Multiplayer online poker is an exciting option for those who find single player casino games too mechanical. It is also an excellent choice for people looking to make friends and enjoy social interaction through the medium of online casino play. The unique chat feature available on online poker rooms enables multiplayer online poker players to interact with your opponents in ways beyond simply betting with them.

If you enjoy the action of Internet casino games and like the social aspect of playing with live opponents, online multiplayer poker is the right thing for you.

A tournament can be played on a single table or multiple tables at one time. You will only play on one table at a time, but if there are more than ten players, they will be playing at the same time on other tables. You may even be moved at random to another table as more players lose all their chips.

Multi Table Tournaments – The quality needed here is patience. In big tournaments, one often finds oneself faced with ‘loose players’. Separate out these players to your advantage for the big hand that you are likely to have in the future. And when it happens, bet big and you may be able to increase your stack size considerably. It is also important to remember not to abuse the big stack, rather target players with smaller stacks. They will only go up against you if they have a very good hand, so stealing blinds and ‘bullying’ them out of pots is a great way to increase your own chip stack. Eventually you will leave a short-stacked player with no choice but to call your raise and go all-in with a mediocre hand, thereby giving away all your chips. However, if all is not going your way and you are running low on chips, consider going all-in pre-flop to try and steal the blinds.

These tournaments often go on for hours, so patience is a virtue well developed. Bet wisely and remain focused. Use the breaks to refresh. Tournament strategy takes time to learn and master. Use these tips and you will be ready to battle any situation very soon.

Traditional Loose/Passive Fish
In full ring games, every winning players best friend is the loose/passive player. They pay you off on all your good hands, but make the minimum with theirs. They give action, but don’t get it. These players are also money in heads-up games and you are in luck if you find yourself sitting across from one.

Exploiting loose/passive players heads-up is ridiculously easy. They are probably going to play every pot and they are likely only going to raise if they have a big hand (exactly how big you will have to determine through trial and error). Therefore you have the relatively simple task of value betting your good hands until you meet resistance and if you are raised, fold unless you have a hand that matches has a good chance of still being good. As a result you will be playing big pots when you are likely ahead and small pots when you are likely behind, which is a very easy way of making money in the long run.

One thing that you will need to discern as soon as possible against loose/passive opponents is how often and under what circumstances they fold post-flop. This will tell you if and how often you should bluff (including continuation betting) and slow play. However, the hallmark of loose/passive players is that you will usually not need to do much of either in order to win.

Full Ring TAGs
The tight/aggressive model is the hallmark of good full-ring limit play, but it has no place in a heads-up game. Often players who are used to full-ring games will instinctively play far too tight when they try heads-up play. As a result they will struggle to make money against most players and they are easy to run over if you make the correct adjustments to your game.

Tight players will fold too often both pre-flop and post-flop. As a result, if you up your aggression, you can win many pots to which you are not really entitled. Pre-flop you should play even more pots than usual (and you should play the vast majority of them anyway). In fact, against tight players, it is probably not a mistake to raise every pot from the button, (although see last months article to see why you may want to let a few go). Post-flop you should continuation bet and bluff liberally. In fact, it is a good idea to re-raise a lot pre-flop in order to set yourself up for taking down the pot post-flop, especially with hands like suited connectors that will be well disguised if you hit.

Of course, you will be playing inferior hands on average than the TAG player, so if you meet resistance you should be more willing than usual to fold. Sometimes this means that you will end up folding to a draw (which TAG players will usually play aggressively heads-up), but you can’t afford to play to their strength and repeatedly get into big pots against their better-than-average hands. Your edge comes from picking up all the little pots where neither of you has a hand, which adds up to a lot in heads-up games.

Honest Joes
Honest Joes play loose and aggressively, but also very predictably. They will play most hands, and raise those that are likely best post-flop, but they usually don’t bluff very often and when they do it’s in very predictable places, such as when you check to them on the river when they have a busted draw. Or sometimes they will bluff a lot, but their bluffs will be predictable as they will bluff every time in certain situations. Either way, it is easy to put them on a hand, as they don’t vary their play enough to make it challenging. Once you have played with them for a while, you will have little problem taking their money.

