Heads-up Cash Games by Taylor Caby

To be a great heads-up cash game player you need to have good hand-reading skills, the ability to adjust to your foe and, above all, ?the mentality not to tilt when things are going badly.

Heads-up cash games are so popular because they offer the potential to win a lot of money ?in a short space of time. In 2005, Taylor Caby was one of the first online superstars who specialised in heads-up cash games. Playing under the name ‘Green Plastic’ he had a long-running $25/$50 match with Prahlad ‘Spirit Rock’ Friedman that attained legendary status in the online community. Here Caby offers his top tips for negotiating the volatile waters of heads-up cash.

1 Play Loose on the Button

The button is always the most profitable position in a cash game but it’s more important in a heads-up game than any other. A good player can probably get away with raising close to 90% of hands preflop, even 100% against opponents who don’t reraise much. You should be raising most of your hands in position and folding most hands out of position.

You’re either in the best position or the worst position when you’re heads-up so you have all the leverage or none of it. In a heads-up cash game you’re really only making money from the button.

2 Mix Up Your Play

A lot of internet players are robotic. They see the same type of players all the time and play in a style that is popular online. If they see a guy limping they think he’s an idiot and think they need to start raising the guy a lot. If you limp with a hand like J-9 suited or 8-7 suited every now and then, and the guy is going to go crazy, then you have a lot of leverage. You have a hand that plays pretty well postflop, it’s well disguised, and if he’s raising a ton of times when you limp he’s often going to have junk. He’s probably going to continuation-bet almost all the time. If you hit a hand you can raise or call, and if you miss you can raise or float him. It puts you in a great spot right there.

When out of position preflop you should be mixing up calling raises and three-betting with your bigger hands. It’s important to show a smart player that you can call with some premiums. Every once in a while I’ll throw in a call with A-A or K-K and check-raise any reasonable flop.

3 Don’t Get Dominated

I personally will fold Ace-rag up to A-8 out of position. I will fold K-7 and K-8 and play K-9+. I’m not going to be playing a bunch of those raggedy hands out of position because I just don’t think they’re profitable.

We are getting into complicated stuff here, but there are some players who will not three-bet most Aces. They will fold Ace-rag out of position and they’ll call with a hand like A-T or A-J because they know that if they three-bet you with those hands you’re going to fold hands like A-8 and A-9 that they dominate. They’d rather keep your smaller Aces in the pot than fold them out when they three-bet.

Against those types of players you may actually call a three-bet with A-x hands because you know they’re not three-betting you with anything [that dominates you] except A-K and A-Q.

4 Be Careful What You Three-bet

I three-bet my premium hands – T-T+ – 80-90% of the time. You can call with a hand like J-T suited but you can also three-bet it. It’s the same with hands like 8-6 suited. I three-bet suited connectors and one-gappers [e.g. 5c-7c] around a third of the time too. The important thing is that your opponent doesn’t know what you have each time.

The only way I would three-bet complete trash hands is if I had some reason to believe my opponent was very likely to play fit or fold – that is, if he had a big hand preflop he would call or four-bet, and if he had a mediocre hand he would just fold. However, most players mix it up in position heads-up. You can’t just expect someone to automatically fold 9-7 suited or something like that. You’re going to get into big trouble three-betting raggedy hands out of position because he will probably have a better hand than you if he calls, and you’re also out of position. That’s a really bad combination.

5 Get it All-in Preflop

If you’re playing the style I advocate, where you’re aggressive, raising most hands on the button, and three-betting some weaker hands, then you should feel completely comfortable getting it all-in preflop with 9-9+ against most opponents you play online.

However, if you’re playing against the type of guy who is really passive and not resisting all this aggression you are showing, then first of all that’s a good game you’re playing in, and second you probably don’t want to get it all-in preflop with anything worse than Q-Q or J-J. If the guy is so passive then he’s just not shipping money in with 8-8 or 9-9. Make sure you try to chip those players down and bleed them away slowly over time.

