Texas Hold Em Heads Up Poker Strategy is very important for winning a poker tournament since you must play Heads Up at the end of it.  Heads Up Poker is also becoming very popular in the cash game format, with many of the high stakes games being played one-on-one.

An effective Heads Up Poker Strategy is very different from regular full ring strategy.  It is important to understand these differences and the reasons for them.

Loose and Aggressive Poker is the best Texas Hold Em Heads Up Poker Strategy

In a Texas Hold Em Heads Up Poker game, you have to post either the small blind or the big blind every hand since there are only two of you playing.  Therefore, you cannot wait for a good hand like in a full ring game.

The continuous posting of the blinds means that you must play a looser style of play as it becomes expensive to fold.  For example, if you fold most hands, you will quickly blind yourself out of the game.

Loose play is also encouraged by the size of the pot before the game starts.  With a small and big blind already posted, completing from the small blind provides you with good odds to call with almost any hand.

Also, in Heads Up play, the small blind is also the button, meaning that you will have position for the rest of the hand after the flop.  This positional factor further encourages looser play.

Semi-bluffing is a very powerful move in Heads Up situations.  If you hold a strong draw, then you can really push you hand hard as chances are your opponent will have a relatively weak hand and find it difficult to call off a large proportion of his stack with a marginal holding.

If you get it wrong and he is lucky enough to have a monster, you still have outs with your draw and a chance to win.  For these reasons, draws can be played aggressively.

If you are playing Heads Up at the end of a tournament, the large size of the blinds and antes relative to your stack is also very important.  The blinds and antes are usually very large at this stage meaning that you have to take risks and gamble to prevent being blinded out of the tournament.

Also, the potential payoff from stealing the blinds through aggressive play becomes larger as the pre flop pot may represent a large proportion of the chips in play.  You may be able to quickly build your stack through a few pre flop blind steals.

Lower Starting Hand Requirements

With only two players contending the pot, the value of your starting hand requirements will drop rapidly as you only need to have a better hand than one player, as opposed to nine in a full ring game.

In fact, most of the time, neither of you will have any sort of real hand.  This makes aggressive play very profitable Heads Up since your opponent often does not have much of a hand to call your aggressive bets with.

Likewise, you must play looser and be willing to call down an aggressive opponent with a marginal hand since play dictates that he won’t have much either.

Switch Gears

With all this advice on loose aggressive play, you still need to remember to switch gears and slow down if your opponent begins to call you down often as a counter strategy.  You need to be astute to what your opponent is doing and make sure that you do not trap yourself if he has adjusted by calling you often.

If he has made this adjustment, you want to then bluff less, and value bet more as you know that he will now call you down thinking you are betting with air.  In this situation, you want to bet him for value and win a good sized pot.

Pay Attention

With Heads Up Poker, it is just you and the other guy.  It is very important to figure out his betting strategies and patterns and any tells that he may have as every hand is against him.  Since every hand is against him, you have more time to focus on just him to see just how he plays in every situation.

Pay attention as one tell, or clue, as to his betting strategy may help you win his entire stack or save you losing yours.  In Heads Up play, everything is on the line at the end of the tournament and there will be a big difference in the payout, so pay attention to your opponent’s style as now is when it is needed the most.

Correct Texas Hold Em Heads Up Strategy is very different from normal poker strategy and therefore many adjustments have to be made to your game.

The best way to approach Heads Up Texas Hold Em is to understand that the blinds now make playing tight poker very expensive and wrong.  In addition, with only two hands out there, your starting hand requirements become much lower.

Understanding these changes and adjusting your game to better suit the situation will allow you to play a winning Texas Hold Em Heads Up Strategy.