Heads-Up Limit Hold’em – Part 4

Welcome to the final part of this series on heads-up limit hold’em. In this part we will be looking at the different types of opponent you will encounter and give tips on how to play against them. Remember that opponent selection is everything when playing heads-up. If your sole opponent is as good or better than you, or even slightly worse, then you will lose money in the long run. Also the game will be vastly different depending on who your opponent is. Think how different a full ring game becomes when a maniac sits down. Well imagine that times ten and that is how much a heads-up game changes when you get a different opponent. There is no such thing as a ‘regular’ heads-up game. How you play should depend entirely on your opponent and each game will be a little bit different.Remember, the key to successful heads-up limit play is to have a loose, aggressive and unpredictable game. Naturally, this means that opponents who are tight, passive or predictable are the easiest to beat. So to start with we will look at these types of opponents, those who are missing a piece of the three-piece jigsaw.

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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