Fine tuning my heads-up game

Lately I have been spending a lot of time playing heads-up. I consider myself to be a pretty good heads-up no limit player but never really bothered to play heads-up by choice. I still enjoy the grind of tournaments. The other day I just happened to read an article in a major poker magazine about exploiting your advantage heads-up and I decided to jump in for the heck of it.

Lo and behold I took down 3 out of 3 matches. The thing that really surprised me is how easy it was to determine what my opponents approach to playing me was going to be. One was only interested in playing small pots. That was fine by me as I prefer to play small pots heads-up as well and believe that is the best path to victory. The other opponent wanted to play large pots and became a rather easy player to trap.

Playing heads-up poker is all about adjusting to your opponent and applying the correct counter strategy to win the match. It usually doesn't take very long to figure out how someone is going to play against you. The key is are you astute and aware enough to understand their approach? This little experiment definitely has me thinking about playing more heads-up matches. No, I realize that I will not win every single one. However, I do realize that when I have an edge I should exploit it. That's what heads-up poker is all about. Try it sometime!