POKER: Playing Heads-up

[Sotally Tober]

How do people feel about playing heads-up? I (used to) hate it. I never felt comfortable with it. You have to play kind of fast and in the face of constant raising. Yet, to win, you eventually have to go heads-up. So to get more comfortable with it, the last 2 days/nights I've played nothing but Heads-Up on Stars. 15 matches. Surprisingly, I go t off to a pretty good start, 2-0, before losing one to go 2-1. In the fifteen matches I went 13-2! Shocked the hell out of me. So I worked on my biggest (perceived) weakness and won some cash to boot. I then went and played in a single table tourney and found that I was able to better recognize situations and hands when a bluff would be more effective and was able to steal some pots. I never used to steal pots, or at least not nice sized ones. Playing heads-up is a good training ground if you feel like the pressure is always being put on you as opposed to being put on by you.

Does anyone else play much heads-up?

[PatsFan12]

I only play heads-up if I get to it in a tournament. I get kindof nervous when it's heads-up, no matter how big my stack is in comparison to the other guy I always think I'm going to lose for some reason. I need to work on that, heading to the heads-up section might be a good idea.

[Sotally Tober]

I only play heads-up if I get to it in a tournament. I get kindof nervous when it's heads-up, no matter how big my stack is in comparison to the other guy I always think I'm going to lose for some reason. I need to work on that, heading to the heads-up section might be a good idea.

That's sounds just like me. I hated heads-up play. Found myself always fearing what the guy might have and so I got super-tight. But since heads-up is the only way to win a tourney, I want to get better at it and I really think playing a few $5 heads-up is good. I'm actually playing $5, $10 & $20 heads-up now and feeling pretty comfortable and confident.

[foghorn]

I played my first strictly heads-up last night. About five hands in, still small blinds, I get a 10h 8h. I'm on the BB. He raises $20, so I call just to see a flop. The flop comes three hearts. I check and he goes all-in. I really thought I was beat by a bigger flush, but I figured what the heck and called anyway. He was bluffing, not even a pair.

[PatsFan12]

I think the main thing I have to realize is that when you are playing heads up, a high pair is going to win alot of hands. You have to play alot more hands since the quality of the winning hand will most likely go down. The other guy is only paying attention to you now so he's going to notice patterns so I really need to work on things like mixing up bets, bluffing at different positions, etc.

[Bama Gambler]

I played my first strictly heads-up last night. About five hands in, still small blinds, I get a 10h 8h. I'm on the BB. He raises $20, so I call just to see a flop. The flop comes three hearts. I check and he goes all-in. I really thought I was beat by a bigger flush, but I figured what the heck and called anyway. He was bluffing, not even a pair.I would have called so fast his head would be spinning. If he flopped a higher flush why would he bet all-in to win a small pot. Heads-up hitting any part of the flop is a very strong hand. Also heads-up three suits on the board is not scary. Four suits is a differnt story.