Heads Up No-Limit Strategies

The optimal way forward in no-limit high-stakes poker games isn’t straight forward. Calculating equity and EV is not an easy process in the heat of battle and especially in the speeded up environment of online poker. This is why many of the high-stakes online players use their time banks effectively. Bluff raises and value calls and bets are where the really good players make their money.

If you think about this for a moment, the good hands play themselves and these hands are seen in the same quantity but this is not where the best players make their money in the nosebleed games. Finding and then exploiting their opponent’s tendencies is really the way to go and also feeling the game out is critical as well and this is good online poker strategy.

This is why many poker players prefer to only play one table in the high-stakes games. But when the game is heads up then this presents a totally different set of dynamics. Let us look at the following hand that I played recently at NL600 heads up. My opponent limped in on the button and I checked with the 7d-5c.

Now before we continue, it is a mistake to look at hands out of context as metagame factors are prevalent here but this hand is still instructive. I had only been playing for about ten hands or so and my opponent had been very passive from the button and had only raised one hand in five from that position which is too low.

The flop came Ah-Jc-8d and I checked. This is a standard play for me and into the $12 pot my opponent bets $6. I felt that if they had an ace that they would have raised pre-flop but then again I do know numerous good heads up players who prefer to limp in from the button because they want to play flops with their opponents who they perceive to be weaker than them and have position to boot.

It’s possible that they could have a pair of jacks and be looking for me to bet so they can trap call but it is also possible that they could fold weaker poker hands like pairs to a check-raise and especially because I have not check-raised the flop before in this match. I felt that their play was weak, they were not a regular on the site, they had limped pre-flop and then bet half the pot on the flop.

I felt that if I check-raised that they would have to show a lot of respect to that play and I did so to $20 and they folded. This hand was interesting because two hands later, they limped again from the button and I checked 2d-2s. The flop came Ad-7c-2h and I checked and this time they bet $10 into the $12 pot.

Now this is basically two scenarios, they are either escalating their bet size and trying to deter me from check-raising or they are hoping to trap me into check-raising by value betting with the intention of calling a check-raise. So I check-raised the pot to $42 and they called making $96 in the pot. The turn card came and was the Kh and I value bet $70 and was called.

The river was the 10c and I bet $170 into the $236 pot and my opponent min-raised me to $340 and we ended up both all-in and my set beat their two pair aces and tens.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Come and scout the bwin poker blog

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