pot odds are never there. Your goal for your hand is a high card or a pair. Either player has about a 1/3 chance to catch a pair on the flop -- not top pair, not a pair with good kicker, just any pair at all. Note that if there was a raise preflop (as there often will be), there will be 4 small bets in the pot. So a bet on the flop pays 4:1 if your opponent folds -- and 2/3 of the time your opponent will have no pair! So again, correct strategy would be to bet out on the flop with literally anything, putting pressure on your opponent to have a hand or fold. When heads-up, constant aggression works not only because it's intimidating, but also because it is usually mathematically correct. You must constantly be putting pressure on your opponent to make a hand or fold. If your opponent is too tight, just betting and raising at every opportunity is not far off from correct play. | ||
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