Heads-Up Limit Holdem – Part 3

Welcome to part three of this four-part series on heads-up limit hold’em. Last month we looked at the basic strategy needed to be successful at this game. The first truth we identified is that nearly every question can be answered with ‘it depends’. While this is true in other forms of poker too, it is especially true heads-up. However, we did identify three cornerstones that must be part of your game. You must play:

Loose – Always pre-flop and usually post-flop against the majority of opponents.
Aggressively – You need to play with frequent (but not mindless) aggression.
Unpredictably – Against all but the very worst opponents.

Get these three things right and you have the core of a good heads-up game. Combine these with the skills that you can bring over from full-ring games and you could potentially be very dangerous indeed. So let’s pick up from there, open up the discussion to look at something that is very rarely discussed in full-ring limit strategy – the metagame.

What is the Metagame?

One big difference between heads-up and full ring games is the idea of a dynamic metagame. Sometimes when playing full ring you will know an opponent well enough that you are aware of how they play in certain situations and you can use that information. In a heads-up game you will play so many hands against the same opponent in such a short space of time that you will start to see the same (or very similar) situations occurring over and over again. You may find that after only fifteen minutes play or less you already have a good feel of how your opponent likes to play in certain situations and be able to exploit that knowledge over and over again.

The bad news is two-fold. First, they will also see how you play in certain situations and be able to adapt. This is why it is necessary to play somewhat unpredictably. Second, if they are a halfway competent player, they will recognise your attempts to exploit their play and deploy countermeasures. You, in turn, can identify these countermeasures and adapt again and so on, as you and your opponent dance a complex dance through the heads-up metagame. This is a fundamental difference between head-up play and longer handed games. The latter rarely (if ever) reach this level of complexity because the same situations won’t occur nearly as often.

If you are struggling coming to terms with what I am talking about, here is an illustration from a heads-up match I played yesterday. My opponent was a reasonable thinking player, but by no means a shark (or I wouldn’t have been playing). He was very loose, seeing virtually 100% of flops, but a little too passive overall. He would often raise draws and occasionally as a pure bluff, but generally didn’t raise enough on the expensive streets either as a bluff or for value.

I quickly determined that he liked to limp from the button (in this case the button, as is most common, was the small blind), only raising the top 20-25% of hands. I also found that if I bet into him on the flop after he limped, he would often fold, more than the 1 time in 3 that made it immediately profitable. So I started betting nearly every flop when he limped, regardless of whether I hit anything or not. After a while he wised up to what I was doing and started to call a lot more and raise when he hit any part of the flop (and sometimes as a bluff). I adapted by ceasing to bet every flop and only betting when I hit the flop in some way, or if the flop was the right texture to represent something. He then adapted again and started betting every flop that I checked in order to steal the pot. I countered this move by check-raising the flop when I had a hand. He responded by betting the flop when I checked, but folding to a check-raise unless he had a hand. Once I realised this, I then started bluff check-raising the flop.

This dance could have continued longer, but I eventually quit the game to go and play on another table I was waiting for. Note how both of us were continually trying to manipulate the metagame to get the upper hand. You might think that this took many hours to play out, but this entire battle of wits took place in a under an hour. And not only that, there were several other similar tussles going on in other phases of the game. After all, this particular battle only concerned flop play when he had the button and didn’t raise pre-flop.

Controlling the Metagame

As you can see from the above example, navigating the metagame is about both adapting to your opponents play and also adapting to changes in their play that take place over the course of the session. This is more or less what you would be doing in a full ring game anyway, albeit to a far greater extent because of the vastly increased amount of information that you are being fed. It is unlikely that you will ever observe a sequence of play anything like the above in full ring play, unless you played with the same person for a very long time (probably over a number of sessions).

Now let’s take things a stage further. The heads-up metagame is, in many ways, like a game of chess. At any given point you can see how your opponent is playing, and employ the best possible counter-strategy. But good chess players will do more than that. They will think several moves ahead to decide not only what they want to do now, but also what they want to achieve several ‘moves’ down the line. As poker players in a heads-up game we must do the same. Rather than just adapting to your opponents game on the fly, try to shape how the game will go. Put yourself in your opponents shoes and try to pre-empt, and eventually control, how they will adapt to your play. When playing, you should be asking yourself the following questions:

1. What does my opponent do that I would like him to keep on doing?
2. What does my opponent do that I would like him to stop doing?
3. How do I want my opponent to perceive me?