Most Honest Joes are full-ring players who are used to multi-tabling or otherwise playing formulaically, which is often profitable in full ring games, but not in heads-up play where their opponents attention is focussed solely on them rather than divided between all the players at the table. The key to beating them is just a simple exercise in observation and adaptation. If they never bluff raise the turn, then fold to most turn raises. If they love to bluff in certain spots, then incite and pick off those bluffs. It’s just like you do against any other player, except it’s so much easier because they are that much more predictable. In the information war, your opponent will be armed with stones, while you’re in a tank.

Rocks
Rocks are a combination of all the bad traits of the players listed above. They are tight, passive and predictable. The types of players who display these characteristics don’t usually find their way into heads-up games, so if you find yourself playing against one, thank your lucky stars. Their game is so ill suited to heads-up play that it is very difficult to lose unless they are getting stellar cards. Bet relentlessly and fold at the first sign of resistance unless you have the goods. You will win the vast majority of pots and the ones you lose will be small because they don’t value bet their good hands nearly enough and you can spot their monster hands a mile off.

Tougher Opponents

Obviously if you meet any of the types of opponent above, then you can expect good positive expectation. But in this day and age, you can’t always sit around waiting for such a plum game. Or if you do you could be sitting on your own for an incredibly long time. Sometimes you have to take on better players and operate with a smaller edge. Just because a player has the fundamentals right and is somewhat loose, aggressive and unpredictable, doesn’t mean that you can’t beat them. Just like in full ring games, you can still beat tight/aggressive players if they make plenty of mistakes or if they are not tight and aggressive enough.

The following are five sub-categories of loose/aggressive/unpredictable players. Each have their own tendencies and require different skills and adaptation to beat.

LAGfish
Remember what we said back in Part 2 of this article?

“(Looseness,, aggression and unpredictability) are the cornerstone of heads-up play…. You can afford to get a lot of things wrong, things that might get you in a lot of trouble in full ring games, if you get these three things right.“

Some players do just this. They get by in heads-up games not because of any deep understanding of the game but because, often by chance, they have stumbled upon a loose, aggressive and unpredictable style. They make lots of other errors, including chasing draws they don’t have the pot odds to chase, bluffing in hopeless situations and refusing to let go of hands that are obviously beat. But the fact that the have the fundamentals right means that they will pick up enough pots to not be major donators. They may even be long-term winners if they play against weak players.

You will be able to beat LAGfish in the long term, because you have an all-round tidier game. One major leak they tend to have is putting in way too many bets with good (but not great) hands, so don’t be afraid to keep piling on the raises when you have a monster, even if it isn’t the nuts. On the other hand, you will save a lot of bets when you are beaten due to your more astute understanding of the game. Also you will almost certainly be better at adapting. Fish, even the LAGfish variety, tend to just play their game and are very slow to adapt to their opponent. As the game goes on you will slowly build up a picture of their tendencies, which will allow you to increase your edge still further.

Maniacs
Maniacs are probably best described as LAGfish on steroids. They will also have little understanding of the finer aspects of poker, and will have a loose and very aggressive style. However, unlike LAGfish, their aggression is a lot more mindless and they will make plays that defy all logic. In a way, this actually makes them more predictable. You know their raises mean very little, so you can play more or less off the strength of your own hand.

Your edge against maniacs can be through the roof, but you are also going to suffer from extreme variance. Out of necessity you’re going to be playing some enormous pots with hands that you would probably rather not be playing enormous pots with. Law of averages you are going to lose a lot of them because you get drawn out on or because they happen to have a monster (which can be very difficult to spot until it’s too late). Lose more than your fair share of big pots in the short-term and suddenly you will be wondering where that 40 big bets went.

The best way to play against maniacs is to value bet ruthlessly. This will often mean capping pre-flop with KJ, capping the flop with middle pair and raising the river with a weak top pair, not really knowing where you stand. The temptation is often just to call down with a decent-but-not-great hand in the face of such brutal aggression, but you are giving up way too much by doing so. Remember, when you have a good hand, you have to make up for all those little pots where you both flop nothing and you are forced to fold because the alternative is calling 2.5 big bets with Q-high.

Preflop, the temptation is often there to keep the pot small and see what comes on the flop unless you have a premium hand. However, it is often best to ram and jam if your hand has some showdown value and you think you have an edge for two reasons. Firstly, getting money in the pot when you are ahead is a pure value winner. Secondly it makes the rest of the hand easier to play as once the pot is big, you can call down with hands like Ace high and baby pairs even if you miss the board completely.

