Head Games - Key Ingredients for Taking Your Heads-Up Cash Game to the Next Level and Beyond

Craig Tapscott: What are the key elements that make up a great no-limit hold’em heads-up cash-game player?

Aaron Jones: The first element is fundamentals. Having good fundamentals will help frame each street and make your decisions easier. The second component is instinct. Some of the best no-limit players lack fundamentals but have gotten by with having a killer feel for the game. They are able to constantly be one step ahead of their opponents, and are great at making seemingly whimsical decisions. Finally, it’s important not to get emotional. Heads-up matches are swingy; they’re full of coolers, suck-outs, and tough decisions. In order to play your best, you have to keep your head clear to make the best decisions. Spotting your opponents’ weaknesses and exploiting them will be crucial to your success. Perhaps even more important, though, will be spotting an opponent’s strengths and avoiding them. If someone is really good at reading you and guessing right, try not to put yourself in a position where that’ll hurt you.

Prahlad Friedman: World-class heads-up cash-game players are very comfortable with aggressive play. That’s the beauty of heads-up no-limit hold’em; you can bluff a lot more. Most elite heads-up players know this, and have adjusted by calling a lot more; therefore, you have to further adjust accordingly, and bluff the right amount. Great players are usually a step ahead of you, and can almost read your mood or know when you’re going to change gears. Also, they aren’t afraid to quit someone, and stay away from players who beat everyone. I’ve made the mistake myself of thinking I can beat anyone, and have lost a lot of money to people I thought were terrible. If they beat everyone else and beat you, wake up!

Scott Augustine: The most important aspect of being a great heads-up player is to be adaptable. You need to be able to play well against someone who’s crazy as well as someone who’s tight. The best way to do this is to have experience in playing both of these styles yourself, along with the spectrum of styles that lie in between. The players who give me the most trouble are those who are willing to put pressure on me in spots that I’m not used to. This could be bluffing often in spots where people normally don’t, or value-betting thinly when I am prone to calling down too light. What separates a good player from a great one is that he might be very good in a few playing styles, but isn’t able to deal with all of them. A great player will determine where an opponent is uncomfortable and will pressure him in those spots all day long.

Craig Tapscott: Share your thoughts about preflop play and how to use betting, position, and any metagame history with specific opponents to the best of your advantage.

Aaron Jones: My preflop bet-sizing never changes based on the strength of my hand. I’ll always choose a bet size that is based on my opponent, and will stick with it. For instance, if I think he’s calling too wide preflop, I’ll punish him by having my range be composed of primarily value hands and increasing my bet size so that I’m bloating the pot with a stronger range (and/or position). If my opponent is folding too much preflop, I can make my raising and reraising size smaller, because I’m trying to risk the minimum to win what is already in the pot. Also, I can always put less money in the pot when I’m in position, because I don’t mind if my opponent makes a call and I get to play a pot in position. One example of this is four-betting preflop. If I make it very small (sometimes online, I reraise the minimum) and he calls with a wide range, it’s OK, because he’s out of position. I’m confident in my ability to play better than him after the flop. Out of position is a bit of a different story; I’d rather not build a big pot, so I’ll make my bet-sizing a little larger to discourage a call.

Prahlad Friedman: Bet-sizing is very important in heads-up play. On the button, I like to mix up my raises between the minimum and four or five times the big blind. Against super-aggressive players who love to reraise from the big blind, I like to limp from the button quite a lot, or raise the minimum. I find it amusing that when I start reraising a guy every hand, he still raises with 7-2 suited and funky hands like that, knowing that I’m going to reraise. These players might find some logic behind it, but I find it pointless to raise with garbage hands, knowing that I won’t want to call a big three-bet. So, know what your opponents are likely to do, and make the smart play.

From the big blind, I like to experiment early in a match to find out what works best. If they are raising a ton of buttons (some players raise 100 percent of buttons), I will reraise often. When I reraise, I want to know how much it takes for them to fold their weaker holdings. In terms of three- and four-bet sizes, you can learn that along the way. You need to know how much it takes to four-bet bluff a guy preflop, and five-bet a guy from the big blind preflop. I could write a book about all of the little nuances, and probably will, soon.

Scott Augustine: I change my button bet-sizing and hand range according to how my opponent is reacting. I vary from starting out minimum-raising to opening much bigger. It’s important to recognize the extremes in player types, find a good counterstrategy, and then place your opponent somewhere on the range of playing styles you have experience with. Heads-up play, more than any other game type, requires a lot of game-time experience. You can’t develop counterstrategies against various opponents if you aren’t familiar with a broad range of player types. 

In regard to the factors that affect immediate decisions, the more that your opponent is three-betting or folding out of the big blind, the smaller you want to make your bet, so that he will fold for the cheapest price and you can call more hands by keeping the stack-to-pot ratio deeper. The more that he’s calling, the bigger the opening size you want to choose to make the pot bigger preflop when you have the positional advantage. When three-betting yourself, you need to figure out how he’s going to react to your three-bets. If he is flat-calling them a lot, you want to make your three-bets bigger. When he is four-betting or folding, you want to make your bet-sizing smaller, so that you’ll lose the least amount when you’re bluffing and still get the same number of folds. ♠