Playing head’s up against tight players can be challenging for a lot of us. I often see aggressive players loose to them because they don’t adapt to the style of their opponent. In this article, we’ll examine what aggressive player can do when facing a tight player in a heads up situation.

Tight players are easy to bluff. They are easy to push around. That in itself can be problematic in the sense that the aggressive player often scares them away too early and the pots won are not very significant. The aggressive player doesn’t get a lot of mileage out of his hands.

Here’s how things often go down: Aggressive player raises and bluffs, tight player folds. This happens over and over and the aggressive player slowly takes away chips from the tight player. But then what happens is that aggressive players often loose patience and they want to get this over with so they start taking greater risks and then at some point a bigger pot develops and the tight player wins it. When this happens, you are back to where you started. All the grinding you’ve done is cancelled by this last hand. This routine is replayed for a while until the aggressive player looses his patience and starts making more and more mistakes. The tight player ends up winning.

I have seen professional players make such mistakes frequently. A good example is Doyle Brunson. I’ve seen him in head’s up situations where he’d have 10 times the amount of chips his only opponent had. He would always go all in and the opponent would always fold until they got a decent hand. Then the tight player would eventually call and double up. It really didn’t take long for the tight player to take the lead, and eventually to win. I have a lot of respect for Doyle Brunson, but I’ve seen him loose too many tournaments he should have won simply because he was impatient.

There are things you can do the prevent this from happening. First, bluffing can work without using excessive raises. If you go all in on a bluff and get called by a tight player, you’re in trouble! So don’t go all in if you don’t have too. If a tight player is sticking around, it’s probably because they have something. Don’t bother giving them any chance. If you don’t have a descent hand, just give up the pot while it’s really small. There’s no need to take a huge risk. Just keep grinding them with slow bluffs and back out when there is a sign that the opponent will not back up. Another option is to trap. It’s always harder to trap tight players because when you check, they often check as well. But when you get a monster hand, show weakness and keep showing weakness unless the board becomes dangerous (straight or flush potentials are dangerous!).

Sometimes, you can force your opponent to change their tactics. Don’t let them frustrate you. Turn the situation around completely. Be super tight and let them become impatient. Let them start taking risks and let them make some mistakes. By doing so, they will gradually increase their level of aggressively. Let them bluff you out of a few minor pots just to build up their confidence and wait for the opportune moment to strike back with a real hand or with a good bluff. The key to winning at heads up is being able to psych out your opponent. When you loose your concentration, become impatient, start making errors and put yourselves in dangerous situations when it’s not necessary, you are being outplayed and out psyched. Change your own tactic if this is happening because you’re loosing control of the game. Doing so automatically forces your opponent to react differently.

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