Most online poker players will agree that heads-up play puts you in the toughest situations. After all, the blinds are in your face every hand, and there’s no folding 9 out of 10 hands while waiting for pocket pairs. If you do this – especially against a really aggressive player – you’re going to bleed out a lot of chips.
Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who frequently raise in heads-up poker – even if it’s just a minimum raise. So you have to be equipped to combat their raises by being aggressive yourself. Of course, this doesn’t mean using blind aggression, where you randomly shove your stack in with ATC in hopes of forcing a fold.
Instead, the first thing to take note of in situations against an aggressive HU opponent are the blind levels. Assuming the blinds are low, you can expect a lot of minimum raises from your opponent; this being said, you need to be willing to 3-bet quite often when you’re holding half-ways decent cards. When blind levels get bigger, you can still 3-bet occasionally, but don’t over do it since there’s too much at stake here if your hand is weak.
Moving along, the button is your friend in these situations, and you should open up with a raise in most cases. By making minimum raises yourself, you force your opponent to decide if they want to call or 3-bet OOP. During the times when you have a weaker hand like small pairs, top pair w/ weak kicker, or just an ace, it’s important to control the pot and keep it small so the risk is minimal.
Aside from this general advice, it’s very important that you do as much research on heads-up situations as possible so you can develop a strong HU strategy.
