Poker one on one!
The cards, the chips, you and just one opponent to face. It doesn’t get any prettier than that.
When you ask different players what the “purest form of poker” is to them, the answers will be as diverse as the number of players answering. Some will say PLO, since you have to control the cards, the draws, the pot, … basically everything in the game.
Others will tell you beauty lies in tournaments with pressuring blinds. A single lonesome cowboy can be found in the camp of playing stakes so high nobody is untouched by a pot he or she looses.
For me: Poker doesn’t get any better than going eye to eye with a single foe.
For clarity’s purpose: we’re talking heads-up No Limit Texas Hold’Em here.
To me, this is the purest form of the game possible. There is no way to hide. It’s either do or die and with my bashing style I tend to do more than I die.
Unfortunately, I can’t really tell you how to play a heads-up match to perfection, since even more than a 9-handed game, playing heads-up asks a lot of adaptation from you. In general, meaning when you don’t come across a hand like Aces vs. Kings, the player winning the match is the one who adapted the first to his opponent.
This doesn’t necessarily mean playing tight when facing a loose player or aggressive when confronted with a rock, but more the one who can find and exploit the other guy’s weaknesses before his own are discovered. Best defence then off course is having no flaws. Since this is impossible, when playing heads-up, make a game-plan before every hand and stick to it as much as you possibly can. The trick here is anticipation. Most tells come out when a player is all of a sudden looking at a situation he did not prepare for. Therefore you should draw up a rough sketch of what you will do about every possible action your opponent could throw at you. This is something you should do in every game of poker, be it heads-up or 9-handed, but it’s just much easier when you only have 1 guy to worry about.
Although your different actions should be drawn from many styles and options in your arsenal, they all can be basically divided into 3 large groups:
1) You have decided pre-flop that you really want this hand. This could be because you want to turn momentum on the other guy after he picked up a lot of smaller pots or because you notice that your opponent is starting to get frustrated with always leaving you with the money and you think that this extra pot will really push him into the red.
What you do here is get a big hand, if it’s not a monster, it doesn’t apply to this category. This is actually the only time during a heads-up game that you should rely on your pre-flop monsters. Can you pick up the pot now? All the better, money is not the issue here, it’s showing that when you want a pot, you’ll get it. Nothing the other guy can do about it.
Should you get to a flop, then hope you hit it hard. If you do, the rest is pretty much self-explanatory.
Is the flop ugly? Re-assess your hand. Is it still worth it to try and pick this up? Do you have AQ with a king out? JJ with an ace on the board? Test if your opponent really wants this hand. If he does, make your big lay down and proclaim it, advertisement might not be what you came in this hand for, but it sure as hell does the trick.
Off course, holding AK to a 842 rainbow board should be worth the consideration that you still have the best hand, keep the rest of the pot small and try to get information from your opponent, reading his betting patterns or physical tells.
2) You hold a mediocre hand and you would like to see what the flop brings you. Once again, can you get your hands on the pot here, don’t hesitate and bash at the least bit of weakness you see your opponent show of, but besides that, the cheaper you can see a flop, the sooner you’ll know what you’re dealing with.
When the flop comes, there’s 4 possibilities:
a. You hit it and you hit it hard: depending on what you have been playing like, bet like you never bet before or slowplay, make sure you don’t make an anomaly your opponent could notice in your play. Have you always been “testing” these hands, then do so now. Have you always been waiting to see what the other guy does, slowplay.
b. You hit it, but only just. Testing the waters is always the way to go. Are you in first position: betting is always an option and from there on forth it’s a matter of assessing your opponent on how far he is. Are you in last position, definitely bet when it’s checked to you or call when the original bet is not too high. The turn will bring some solace on what to do.
c. You did not hit the flop and have a fairly solid impression that you still might have the highest card or your opponent shows weakness. Here it might be best to end this display right now. Bear two things in mind: first of all: if you bet, bet safe! No need in throwing away chips you could better use on a flop where you did hit and secondly: if your opponent is unwilling to let go, he either want it even more than you do or you made the misread. Leave now! Reraising the raise is hardly ever the safe play and should be dealt on with caution.
d. You did not hit the flop and have no hope on getting the pot. Check and leave at the least bit of aggression the other guy shows. No disgrace in letting one go once in a while, even if it did turn out you had the best hand after all.
3) You discover a monster in your hand and have no specific agenda currently running.
Playing it might resemble the first category, but is extremely different.
First of all because with this type of situation you want your benefit to be large.
Once again, this is a time to consider your own reputation. Are you tight? No problem, When you are a careful player, your opponent probably already adapted to it and wants to pick up a lot of uncontested pots. Make sure that by the time he realises you are in fact not trying to test the waters against his attempts, he already invested a lot of chips. The rest is again self-explanatory.
Are you an aggressive player? Again, no problem, just expect to be paid off on your big hand a little less often than your tight colleague does. You pick up more pots along the way, he gets paid more when hitting aces. Life isn’t always fair, deal with it.
Once in a while, however, you will see a player fed up with your seemingly loose actions and he will call or even raise you. Same story goes for someone holding a strong, but not monstrous hand willing to take a stand on f.e. AT, assuming your holding squadoosh anyway. That’s when you strike and that’s where the beauty of the aggressive monster lies. When trying to be tricky you get less action on monsters than you do playing tight, but your pay out will be higher. An opponent noticing that his raise gets response from a tight player will leave, when facing a loose player it might be that he still thinks hands like AT, KJ or even Q8 are still good.
Slowplaying for an aggressive player is like putting up a neon sign saying you have the goods. Don’t overuse it, people tend to catch on. Any action you can provoke is good action. Any check after your check is a missed opportunity.
All other hands go in the muck. Believe me, There’s not much left.
So, to sum up shortly:
a) What are you trying to do? Picking up a lot of money or trying to get dominance over the play? Adjust your play as such.
b) What type of hand do you have and what type of hand do you put your opponent on?
Try to find out before you sacrifice a lot of chips.
c) What reputation do you have? Don’t necessarily try to play different than you are expected, just try to play appropriate, and watch out for typical answers against your type of playing.
Should you still have some questions, come see us. I’ll be the blurry one behind your despair.
The Mad Man
