One of the great things about playing heads up No Limit Texas Holdem Poker is that is a very easy game to learn. Most of the time when you are playing other players, you aren’t playing for deep money, and less invested in the hands that you are playing. When you are playing for blinds, however, you are in the money. Heads up poker is all about winning money. A heads up Bolagila player has to win a lot of heads up games in a row before they will start to make a serious income. A good way to win enough heads up poker games to make a living is to win 40% of the total hands you are playing. 40% of your heads up game should be your bankroll. Pocket aces and pocket kings are the number 1 two premium starters in poker. When you play any poker hand you have a chance of winning and you need to build a bankroll around those two cards. The goal of every poker player is to win money and get paid on your cards. At any point in a poker session you should be looking to pick up a hand and play it to the river. That is some very basic advice for re-raising your premium hands. The trick is to know your opponent’s range and play against that range. Now let’s say you are dealt a pair of twos. You are an 80% favorite to win the hand so you need to bet roughly 8 times the blind. Many players will bet less than that or no hand. Their range is not that unique to a heads up game. Still, against any opponent that has picked up on your betting pattern, you are likely to get paid off. Heads Up Poker takes a little bit of practice but if you can do it, it will pay off in the long run. Try to focus less on your cards and more on your opponents. In the poker world, players are very fond of saying “employed motions” such as tapping the table, having your hand, etc. If you can get paid off on a hand, you are jinxed for life. Ask a player who has played many heads up poker sessions if they know their opponent’s bankroll. It is a good rule of thumb to always raise the equal amount as your opponent raises. Keep in mind what Ken Wells says in his book “ials” that you should not put an opponent on a hand if he plays more than one per round. It is a difficult concept to grasp but you must keep in mind. An exception could be against an opponent who is slow rolling his small suited cards. Against an opponent who always raises with large suited connectors, you can call him for a small raise and get the majority of your money in on the flop. The point is, in general, against a multiply toughest opponent, you should put him on a range of hands. It could be 60-40% on any given hand. Against a tough trusted opponent, it could be flipped to 50-50. This is discussed more fully in another article. And finally, against a player that only plays heads up, you could only get a 70% of the pot on a heads up basis. All four of those situations are the same, the hands won’t change, but the percentage of the pot will.
For medium to tougher opponents, you will be happy with 75% of the pot on a 3bet. This is still very high poker hand percentages. Against these players, you will take down just about any pots that you stake your money on. They will have no other choice but to fold most hands. Against easier opponents, you will get more than your fair share of pots. Very few players play all pockets, so if you can steal the blinds with medium to lower pocket pairs, and win small uncontested pots, you are sitting in a very comfortable position. If you have read the article, The Fundamentals of Texas Holdem Poker, you should have a good idea of how to play heads up. It will be a game of statistics and a game of reading your opponent.