Stealers
Much in heads-up limit comes down to who can pick up the most small pots when neither player has a whole lot. Stealers have this down to a fine art, knowing a million ways to try and get you to fold a better hand. They will raise and re-raise pre-flop with trash, raise the flop with air, or float the flop and raise the turn or river. You can be certain that every pot you are involved in, they will try to steal at some point.

Stealers can be tricky opponents, especially if you’re not getting many good hands. Unlike maniacs, they will use aggression as a precision instrument rather than a blunt weapon. If they raise and get resistance, they are able to let go of their hand. As such they can put you in a lot of tough spots where you must decide between fold and call down, re-raise or call down, or sometimes even fold or re-steal. Their weakness is that because you know they are going to try and steal the pot at some point, you can plan for it and spot it far easier. Their aggression is too consistent and predictable to be completely effective.

The key to beating this type of opponent is to plan the hand well. Don’t make bets where you are unsure how you are going to handle a raise. Don’t decide to value bet, decide to bet/fold, bet/call or bet/re-raise. And have a plan for what to do on later streets too. If you have position, sometimes turn down thin value bets and check through in order to ensure a cheap showdown. If you are out of position with a marginal hand, sometimes it is better to ‘value check’ the turn or river, rather than betting, as you will regularly pick off bluffs from hopeless hands that would have either folded or put you in a difficult spot by raising.

Jekyll and Hyde
These enigmatic opponents can be very confusing, as they seem almost schizophrenic. They have a Mr Hyde side of a loose/aggressive game, sometimes even maniacal, and then they have a more placid Dr Jekyll game that is a lot more passive and sometimes tighter. They will switch between these two games at various points and you can never sure which version will turn up on any given day. In fact, if you only play the player once, you might never know that they are a gear-changing player.

The two keys to understanding and beating this type of player is firstly (obviously) to know how beat each game they bring to the table and secondly to work out what makes them switch between the two styles. In some cases one of their personalities is a form of tilt. In other words maybe they are naturally loose/aggressive, but go tight/passive after taking too many bad beats. Some might even be the other way around and ‘tilting’ actually causes them to unwittingly play better. In other cases it might be a conscious switch between two styles in an attempt to throw you off your game. For example, I have one regular opponent who will switch to their passive persona if they get caught bluffing too often and then switch back to their aggressive persona when they feel you are trying to take advantage by bluffing too much.

In fact, you can sometimes use this to your advantage. If somebody has a very dangerous LAG persona, you may be able to get them to switch to a more passive persona by making a few –EV call downs in the hopes of catching them bluffing. This was covered in more detail in last month’s article.

Sharks
Don’t play with sharks. Unlike in full ring games, where you will tolerate a few other good players at the table, you shouldn’t play heads-up with a player who is as good or better than you. In fact, even if they are slightly worse than you, you might not be able to beat the rake. All of the players described in this second section are competent, but exploitable. If you can’t identify any obvious weaknesses then get out the game. More than one good heads-up player has gone broke by insisting on playing with other good heads-up players.

Obviously these are not all the types of players you will meet. In fact, what makes heads-up play so interesting is that every opponent is different. But identifying key stereotypes will help you when you encounter similar players again. If you ever encounter a player who has you totally baffled, then don’t be afraid to stop playing and take stock. While you will sometimes take a while to figure out an opponent, you can’t continue that indefinitely. It’s possible they are a very good player and are intentionally keeping you off-balance. There are plenty of other far more predictable opponents out there.

This concludes this series on heads-up limit hold’em. As games get tougher, sometimes the difference between success and failure is game selection and maybe finding that one donator who is giving away money. If you find them, there is no better way to take their money than getting them in a heads-up game.

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Given the river rule, it isn’t easy to get opponents to fold on the river given the size of the pot; however, there are situations here and there which arise which will give you an opportunity to try and steal the pot. The most common example is when you are on a draw and you continue to bet the river hoping that your opponent will fold a busted draw or weak pair.

Occasionally, you can use a scare card on the river to attempt a bluff. For example, a suited card falls, or the board pairs and you represent trips, or an ace comes on the river and you represent the ace. These kinds of plays generally only work though against players who don’t follow the river rule and are capable of laying down a hand on the river. There aren’t many of these players so you should only try these plays in specific situations.

Realize that bluffs do not have to be highly successful in order to be profitable. If there are five or six big bets in the pot, you only have to be successful a small percentage of the time for the bluff to show a profit.

