Heads-up poker strips away everything that makes poker comfortable. No waiting for premiums. No hiding behind tight ranges. No exploiting the fish while avoiding the regulars. Just you versus one opponent, playing 70% of hands, making decisions every 30 seconds that determine who takes the money.
This is poker distilled to its essence: pure aggression, constant adjustment, and psychological warfare. Every hand matters. Every decision compounds. Every weakness gets exploited immediately. You can't wait for good spots—you have to create them constantly or get run over.
I've played thousands of hours of heads-up, from $1/$2 to $25/$50, online and live. Won some, lost more while learning, eventually became profitable through painful trial and error. The learning curve is brutal because mistakes get punished instantly and repeatedly. But master heads-up and you've mastered poker—everything else feels easy by comparison.
Here's what actually wins at heads-up poker, not the generic "be aggressive" advice everyone repeats without understanding why.
The Position Advantage That Decides Everything
In heads-up, the button posts the small blind and acts first preflop but last postflop. This creates a massive positional advantage that most players don't fully exploit.
From the button, you should be opening 80-90% of hands minimum. Yes, that includes J-3 offsuit. The positional advantage is so significant that almost any two cards become profitable opens. You're getting 3:1 on a min-raise and have position postflop. The math is undeniable.
The big blind faces a terrible situation: out of position for the entire hand after the flop. This positional disadvantage is so severe that defending wide becomes mandatory despite the disadvantage. Fold too much and you're giving away money. Defend too loose and you're playing huge pots out of position.
The correct button strategy: min-raise to 2x almost everything. This gives the worst price while maintaining a wide range that's hard to play against. Three-betting from the big blind needs to be frequent (15-20% minimum) to prevent the button from printing money.
Most players completely misunderstand this dynamic. They play 40% of buttons and fold 70% of big blinds, essentially handing their opponent free money every orbit. Position in heads-up isn't just important—it's everything.
The Aggression Formula
Heads-up poker rewards aggression more than any other format, but not blind aggression—calculated, relentless pressure that never stops.
The math is simple: if your opponent folds more than 50% to a min-bet, betting any two cards is profitable. Most players fold 60-70% to continuation bets heads-up. This means betting almost every flop shows automatic profit before considering your actual equity.
But single barrel aggression isn't enough. The money comes from multiple street aggression. Bet flop, bet turn, bet river. Most players can handle one barrel. Few can handle three. The cumulative fold equity across streets creates massive profit.
Your baseline should be: bet 100% of flops when you were the preflop aggressor, bet 70% of turns, bet 50% of rivers. Adjust from there based on board texture and opponent tendencies. This might seem excessive, but it's mathematically correct against most opponents.
The key is bet sizing. Smaller bets (25-40% pot) allow more frequent bluffs while maintaining credibility. You can bluff twice as often with half-pot bets versus pot-sized bets while maintaining the same risk-reward ratio.
Range Construction That Actually Works
Forget everything you know about starting hand charts. Heads-up ranges are completely different and much wider than you think.
**Button opening range**: 80-100% of hands. Yes, 7-2 offsuit is an open. The weakest 20% you might fold are hands like 7-3 offsuit, 8-2 offsuit, 9-3 offsuit—the absolute garbage. Everything else opens.
**Big blind defending range**: 60-80% against min-raises. This seems insanely wide but consider the math: you're getting 3:1 on a call, needing only 25% equity to break even. Almost every hand has 25% equity against a 90% opening range.
**Three-betting ranges**: 15-20% of hands from the big blind. This includes all premiums (top 5%), good suited hands (A-x suited, K-x suited), and some pure bluffs (7-6 suited, 8-7 suited). The three-bet needs to be 5-6x the open to generate folds.
**Four-betting ranges**: Top 5-8% of hands plus occasional bluffs. Most heads-up players never four-bet bluff, making them incredibly exploitable. Add hands like A-5 suited as four-bet bluffs and watch opponents fold too much.
Exploitative Adjustments
Playing GTO heads-up is fine for learning, but the real money comes from exploitation. Every opponent has massive leaks in heads-up because the format is so difficult.
**Against passive opponents**: Open 100% of buttons, bet every street until they show aggression. Passive players let you realize all your equity while folding too much. Value bet thinner than seems reasonable—second pair is often good.
**Against maniacs**: Tighten button opens to 60-70%, call down lighter, let them hang themselves. Maniacs bluff too much in spots where you can't fold. Check-call with ace-high becomes profitable. Let them barrel off with air.
**Against tight players**: Open 100% of buttons, three-bet 25% from big blind, apply maximum pressure. Tight players wait for hands that don't come often enough heads-up. They fold 80%+ giving you free money.
**Against calling stations**: Never bluff, value bet everything including third pair. Calling stations don't fold, so bluffing is literally burning money. But they also call with worse, so thin value becomes massively profitable.