6 Learn to Value-bet Thinly

More often than not top pair will win a heads-up pot at showdown, so you should act accordingly. If you have top pair I would most likely be value-betting it all three streets. Also, if you have second pair with a good kicker against a guy that’s shown he can call a lot there’s no sense in playing it passively.

If you value-bet too thinly and a guy calls you with a better hand it’s not too bad. Maybe you thought you were betting for value, but what does that tell you? He knows you’re willing to value-bet thinly and you can probably get away with more bluffs in future because he knows you’re going to be trying to get value out of second pair sometimes. This just comes with practice.

7 Keep the Pressure on Postflop

Continuation betting is important. Against a weak opponent, like most of the guys at the small to medium stakes, they are mostly playing their cards and you should be continuation betting most to all of the time.

I would c-bet most of the time on Ace-high flops. People tend to give up on them and they don’t like to check-raise bluff, knowing that you could have an Ace, leaving them with less than 5% equity.

If you’re playing against guys who are tough and observant – check-raising flops that they think you’re likely to be attacking often, such as K-5-2 – you have to mix it up. You can’t just relentlessly c-bet. Say the flop is 5s-6s-7c and he checks. If you have nothing this is probably a flop I would give up on a lot of the time. Your opponent will realise that you’ve probably not flopped that hard. He can check-raise and put you in a position where you’re going to be risking a lot of chips for not a lot of reward.

You, too, should be check-raise bluffing against guys who are c-betting too much. If you call with a hand like 8-9 suited and flop a flush draw it’s a no-brainer spot to do it. Other times if you just call preflop with K-J and the flop comes 3-6-7 that’s not a bad time to check-raise either. If you get called the guy probably has a one-pair hand and you likely have six clean outs on the turn. If the turn brings your pair card you can fire again confident you have the best hand. If you miss there are certainly going to be cards he feels you could have so you can just fire again. The biggest thing to keep in mind when you’re check-raise bluffing is try to do it when you have a fair amount of equity in the hand.

8 Game Selection

Game selection is vital because all this stuff I’m talking about doesn’t really matter if you’re playing against somebody as good as you. You can be a world-class player and play to the best of your abilities, but if you’re playing a guy one notch better than you, you’re still going to lose eventually.

When you sit down at the table you have to look for the things I’ve talked about, the strategies I’ve suggested you play. If you’re playing against somebody who is following those – he’s loose in position, he’s aggressive, he’s careful out of position (but not too tight) – that’s the type of guy I probably would not want to play. If I’m playing and after 20 minutes I don’t really see where my edge is versus this guy then I just sit out. That’s the great thing about the internet – there are always other games to play.

9 Take Advantage of Tilt

This is poker. You’re there for one reason – to make money. If you’re playing badly or tilting just get out of the game. If you lose five buy-ins then that’s probably a good starting point to take a break.

Momentum is very important heads-up. When things have been going well and you’ve been winning pots and showing down winners it’s just human nature for the other person to tip his cap and give you respect. That’s often a time where you can start to ratchet up the aggression. Your opponent is probably going to give you credit now for playing solidly and making hands, so you should start to bluff him a little more. Then the snowball effect comes. You’re bluffing and bluffing him and he’s thinking, ‘Man, this guy keeps getting hands.’ Eventually he thinks you can’t have a hand any more so he calls, but you’ve got a proper hand this time. When things really start to go your way you can get the guy on tilt. That’s when you can really make a ton of money playing heads-up.

10 Put the Hours In

If you’re playing well and winning, put as much time in as you possibly can. If you’re not playing well and not winning, just quit. If you follow that advice I swear you will be a successful player – as long as you have a basic understanding of heads-up strategy.

So many people do the exact opposite of this. I would say that about 75% of poker players actually play way more when they’re losing than when they’re winning. This is insane, because all these factors I have talked about work against you when you’re losing. It’s because of the emotions involved in the game. Just flip that around and you’re almost certain to show an immediate profit.

CardRunners is the world leader in poker training with over 1,500
poker videos, active strategy forums and other benefits focused on
teaching you profitable poker. You can receive a CardRunners membership
for free by joining Truly Free Poker Training.

www.CardRunners.com
www.TrulyFreePokerTraining.com