Bluff raises on the river are even more difficult to pull off profitably, as it is difficult to get an opponent to fold who has already bet on the river, and you have reduced pot odds on your raise. The best time to attempt a bluff raise is when you expect your opponent is also on a bluff and your hand can’t even beat a bluff.

Let’s look at some examples to test your skills.

1/ $20-$40. You hold T ♣ 8 ♣ in the small blind. An early player limps in and you call. Three players see the flop of 9 ♣ 6 ♥ 6 ♦ . You bet, the big blind raises, and you decide to call. The turn is the 2 ♣. You check and the big blind checks. The river is the 9 . There is $140 in the pot. What do you do?

Answer: Your opponent’s check on the turn indicates weakness. He may have had a pair of 9′s and was worried about trips, but he also might be holding a draw or a small pocket pair. The pot odds are sufficient for you to represent a full house and bet out a bluff. Bet.

2/ $15-$30. You hold A ♦ K ♠ in the small blind. An early player raises and a middle player calls. You only call and the big blind calls. Four players see the flop of 9 ♦ 5 ♠ 2 ♦ . The big blind bets and everyone calls. The turn is the 3 ª. The big blind bets and everyone calls. The river is the 5 ♥. The big blind checks, the early player bets, and the middle player calls. There is $360 in the pot. What do you do?

Answer: Bluff raises on the river rarely are successful. However, sometimes you can spot opportunities such as in this example. The early player has limped along the entire hand and decides to bet out when a 5 comes on the turn. It is possible he has a hand like A-5 but doubtful since he raised preflop. The middle player obviously has a weak hand or he would have raised on one of the earlier betting rounds. Raising in this situation will represent trip 5′s and make it very difficult for one of your opponents to call. Your bluff only has to work once every seven times to break even. Raise.

In the actual hand, the player folded. The early player showed Q ♠ T ♠ and the middle player A ♠ 2 ♠ .

3/ $30-$60. You hold 3 ♦ 3 ♠ in the cutoff in a six-handed game and raise first in. The big blind calls and two players see the flop of A ♦ T ♦ 8 ♦ . Your opponent checks, you bet, and your opponent calls. The turn is the T ♠ and you both check . The river is the A ♠. Your opponent suddenly bets out. There is $255 in the pot. What do you do?

Answer: About the only hand a reasonable player could bet here is an ace, or possibly a T. If he had an ace, you would expect a check-raise on the flop, or for him to bet out the turn to protect against a flush draw. When an opponent suddenly changes his betting pattern from one of weakness to one of strength you must be suspicious. Unfortunately, you can’t even beat the board so your only option is to raise if you want to win the pot. It will cost you $120 to win $255 so you only need to be correct 1 in 3 times for the bluff to be profitable. Raise.

4/ $20-$40. You hold Q ♦ Q ♠ in middle position. An early player calls, you raise, and the button calls. The big blind reraises and everyone calls. There is $330 in the pot. The flop is was 6 ♥ 5 ♥ 3 ♦ . It is checked to you, you bet, and everyone calls. The turn card is the 9 ♠ . It is checked to you, you bet, the button calls, and the big blind raises. Everybody calls and the button is all-in at this point. There is $730 in the pot. The river is the dreaded J ♥. The big blind checks and the early player suddenly wakes up and bets. There is $770 in the pot. What do you do?

Answer: It appears that the player in early position is sitting on a flush. However, the correct play for him would have been to check-raise the flop with a flush draw. A set of jacks doesn’t make sense either. The river bet is a little suspicious giving you reason to at least call.

Unfortunately, you have the player in the big blind to worry about also. He check-raised the turn in a multi-way pot indicating strength. He could very well be on a set or two pair. However, if you raise, it would be very difficult for the big blind to call with even a set. Not only must he call two big bets, he faces the risk that the player behind him reraises (although he could probably definitely fold at that point).

You are going to call at least the $40 given the size of the pot, so a raise only costs you $40 more to win $810 (we’re including your $40 river call in the size of the pot). If your raise saves you the pot once every 21 times you show a profit. You won’t be successful very often, but you don’t need to be to show a profit. It’s a risky advanced play but with a decent chance at success. Raise.

In the actual hand, the player only called. The big blind showed AA and the early player A-7.

Some of these hand examples were taken from my book, Internet Texas Hold’em .

