Take advantage of your opponent's tilt when heads-up

Articles / John Tabatabai / 18 February 2010 / 1 Comments

There is little more frustrating in the game than repeatedly losing buy ins to a weak and lucky player heads up, and as the blood starts boiling, the possibility for tilt rises exponentially.

Some of the most profitable situations in heads up cash games are to do with spotting if and when a player has snapped, and then radically changing your calling ranges as a result. Heads up poker is probably the most brutal arena in the game, where psychology and skill clash together with all the usual savage luck of poker.

There is little more frustrating in the game than repeatedly losing buy ins to a weak and lucky player heads up, and as the blood starts boiling, the possibility for tilt rises exponentially.

Tilting players tend to start playing wildly aggressive and over the top in heads up matches. Habitually bluffing with nothing, going too far with any kind of hand, and calling off with total junk, are all pretty standard plays once someone starts really losing it. These sorts of plays require you to radically shift most of your hand ranges to take maximum advantage, and learning the methods to exploit these tendencies to the maximum is crucial to making the most money on the day.

Someone habitually bluffing and going too far with anything opens themselves up to a much greater frequency of marginal calls than someone playing closer to the optimum line. As someone's play gets wilder, your own standards for calling should rise directly in line with it to pick off more bluffs. As a side point, there is nothing better for extending a players tilting streak than making a few well timed hero calls against there moves.

Not only should you be calling more, but frequently you should be value betting much more lightly. As a player's bluffing frequency rises, so often does their expectation that your bluffing frequency is higher (weak players nearly always use their own play as a point of reference when thinking about others around them), with the result that they start calling more and more often with junk. This leaves them wide open to a few well timed thin value bets, and getting maximum value out of your marginal hands is crucial to fully exploiting a tilting player.

Heads up poker is probably the purest form of the game, and as a result, the close observation of your opponent is more important than in any other form. Spotting and adapting to big changes in their playing style is fundamental to becoming a winning heads up player - you cannot simply play one style, and observation and adaptation are the two most important features of a winning heads up players game.

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Comments (1)

1. Gambit90 | 18 February 2010

   Nice article! strongly agree with every word :)