I love to play the heads-up sit-n-gos on Ultimate Bet, and I have had success at all levels from $5 to $100 (I’ve never had the “cahones” to play higher than that). Recently someone posted that they would like to see an article on Heads-up play....so here is my attempt at that article. <READMORE>

One of the biggest mistakes I see heads up players make is not raising enough. Especially at the lower levels ($5-$20), a lot of players play very standard poker. If they have a good hand, they call, and if they have a bad hand, they fold. If they have a VERY good hand, they raise. It's very easy to take advantage of players like this.

It is proper to raise with a very wide range of hands when you’re heads up. If I see a hand like K-8, I’m raising. If I see a hand like Q-10, I'm raising. Why? Because I probably have the best hand! If you deal out random cards from a deck, the average hand will be Jack-high. Therefore, when heads up, any hand with a card higher than a Jack is a “better than average hand,” and appropriately, I raise it up. I love opponents who just call from the small blind a lot, because it gives me the opportunity to catch a straight with my 2-3 or a flush with my 7-2 of hearts. I am able to catch these hands because my opponent with A-3 or K-4 decided it wasn’t worth raising.

Conversely, if I see an opponent doing a lot of calling when I raise, I do even more raising than normal. Why? Because I can take away those pots on the flop. Say the blinds are 50/100, and both players have $2500, If every time I raise to 300, my opponent calls, I'm going to raise to $300 almost every time, because when I continuation bet the flop, I'm going to win that pot and that extra $300. And if I get resistance, I just let the hand go, because the small pots I've won will add up to MUCH more than the small pots I lose when I continuation bet and he raises me.

Now that I’ve given you the big secret to winning, you're all going to go out there and start raising, right? Ok, so now we have a bunch of people who know they should raise. The next question that will inevitably come up is, “Well, how do I deal with someone who raises all the time?” I’ll give you a hint....it starts with an R and rhymes with graze. That’s right....you guessed it....RAISE! The fastest way to slow down a raiser heads-up (or even at a full table) is to play right back at him.

Wanna try a fun experiment? Log onto UB, sign up for a $5 sng, and raise to 3x BB every single hand. I'm serious. I don’t care if you have 7-2, A-A, or J-10, just raise. See how many pots you win. Now, occasionally you’re going to get that preflop raise called, right? Well, bet the flop. No matter what it is. If you have 7-2 and the flop is A-K-Q, bet it, and bet about 3/4 of the pot. If you get raised, just fold. You know what....you’ll probably win! You'll at least make a good run at it.

The first step to beating your opponent heads-up is becoming comfortable with raising. At this point, I almost don’t even worry about my cards. If I get raised or reraised and I don’t have a GREAT hand, I just fold. The small pots you win will far, far outweigh the pots you lose when you get reraised.

The hardest thing to learn (at least for me) is that you only have a finite number of chips when you're heads up, and as the blinds escalate, you're going to have to put an uncomfortable amount of your stack into the middle in order to win. If blinds are 5,000/10,000 and you both have $100,000, you're still going to have to make it $25k to go with “only” K-5. But that is how you win. If the other player makes it $25k, you're going to have to move in with your A-J. That’s how you win heads-up matches. I hope this helps, and good luck at the tables.</READMORE>