The Mental Game Destroyer
Heads-up poker destroys mental games faster than any format. The variance is brutal, the pace is relentless, and there's nowhere to hide when you're getting crushed.
A standard heads-up session involves 300+ hands per hour online. That's more decisions than most players make in a week of full-ring poker. Mental fatigue sets in quickly, leading to deteriorating play that compounds losses.
The swings are massive. Winning or losing 10 buy-ins in a session is normal. Your opponent can run pure for an hour and there's nothing you can do except take it. This variance breaks most players mentally before they develop the skills to win.
Tilt is amplified heads-up because every mistake directly benefits your opponent. At a full table, tilting costs you money distributed among eight players. Heads-up, one opponent gets all of it, creating a snowball effect where tilt leads to more tilt.
The solution: shorter sessions with hard stops. Play 200 hands maximum, then mandatory break. Set stop-losses at 3-5 buy-ins. When you hit them, quit immediately regardless of how you feel. The format is too intense for marathon sessions.
Online vs. Live Heads-Up
Online heads-up and live heads-up are completely different games requiring different strategies.
Online heads-up is pure aggression and mathematics. Players see 300+ hands per hour, making individual reads less important than fundamental strategy. Timing tells matter more online—instant checks usually mean weakness, long tanks indicate decisions.
Live heads-up becomes psychological warfare. At 30 hands per hour, every hand matters more. Physical tells are everywhere. Table talk becomes a weapon. The pace allows for complex leveling wars that don't exist online.
For home game heads-up matches, the dynamics are unique. Players often have history, know each other's tendencies, and play deeper stacked. These matches become about exploitation and adjustment rather than pure aggression.
The Profit Reality
Heads-up poker is the most profitable format per hand but also the most difficult to beat. The rake impact is severe, especially at lower stakes where beating 5bb/100 in rake makes profitability nearly impossible.
Professional heads-up players are extinct below $2/$4 because the rake makes it unbeatable. Even at higher stakes, the player pool is tiny and extremely tough. Everyone playing $5/$10+ heads-up is studying solvers and playing near-optimal strategy.
The real profit in heads-up comes from two sources: challenging recreational players who think they're good, and the heads-up portion of SNGs and tournaments where players haven't specialized in the format.
For casual players, heads-up should be about improvement, not profit. The skills developed translate directly to all poker formats. Learning to play 80% of hands profitably makes playing 20% at a full table trivial.
Common Heads-Up Disasters
Most players make the same mistakes in heads-up, hemorrhaging money through predictable errors:
**Playing too tight preflop**: Folding more than 30% of buttons is giving away money. Every fold from the button is a mistake against competent opponents. You need to play garbage hands and make them work postflop.
**Single-street aggression**: Betting flop then checking turn is transparent weakness. Either commit to multiple barrels or check from the start. Half-hearted aggression is worse than passivity.
**Sizing tells**: Using different sizes for bluffs versus value is the most expensive tell in poker. Pick standard sizes and use them for entire ranges. Your opponent shouldn't know your hand strength from bet size.
**Tilting from variance**: Heads-up variance is insane. Your opponent will hit runner-runner repeatedly. They'll cooler you constantly. This is normal, not personal. Players who can't handle this shouldn't play heads-up.
Training for Heads-Up War
Getting good at heads-up requires specific training that most players never do:
Start with play money or micro stakes online. The goal isn't profit—it's volume. Play thousands of hands to understand the flow and pace. Make every mistake cheap before playing for real money.
Use poker software to analyze your ranges. You're probably playing too tight from the button and not three-betting enough from the big blind. Database analysis reveals these leaks immediately.
Practice with a partner at equal skill level. Set up home game sessions specifically for heads-up practice. Trade strategies, discuss hands, improve together. Iron sharpens iron.
Study solvers but don't worship them. GTO provides a baseline, but heads-up profit comes from exploitation. Learn the theory then deviate based on opponents.
The Bottom Line
Heads-up poker is simultaneously the best and worst format in poker. Best because it's pure poker skill with nowhere to hide. Worst because it's mentally exhausting, high variance, and heavily raked.
Master heads-up and every other poker format becomes easier. The aggressive skills, wide ranges, and constant decision-making translate directly to winning play everywhere. But the journey to mastery is brutal.
Most players should treat heads-up as training, not a primary game. The skills you develop are invaluable, but the format itself is too demanding for regular play unless you're truly dedicated to specialization.
If you're going to play heads-up, commit completely. Half-hearted heads-up play is expensive education. Go all-in on aggression, play uncomfortably wide ranges, and accept the variance as the price of poker's purest format.
Ready to practice heads-up warfare? Set up your battlefield with a proper poker table designed for intense, focused competition.