Advice needed for heads up play

[mowgli77]

Played at local casino last night in an 8 player £10 freeze out. Agreed to split winnings £50 - £30 1st and 2nd. I got to heads up and blinds were £500/£1000 (started at 50/100). Had some terrible cards such as 5/3 offsuit, 4/6 offsuit etc and folded quite a lot of single blinds as I didn't want to get raised and give away even more money for free.

Lad I was up against played mainly decent hands and was pretty good. Basically what type of hands would you play as a minimum at heads up and would you fold single blinds with poor cards or try raise opponent off double blind? I ain't no poker regular so please don't go all technical on me.

Just wondered what I should be doing at heads up to make sure I don't give away too much money and can play some half decent hands with a chance of doubling up. On one hand he called my double blind. I had 2/3 suited (hearts) and flop was 2/3/7 or something like that. I won that hand and picked up a decent pot as he kept calling to the river, despite me putting a fair bit of cash in but he hit nothing.

Thanks for any advice.

[Punto Banco]

Originally Posted by mowgli77

Played at local casino last night in an 8 player £10 freeze out. Agreed to split winnings £50 - £30 1st and 2nd. I got to heads up and blinds were £500/£1000 (started at 50/100). Had some terrible cards such as 5/3 offsuit, 4/6 offsuit etc and folded quite a lot of single blinds as I didn't want to get raised and give away even more money for free.

Lad I was up against played mainly decent hands and was pretty good. Basically what type of hands would you play as a minimum at heads up and would you fold single blinds with poor cards or try raise opponent off double blind? I ain't no poker regular so please don't go all technical on me.

Just wondered what I should be doing at heads up to make sure I don't give away too much money and can play some half decent hands with a chance of doubling up. On one hand he called my double blind. I had 2/3 suited (hearts) and flop was 2/3/7 or something like that. I won that hand and picked up a decent pot as he kept calling to the river, despite me putting a fair bit of cash in but he hit nothing.

Thanks for any advice.

Really my aim in HU (depending on blinds relative to chipstacks... u dont mention stacks)... but I just try not to get dominated preflop... so if you hit you can bet confidently (or not depending how strong you are) w/o any worries of having no outs... you have to put together any information you have on your opponent to decide what type of player he is... i generally do not bluff so much... however semibluffs are very common for me... really you want hands that are really together or strong, any Ace is good however you HAVE to be able to fold A* if necessary especially preflop... be very wary of 910, 10J, even JQ etc as they are quite easily dominated (you can get overconfident hitting top pair on the flop with these and be out in about 5 seconds)... so really 34, 45, 56, 67 are acceptable... high cards are good of course aswell and low pairs should be played cautiously.. 22, 33, 44, 55... can be dangerous, too often I see people push with them HU however they do not offer to much advantage with two possibilities:
a) opponent has overcards (55/45 shot in your favour)
b) opponent has overpair (VERY BAD!!!!)

I am more a fan of getting my self in the most favourable position possible before going allin... im not after a 50/50 shot and if need be i'll sacrifice the chip lead to do so... I would rather be 2/3 of my opponents stack and have an 80-85% chance to win an allin hand than be just ahead and be only 50/50... im a fan also if you have 10x opponent stack... allin every hand... he has to lose eventually...

Hope I helped... its hard to consolidate such complicated matters however experience is the best way to improve... rather than thinking about exactly which hands you should be playing... I rate myself as a fair HU player but I dont by any means have a prescription alot of it is to do with the environment (Chipstacks, peoples view of you, your view of others)... Im sorry if i got on a bit of a rant... I am not the best at explaining things... it is a prety complicated matter and experience is the only true way to improve HU... getting top cards doesnt hurt either...

[mowgli77]

Cheers for that, much appreciated.
As for stacks, I was in front but not by much by the time it got to heads up. We went head to head for a decent size pot, I had Q6, he had Q7 with a Queen on the flop with lods of checking. Reflecting on that if I'd put in a decent bet and represented a higher kicker he'd probably have folded but at least I'm learning.

[slapdash]

Some people think you should almost never fold initially as small blind pre-flop
heads-up. I'm not quite convinced, but it's probably not that far off. The
reason is that playing heads-up, the small blind plays second after the flop,
which gives a huge advantage. And your opponent hasn't had a chance to
bet when you decide whether to fold, so he has a random hand. And no hand
is a very big underdog to an average hand.

Heads-up, just going all-in every hand, whatever your hand is, is not a
terrible strategy (I'm not suggesting it's the best strategy!). Even if the
blinds are very small compared to the stack sizes (so your opponent can
afford to wait for a really good hand before calling) and your opponent
plays perfectly, you'll win about 20% of the time if you do this. At the end
of a tournament in a casino, when the blinds are probably quite large, it's
probably more like 40%.

Basically, for anybody who hasn't read about how to play heads-up and
hasn't had much experience of it, then unless they are a certified
psychopath, the correct strategy is almost certainly more aggressive than
they would imagine.

[slapdash]

Originally Posted by slapdash

Heads-up, just going all-in every hand, whatever your hand is, is not a
terrible strategy (I'm not suggesting it's the best strategy!). Even if the
blinds are very small compared to the stack sizes (so your opponent can
afford to wait for a really good hand before calling) and your opponent
plays perfectly, you'll win about 20% of the time if you do this.

That's assuming you start with about the same number of chips.

[mowgli77]

Cheers Slapdash. I was getting involved with hands like J5 and Q6 as mentioned when normally I'd fold them with more players in the game. They kept getting beat which was tempting me to fold them more often.

[GotaFancy?]

Regarding the stack sizes - what is important is how big the small stack is in comparison to the BB ..... if the multiplier is small enough, then I am all in from the button with any 2 cards.....

"The Gap" becomes critical - that is, it takes a far stronger hand to call all in than it does to go all in .....

If you download SNGEGT (SitNGo End Game Tools - www.sngegt.com I think) there is a Heads Up "trainer"...