Heads Up SNG Strategy

In my experience Heads Up games are about outwitting, manipulating and ambushing your opponents. They are great for churning a good ROI because they give you the perfect opportunity to exploit weak players and use your own post-flop skills.

Unfortunately, there isn’t that much room for “normal” poker strategy because with only two players in the hand, you’ll be bluffing far more pots than you would in a 6 or 10 man table. The outcome is that they’ll be moderate swings throughout the games, but the game itself is decided in one or two “perfectly played” hands.

In terms of Variance, I would say it can become an issue if you only play 5 – 10 games, but anything above 20 games should give you some nice results.

Playing Style

Heads Up games are most profitable for loose aggressive players (LAGs) who can readily understand their opponents. The trick is to outwit, trap and ambush your opponent whilst mixing up your own game. LAGs tend to fair very well because they are superior in post-flop play and better suited to the fast pace of heads up play.

Your strategy in heads up should be related to your opponent’s playing style. Each game is different, and in my opinion you never actually play the same heads up game twice. Against tight players, you need to raise lots of pre-flop pots, c-bet flops out of position and be willing to double barrel or triple barrel on solid boards. Remember, the best cards to double barrel the turn include any pairs to the flop (e.g. 7 in a 5-K-7 flop) or any higher cards (e.g. Ace). These cards reduce your opponent’s relative hand strength and equity, giving you greater fold equity for bluffing. Aside from this, you want to raise as many pre-flop pots as possible and price your opponent out of seeing the flop. As your opponent bleeds chips and you become big stacked, your ability to play a looser range of hands pre-flop (7h-6h) gives you a better chance of hitting monster and trapping your opponent.

Against loose players (who continually raise pre-flop pots), you need to play very tight. Throw away your marginal/trash hands to raises, but 3bet and hit back with your good holdings such as A5+, suited connectors and pocket pairs. Because you have a superior holding a lot of the time he’ll insta-fold when you hit back. Once you hit the flop, you’re supposed to check-raise your strong hands and extract maximum value.

Position

Position is an extremely important concept in heads up matches. In position (dealer) you can play a wide range of hands because you have position on all the streets. For instance, statistically your opponent will miss 60% of flops, which means a c-bet (half-pot raise) will earn you lots of chips in the long run and only needs to work 1/3 times to break even.

When sat in dealer position, you should raise 50% or more of your hands pre-flop and there are three reasons for doing this: to force your opponent to fold his marginal hands/prevent limping, to increase your relative equity in the pot and to increase your fold equity for bluffing in later streets.

In big blind position, you should check your non-premium hands and raise A5+ type hands around 2.5xbbs.

Conclusion on Heads Up Strategy

It’s impossible to teach 100% proof heads up strategy. For the most part it requires constant innovation and picking up tells on your opponent in post-flop play. However I think that for micro-low stakes games at least, the tips above will give you a massive head start.

This article was provided by Play Online Craps.