One On One Poker - Advice to Win at Heads Up Poker

Antonio Esfandiari dishes essential advice for using unrelenting aggression to get ahead in heads-up play

Author: Antonio Esfandiari

THE MAIN PRINCIPLE OF HEADS-UP PLAY to keep in mind is that it’s very difficult to make a hand. Even if you flop bottom pair, you probably have the best hand. If you flop top pair, you probably have a monster, even if you have the worst possible kicker. So what you want to do when playing heads up is never give up. You want to play almost any two cards. You always want to bet, and you always want to see flops. You have to be aggressive, plain and simple.

Say you’re in a pot and there’s a little bit of money in before the flop, and you’re first to act after the flop; in that situation, I almost always recommend putting a little bet out there because it really puts a lot of pressure on your opponent. If he doesn’t have anything, in order for him to bluff, he has to call your bet and raise you three or four times as much—meaning he has to commit a lot of his chips to make a move on you. Conversely, if you just check and he bets, now you have to face the same dilemma. When you’re first to go in a heads-up pot, no matter what happened before the flop, if you bet out, it puts a lot of pressure on the other guy because chances are he didn’t connect with the flop.

In heads-up play, a lot of the time neither you nor your opponent are making hands. So it’s who is in there stealing those pots when no one has anything that’s going to come out ahead. If you have an ace, you probably have the best hand. If someone raises, you just come over the top. And if you get your money in with K-J, and the other guy has A-7, sure he has the best hand, but you’re not even a big underdog at all.

Very rarely should you fold before the flop. If you have a 9-7, you don’t want to be folding to just a little raise. You have to play that hand. You have to play hands, and you have to keep betting. The only hands you want to be folding are crap like 7-2 or 2-3. Unless it’s a terrible hand, you should be playing it every time—at least calling if not raising.

Basically, what you want to do is get your opponent so sick of you being in there all the time that he’s going to start taking stands with hands like A-7. He’s just going to go crazy, and hopefully you’ll have something. People are often not prepared for the onslaught of aggression that you throw at them. You want to take the other guy out of his comfort zone and just jab, jab, jab as much as you can to get him thinking, Wow, this guy’s crazy, and hopefully you’ll have the better hand when the guy puts all his money in.

Of course, there are times to be cautious. When you raise and your opponent re-raises, that’s often your signal to let it go. In any kind of poker game, when someone puts in big money and they’re committing their whole stack, they usually have a hand. That’s why you want to jab. You don’t want to put in big money on a bluff. You want to just take little jabs.

But I don’t recommend slow-playing in heads-up action. When I played Daniel Negreanu at the National Heads-Up Championship, he raised on the button, and I smooth-called out of the big blind with pocket tens. If I re-raise there, and he moves me in, I’m either a 50-50 with my tens, or he’s beating me. But if I just call, he’s never going to put me on a pair of tens. So I just smooth-called, and when the flop came 10-7-2, most people would check that big hand, but I disagree with that. Always bet out your big hands, because the other guy’s not going to think you flopped a big hand. So I bet out, Daniel came over the top, and we got all the money in. He never put me on a set, and he told me that was a great bet.

Here’s a mistake I made in that same Heads-Up tournament: When I played against Phil Hellmuth, I had him full-blown steaming, and I was just picking on him. I was just raising him and raising him and he just kept folding and folding. He was just waiting for hands. And, eventually, he started making hands, and I didn’t adjust my game and slow down. I sensed the momentum turning, and I didn’t go with it. You have to know when things are going your way and when things aren’t going your way, and when things aren’t going your way and you’re losing pots, stop. Put the brakes on. Kick back a little bit. But when you’re winning, of course, keep jamming.

But the main thing is, people fold too many hands. If you have 9-7, and it comes Q-9-3, and the opponent bets, a lot of people fold with second pair. That’s a mistake, unless you have some great read on the other guy. In heads-up, second pair is a monster. You can’t let your opponent bluff you into folding a monster.