Matthew is the author of two other books: Texas Hold’em Odds and Probabilities, and The Poker Mindset, coauthored by Ian Taylor. You can read his poker blog at www.PokerWonks.com

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Loose – Always pre-flop and usually post-flop against the majority of opponents.
Aggressively – You need to play with frequent (but not mindless) aggression.
Unpredictably – Against all but the very worst opponents.

Get these three things right and you have the core of a good heads-up game. Combine these with the skills that you can bring over from full-ring games and you could potentially be very dangerous indeed. So let’s pick up from there, open up the discussion to look at something that is very rarely discussed in full-ring limit strategy – the metagame.

What is the Metagame?

One big difference between heads-up and full ring games is the idea of a dynamic metagame. Sometimes when playing full ring you will know an opponent well enough that you are aware of how they play in certain situations and you can use that information. In a heads-up game you will play so many hands against the same opponent in such a short space of time that you will start to see the same (or very similar) situations occurring over and over again. You may find that after only fifteen minutes play or less you already have a good feel of how your opponent likes to play in certain situations and be able to exploit that knowledge over and over again.

The bad news is two-fold. First, they will also see how you play in certain situations and be able to adapt. This is why it is necessary to play somewhat unpredictably. Second, if they are a halfway competent player, they will recognise your attempts to exploit their play and deploy countermeasures. You, in turn, can identify these countermeasures and adapt again and so on, as you and your opponent dance a complex dance through the heads-up metagame. This is a fundamental difference between head-up play and longer handed games. The latter rarely (if ever) reach this level of complexity because the same situations won’t occur nearly as often.

If you are struggling coming to terms with what I am talking about, here is an illustration from a heads-up match I played yesterday. My opponent was a reasonable thinking player, but by no means a shark (or I wouldn’t have been playing). He was very loose, seeing virtually 100% of flops, but a little too passive overall. He would often raise draws and occasionally as a pure bluff, but generally didn’t raise enough on the expensive streets either as a bluff or for value.

I quickly determined that he liked to limp from the button (in this case the button, as is most common, was the small blind), only raising the top 20-25% of hands. I also found that if I bet into him on the flop after he limped, he would often fold, more than the 1 time in 3 that made it immediately profitable. So I started betting nearly every flop when he limped, regardless of whether I hit anything or not. After a while he wised up to what I was doing and started to call a lot more and raise when he hit any part of the flop (and sometimes as a bluff). I adapted by ceasing to bet every flop and only betting when I hit the flop in some way, or if the flop was the right texture to represent something. He then adapted again and started betting every flop that I checked in order to steal the pot. I countered this move by check-raising the flop when I had a hand. He responded by betting the flop when I checked, but folding to a check-raise unless he had a hand. Once I realised this, I then started bluff check-raising the flop.

This dance could have continued longer, but I eventually quit the game to go and play on another table I was waiting for. Note how both of us were continually trying to manipulate the metagame to get the upper hand. You might think that this took many hours to play out, but this entire battle of wits took place in a under an hour. And not only that, there were several other similar tussles going on in other phases of the game. After all, this particular battle only concerned flop play when he had the button and didn’t raise pre-flop.

Controlling the Metagame

As you can see from the above example, navigating the metagame is about both adapting to your opponents play and also adapting to changes in their play that take place over the course of the session. This is more or less what you would be doing in a full ring game anyway, albeit to a far greater extent because of the vastly increased amount of information that you are being fed. It is unlikely that you will ever observe a sequence of play anything like the above in full ring play, unless you played with the same person for a very long time (probably over a number of sessions).

Now let’s take things a stage further. The heads-up metagame is, in many ways, like a game of chess. At any given point you can see how your opponent is playing, and employ the best possible counter-strategy. But good chess players will do more than that. They will think several moves ahead to decide not only what they want to do now, but also what they want to achieve several ‘moves’ down the line. As poker players in a heads-up game we must do the same. Rather than just adapting to your opponents game on the fly, try to shape how the game will go. Put yourself in your opponents shoes and try to pre-empt, and eventually control, how they will adapt to your play. When playing, you should be asking yourself the following questions:

1. What does my opponent do that I would like him to keep on doing?
2. What does my opponent do that I would like him to stop doing?
3. How do I want my opponent to perceive me?

What does my opponent do that I would like him to keep on doing?
One of the best ways to win money in a heads-up game is to exploit one or more specific weaknesses in your opponent’s game. Of course, you can only do this if your opponent fails to correct this weakness over time. Don’t play in such a way that you force your opponent to stop doing the very thing that is making you money, or in a way that allows them to easily spot their error.

