Heads-up poker play presents an interesting twist versus ring-game poker because you know exactly how often you will be playing out of position. In a ring game, there is only one position at the table where you know that if you choose to enter a pot you will be acting first for the rest of the hand, and that’s the small blind. You could end up acting from the button if everyone folds behind you; or even from the big blind if everyone folds to the small blind.

In heads-up poker, however, you’ll end up having to act first for the whole hand exactly half of the time. That means you’ll be acting at a big disadvantage 50% of the time in heads-up play. Now, don’t despair – because that also means you will be acting with an advantage 50% of the time as well. It’s how you manage your pots under each of these circumstances that will determine whether you win or lose heads-up.

We know for sure that hands are much more difficult to play out of position since it’s much more difficult to win the pot without improvement – to bluff – when we have to act first. And, when we do bluff, the line of play, well the effective line of play anyway, involves committing more chips to the bluff than we would have to if we were in position. Whenever we have to commit more chips, our success rate on the play has to be higher for the play to be profitable and our risk of ruin also goes up – two very undesirable things.

We also know that the flip side of bluffing is also true: Not only is bluffing harder to accomplish out of position, but getting paid on your hands is also more difficult. The check-raise with big hands often causes your opponent to fold. Just check-calling and playing the hand cagily makes you dependent on your opponent betting for you and increases the probability that you will get sucked out on. That kind of passive play, while more likely to induce bluffs, also increases your variance considerably in the already high-variance situation of heads-up poker.

Now, when you’re on the button, of course, everything flips in your favour. You’re going to be much more likely to win when your hand does not improve. Your bluffs are going to be cheaper, and they are going to be higher percentage and executed with more information since you can see what your opponent does in front of you before you decide how to play the hand. Not only that but when you do make a big hand, it’s going to be much easier to extract value when you get to act last. All of this comes together to tell us that acting in position is a huge advantage.

So, how do you come out a winner in a game where you are at a big disadvantage half the time, but a big advantage the other half of the time? Well, it has to do with controlling the pot. The most obvious way we can counteract our 50/50 disadvantage is by keeping our posts small under these circumstances. This means that if a player limps on the button against me, I am very likely to just go ahead and check the big blind heads-up; because if he wants to keep my pot small when I have to act at a disadvantage that is good for me, and I will oblige. The only type of opponent I would raise a lot there is one who had shown me that when he limps that he tends to fold to a raise. Obviously in that spot I will just try to pick up the pot early and not have to play it out with a positional disadvantage. I will also raise with hands that have a big enough advantage that they compensate for the positional issues… in other words if I had a hand I know is the best hand I will often raise after a limp – a hand like A-A comes to mind but not A-J. But outside that narrow range of circumstances, I will do what I can to keep the pot smaller when I am out of position than when I am in position.

Basically the idea is this: Get your opponent to put in lots of money when it is advantage you and little money when it is advantage him. When he limps the button, it is advantage him, but he is allowing you to get by for free. This of course brings us to the other piece of the puzzle: When you’re on the button, you should be making the pots bigger (by raising), especially against an opponent who folds or calls in the big blind all the time. As long as your opponent is not putting a lot of pressure back on you every time you raise, you should be raising a lot.

When you think about the match in this way, what happens is that you make sure that 50% of the time you’re at a big advantage over your opponent (when you’re on the button) that the money you churn through the game is much higher than the 50% of the time you are at a disadvantage. And that fact alone will take you a long way to being a winning heads-up poker player.

Higher churn when it is advantage you. Remember that.

Annie Duke

Annie Duke is the sister of famous poker professional Howard Lederer and one of the best known female poker professionals in the world. Interestingly, she has been known to speak up against women’s only tournaments, arguing that poker is one of the games where women and men could compete from absolutely equal footings.

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