Poker Playing Strategies – Heads up Play
Poker is always exciting, but when a tournament or a table gets down to just two players, the excitement level goes up. Heads up play is probably the most fun part of a poker game and most exciting to watch. Anything can happen, the bets get higher and more aggressive and all it takes is an all in and a call to be looking at the winner. However, with all the excitement you can’t lose your head if you’re playing. You need to keep a strategy in mind for how you are going to play.
In heads up play you have to be more aggressive, possibly even super aggressive if the blinds are very small in comparison to your stack. If the blinds are only at 5% of your chip stack then you should be calling the big blind on almost any hand to at least see the flop. On the other hand if the blinds are very high in comparison to your chip stack then you also have to act very fast and find a hand you can go all in with or at least win some chips, because there is nothing worse then letting blinds eat away at your stack until you have nothing.
It is important to know how to play heads up because a few years ago not many people understood how to play heads up since they only would get the chance if they got to the end of a large tournament. But now there are one table tournaments and sit and go’s which means everyone gets to play some heads up at one time or another so you better know what you’re doing. Also, heads up poker is looking to be the next craze in poker. We are beginning to see heads up tournaments setup in a winner moves on loser goes home fashion. NBC even premiered its national heads up tournament from the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. This is why it is more important than ever before to know how to play heads up.
As everyone knows when it comes to starting hands in heads up play the requirements to play with are very small. The average hand in heads up play is J-7 off suit. This means if you are looking at a J-7 off suit you have a 50% chance of having the best hand pre flop. If you have K-6, Q-9, or A-3 you are ahead of the game and chances are you have the best hand so you can feel free to call or raise a little bit.
Along with those hands being decent starting hands there are also mega hands that you can feel confident in raising big or even going all in with. You have a monster hand if you hold an A, any pocket pair, or other hands like K-Q and Q-J suited. This means there are a total of 27 hands that you should feel confident enough to raise with.
Some hands that don’t do well in heads up play however are small pocket pairs and small connectors. These hands are usually good in poker because in a ten hand game you can sometimes catch a straight or flush on the river, but in heads up play a good opponent won’t let you get to the river, because they’ll be betting to aggressively to force you to fold.
It is very important in heads up play to be aggressive and one of the most important areas for you to be aggressive in is in small unimportant pots. In heads up play players tend to wait for their big pocket pair or miracle flop, but what is important is to win all the small unimportant pots or blinds in between because if your opponent does get their pocket aces against your pocket kings at least you’ll have taken enough of their chips so they can’t do much damage to you.
Playing heads up is exciting and fun and if you have a chip lead it is often easy to chip bully yourself some pots, however you can’t lose your head over the excitement. You need to know your strategy and what kind of hands you are going to play with. Heads up play is becoming a very important part of the game and it is a good thing if you know how to play heads up well.
[tags]poker, poker strategy, poker articles[/tags]
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