What does my opponent do that I would like him to keep on doing?
One of the best ways to win money in a heads-up game is to exploit one or more specific weaknesses in your opponent’s game. Of course, you can only do this if your opponent fails to correct this weakness over time. Don’t play in such a way that you force your opponent to stop doing the very thing that is making you money, or in a way that allows them to easily spot their error.

Example 1 – You have an opponent that folds too often post-flop. You decide that you can make the most money by betting or check-raising every flop unless the board looks very bad. Then, if you meet resistance, just back off unless you have a hand. However, if you do this on every hand, then your opponent will realise quite quickly what you are doing. So sometimes just check all the way to the river with a weak hand, and fold if they bet. By doing this you will give the impression that you are just hitting a lot of hands and are not just bluffing all the time.

Example 2 – You notice that your opponent always bets the river with position when you check to him. To exploit this you can check-raise (or ‘sexy’) the river with your good hands to value bet rather than just bet out. This will frequently earn you two bets instead of one, or one bet instead of none if they have a busted draw. However, do this too often and they will soon wise up and start checking through. Therefore it is best to save the check-raise for when you are fairly confident you can get two bets from your opponent. Sometimes just bet your good hands instead or, if you suspect they might be on a busted draw, check-call, which looks cautious rather than exploitative. Obviously you should also check-fold your lost cause hands, to make it look like their bluffing is working. With any luck, they won’t realise how much money they are losing through their over-liberal betting of the river.

What does my opponent do that I would like him to stop doing?
This is the opposite of the above. If your opponent has a facet to his game that works particularly well against you, or makes you uncomfortable, then you might want to explore ways to encourage them to change or at least temper this aspect of their game. This might mean making plays that are –EV in the short term, but will mould the game into something more to your liking in the long term.

Example 1 - If your opponent bluff raises the turn a lot, then you may need to call down with some weak hands that are slightly –EV against his range. Eventually he may decide that it is not worth bluff raising you, at which point you can return to your usual game. Or, if he does it out of position, then skip some of the thinner value bets and check behind on the turn more.

Example 2 - If they are the kind of opponent who always keeps betting until they meet resistance, never allowing you a cheap showdown, then start waiting until the river to raise your good hands. This will sometimes mean you miss bets overall when they have a good second best hand, but after repeatedly folding their junk to a river raise, they should eventually get the message and give you some free cards and cheaper showdowns.

How do I want my opponent to perceive me?
If your opponent is adapting to the way that you play then it is good if they misread you, or misunderstand exactly what you are doing. At the very least, you need to make sure that your game is one step ahead of their efforts to adapt. Often the early hands of an exchange go a long way towards formulating an opponents overall impression of you. As the sayings go, “first impressions count” and “it’s easier to gain a good reputation than lose a bad one”.

Hence it is sometimes worth investing a little time at the start of a match in your ‘image’. Hopefully you will be playing a loose-aggressive game, so you might want to goad your opponent into prematurely labelling you as tight and/or passive. Obviously you don’t want to give up too much, but maybe fold a few borderline hands that you might otherwise play or take a more passive line if the difference in EV is only slight.

Of course, the goal in creating a false impression of yourself is to cause your opponent to play incorrectly against you, or at least be slow to adapt, when you show your true colours. If you gain a tight reputation, you will encourage your opponent to make poor bluffs that you can snap off. If you gain a passive reputation, you will increase your own opportunity for bluffing. Of course, under certain circumstances, it might pay to go the other way. Showing a couple of bluffs to an over-aggressive opponent may lead to them increasing their aggression still further, allowing you to win bigger pots with your good hands.

A Word of Warning

The idea of the metagame and how to manipulate it is a powerful one in heads-up limit holdem. With only one opponent to concentrate on, both players will constantly be adapting and readapting to each other in an effort to stay on top. However, you mustn’t lose sight of the fundamentals of the game. On the whole you must stick to your loose, aggressive style, adhering to fundamental poker principles and hand reading skills.

The ideas in the second half of this article especially must not be taken too far. I have never been a big fan of ‘advertising plays’ in full ring games, because what you stand to lose is often more than you think and not offset by what you stand to gain. In heads-up play, it is more of a necessary evil because of the importance of the metagame and the potential gains from forcing your lone opponent to repeatedly play sub-optimally. However, you still need to be mindful that you are not playing too sub-optimally yourself in order to achieve these goals. If you are unable to win by playing a solid and comparatively straightforward game and are relying on constantly trying to manipulate your opponent to maintain an edge, maybe it would be better to find an easier opponent. Online poker is not yet tough enough that we need to scratch around for tiny edges in a game that is already extremely high variance. Not at the lower limits anyway.