By Tony Guerrera

Perhaps a cash game is down to you and one other player. He played poorly when action was fullhanded, and you’d like to keep the game going so that you can either bust him heads-up (or get enough people to sit to return to a highly profitable fullhanded situation in the event that this poor fullhanded player is a heads-up wizard).

Perhaps you’ve battled for hours in a huge multi-table tournament. After lots of great play and good fortune, you’re battling heads-up for first place in a situation where the difference between first and second is huge…substantially larger than any amount you’ve battled for before at a poker table.

Or perhaps you see heads-up play as a potentially lucrative form of poker you’d like to exploit either by playing in heads-up tournaments or heads-up cash game tables. The bottom line is that heads-up play can be a great source of profits if you’re good at it.

Poker is always a battle that involves inducing your opponents into making mistakes, but nowhere is this maneuvering more pronounced than in heads-up play. If you’re lucky, you’ll be facing a stubbornly thickheaded player whom you can beat without employing much trickery. But generally, forcing your opponent into making big mistakes will involve using a wide range of tactics, many of which involve manipulating established betting patterns. In the end, winning heads-up play typically involves lots of deception: not deception for deception’s sake, but deception for tact’s sake.

Same Betting Pattern, Different Cards; Same Cards, Different Betting Pattern

Many hands can take place in a short period of time during a heads-up match…especially an online one. With the high number of hands per hour being played, it’s usually the case that the same betting patterns repeat themselves within a very short period of time. By keeping the pace fast and furious, you can sometimes lull your heads-up opponent into autopilot mode, at which point you can initialize a hand with a common betting pattern but end it much differently.

Suppose you’ve been raising preflop every time you’re the button and checking behind when you miss the flop, looking to employ a delayed continuation bet on the turn should your opponent check to you again. The last two times you’ve done this, your opponent called you, and the hands went to showdown. Now, you have AA; you raise to 3 big blinds, and your opponent calls. The flop is J52. Consider checking behind and betting on the turn; make it look like you’re making another standard delayed continuation bet. You’ll either get a call from a much worse hand than normal, or you might induce a check-raise bluff. Of course, there will be times when timing won’t be your friend, and the supposed check-raise bluff is coming from a hand that outflopped you, but as always, your thinking needs to be with respect to the long-run.

Meanwhile, you and your opponent have about 6 big blinds each, and your opponent has pushed all-in preflop every time you’ve limped from the small blind. So far, you’ve folded every time your opponent has pushed all-in. Now, you have AA in the small blind. What do you do? Limp, and let your opponent push all-in again. This is a great trap to set up against a player who raises every time you limp from the small blind. If you and your opponent have slightly deeper stacks, say about 15BB each, and your opponent raises to 5BB every time you limp from the small blind, look to limp reraise all-in.

One reason for employing deception in heads-up battles is to trap your opponent. Therefore…

When is Trapping Effective?

Trapping is most effective against opponents possessing the following two characteristics:

1. They often fold when you bet.
2. They often become aggressive when you are passive.

Referring back to the example from the previous section where you trap your opponent by limping with AA, trapping by limping is appropriate if your opponent is more likely to push if you call than he is to call if you push. Normally, when poker players talk about trapping, they think of slowplaying; and when they think of slowplaying, they think of doing so with huge hands. However, against highly aggressive opponents, you should be trapping with more than just your super premium holdings.

Meanwhile, you should avoid trapping against opponents who are willing to call you down with a wide range of hands. Against such players, employ an endless barrage of value bets until they have no more chips with which to call you.

Constantly Change Gears

To thrive in a heads-up battle, you need to anticipate your opponent’s adjustments and make appropriate adjustments in response. And just when your opponent thinks that a certain betting pattern means one thing, go ahead and change things up. Before your opponent catches on to a highly profitable betting pattern, switch gears for a few hands to take your opponent of his mental rhythm; whenever you stumble upon a highly profitable betting pattern, you need to do whatever it takes to preserve it.

While putting all this effort in to confuse your opponent, make sure that you don’t confuse yourself. Sometimes, we can deceive our opponents so well that we suddenly find ourselves in a situation where we can no longer read that opponent because we no longer have past hand data to draw upon. You want to be deceptive, but you also want to control the match in a way that allows you to anticipate how your opponent will change in response to every change you make.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker By The Numbers

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