Example 1 – You have an opponent that folds too often post-flop. You decide that you can make the most money by betting or check-raising every flop unless the board looks very bad. Then, if you meet resistance, just back off unless you have a hand. However, if you do this on every hand, then your opponent will realise quite quickly what you are doing. So sometimes just check all the way to the river with a weak hand, and fold if they bet. By doing this you will give the impression that you are just hitting a lot of hands and are not just bluffing all the time.

Example 2 – You notice that your opponent always bets the river with position when you check to him. To exploit this you can check-raise (or ‘sexy’) the river with your good hands to value bet rather than just bet out. This will frequently earn you two bets instead of one, or one bet instead of none if they have a busted draw. However, do this too often and they will soon wise up and start checking through. Therefore it is best to save the check-raise for when you are fairly confident you can get two bets from your opponent. Sometimes just bet your good hands instead or, if you suspect they might be on a busted draw, check-call, which looks cautious rather than exploitative. Obviously you should also check-fold your lost cause hands, to make it look like their bluffing is working. With any luck, they won’t realise how much money they are losing through their over-liberal betting of the river.

What does my opponent do that I would like him to stop doing?
This is the opposite of the above. If your opponent has a facet to his game that works particularly well against you, or makes you uncomfortable, then you might want to explore ways to encourage them to change or at least temper this aspect of their game. This might mean making plays that are –EV in the short term, but will mould the game into something more to your liking in the long term.

Example 1 – If your opponent bluff raises the turn a lot, then you may need to call down with some weak hands that are slightly –EV against his range. Eventually he may decide that it is not worth bluff raising you, at which point you can return to your usual game. Or, if he does it out of position, then skip some of the thinner value bets and check behind on the turn more.

Example 2 – If they are the kind of opponent who always keeps betting until they meet resistance, never allowing you a cheap showdown, then start waiting until the river to raise your good hands. This will sometimes mean you miss bets overall when they have a good second best hand, but after repeatedly folding their junk to a river raise, they should eventually get the message and give you some free cards and cheaper showdowns.

How do I want my opponent to perceive me?
If your opponent is adapting to the way that you play then it is good if they misread you, or misunderstand exactly what you are doing. At the very least, you need to make sure that your game is one step ahead of their efforts to adapt. Often the early hands of an exchange go a long way towards formulating an opponents overall impression of you. As the sayings go, “first impressions count” and “it’s easier to gain a good reputation than lose a bad one”.

Hence it is sometimes worth investing a little time at the start of a match in your ‘image’. Hopefully you will be playing a loose-aggressive game, so you might want to goad your opponent into prematurely labelling you as tight and/or passive. Obviously you don’t want to give up too much, but maybe fold a few borderline hands that you might otherwise play or take a more passive line if the difference in EV is only slight.

Of course, the goal in creating a false impression of yourself is to cause your opponent to play incorrectly against you, or at least be slow to adapt, when you show your true colours. If you gain a tight reputation, you will encourage your opponent to make poor bluffs that you can snap off. If you gain a passive reputation, you will increase your own opportunity for bluffing. Of course, under certain circumstances, it might pay to go the other way. Showing a couple of bluffs to an over-aggressive opponent may lead to them increasing their aggression still further, allowing you to win bigger pots with your good hands.

A Word of Warning

The idea of the metagame and how to manipulate it is a powerful one in heads-up limit holdem. With only one opponent to concentrate on, both players will constantly be adapting and readapting to each other in an effort to stay on top. However, you mustn’t lose sight of the fundamentals of the game. On the whole you must stick to your loose, aggressive style, adhering to fundamental poker principles and hand reading skills.

The ideas in the second half of this article especially must not be taken too far. I have never been a big fan of ‘advertising plays’ in full ring games, because what you stand to lose is often more than you think and not offset by what you stand to gain. In heads-up play, it is more of a necessary evil because of the importance of the metagame and the potential gains from forcing your lone opponent to repeatedly play sub-optimally. However, you still need to be mindful that you are not playing too sub-optimally yourself in order to achieve these goals. If you are unable to win by playing a solid and comparatively straightforward game and are relying on constantly trying to manipulate your opponent to maintain an edge, maybe it would be better to find an easier opponent. Online poker is not yet tough enough that we need to scratch around for tiny edges in a game that is already extremely high variance. Not at the lower limits anyway.

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