A quick guide to HU cash

I've just had another crappy session and I'm on semi tilt - owned someone HU only for him to suckout for stacks and remove any profit then I got hit and run by a short stack whos a5 beat my tt, then I got backdoor flush over flushed and finally spewed a stack at £500 on a horrible bluff, well only about £250 was spew but still annoying (ie the initial bluff was good but it soon became clear he wasnt folding). I'm discliplined enough not to play but I've got a burning desire to so I'm going to write about it instead. Sorry for the whine, I actually find it annoying when people whine about beats and to be honest I don't really care about my beats - its more the fact that I made a stupid mistake because of them.

Anyway lets talk HU. Let me start by saying that like any form of poker there is no perfect strategy, it is all about establishing a "normal" line then deviating from that in certain ways in order to maximize your expectation against opponents who adapt to your "normal" style.

Preflop

First off starting hands, like 6max or full ring your starting hands should depend on your position, your opponent and your image but a rough default range might look something like this...

Button raising range - no limping!: any suited cards, any K any A, most Q's, any connectors or one gappers, any hand with two medium cards or two big cards ie 69 or J7, any pair etc. In some ways it might be easier to state which hands to fold, generally I fold hands like q2o, j4o, 83o, 72o, 32o ie ones that have nothing other than pair potential and even when we hit those pairs we are either very very vulnerable to be outkicked or the pair is very low and basically only better than A high, hands like 45o are much better than j2o due to straight potential.
Note: The one time when limping is viable is against short stacks who are very volatile. E.g. someone who has $100 with $2/$5 blinds, raising to $15 (3x is standard hu raise) puts you in a very tough spot if they push.

BB range: Generally it is good to be relatively tight in the bb to keep things simple while trying to ensure you dont get ran over by someone. Obviously a big part of successful HU strategy is to not be too predictable, so when I say calling or reraising ranges I mean them as a rough guide and you should merge the two ranges at the ends ie call mostly but reraise sometimes with the strong end of the calling range ie 88 or T9s and similarly the opposite for reraising hands ie reraise mostly with KJ but sometimes call.

• Calling: suited aces and kings, a7o+, K7o+ Q8+ j8+, hands like 87o or 96s, all pairs, all suited connectors etc.
• Reraising: ATo+, A8s+, KJ+, 99+, some suited connectors or 1 gappers

Finally a rough BTN 3bet calling range would be basically the same as the reraising range from the BB but you can losen up a bit if you want since you have position but I tend to keep the "Big card part" ie Ax the same but play more suited connector type hands.

Flop

Its pretty hard to write a short summary for post flop play HU because literally every line is available to you so I'm not even going to try. Instead I'll try to talk about the very basics and add in a couple of deviations to consider. The key to good post flop play HU is to play standard and add in lots of little deviations along the way to confuse your opponents and make them play incorrectly against you.

In position: In HU the majority of the time no-one has anything but the key isn't always just blind aggression but who can represent the hands best. Generally cbet the majority of flops particularly A-Jxx ones or 26T etc which are unlikely to hit your opponents, flops like JhTs7h should be bet rarely for obvious reasons. Basically use your knowledge of normal cbetting and adapt to hu.

When you hit a pair you nearly always want to bet it because a pair is a good hand in HU and obviously you are cbetting a lot so you need to balance that out a bit. Similar to the btn raising range it might be easier to state times when you might want to check a good hand. Times might be when you raise K5 and flop comes K96, by checking here with a strong hand (TP is a monster) you achieve a few things a) you make it so that your opponent knows you are capable of checking a hand so they won't autobet the turn every time you dont cbet, b) it is a good place to slowplay because only an ace can really hurt you, c) you can sometimes get more value from a 9 because you can bet both remaining streets and they will certainly call.

One other technique to consider is very occasionally checking good hands on draw heavy boards, this is because no-one can ever give you credit for a hand on future streets and so opponents often try to bluff you or completely overvalue their hand if they have one. Clearly you should only do this rarely but an important thing to remember is that most of the time people dont have a hand HU and that includes draws, so even if one of them hits you can still have some confidence that you hand is good as your opponents are likely to be bluffing the draw.

Out of Position: Again the "opponent dependent disclaimer" is very valid here. Checkraise aggressive opponents a lot - with both air, draws and good hands, they will react to this in two ways either they slow down and allow you to control the match by leading the turn and taking pots with hands which have no showdown value and they let you check down your hands like 33 or A high which have showdown value but mostly can't stand any heat (note A high is often good HU and things like K high call downs are "normal?"), alternatively they start reraising your C/Rs so the normal "tighten up and wait for a hand e.g. top pair" applies, very occasionally people start calling the C/Rs in which case they often either fold a lot to a turn bet. Hands like middle pair or bottom pair are best played from behind the majority of the time i.e check/call one or two streets as standard - again I stress that its important not to be predictable so if you have J9d on a As9s4d board it is probably best to check call say 80% but C/R the other 20% for example. I generally don't lead that much in OOP because its often better to C/R as you likely get a cbet as well as the current pot, however I like lead bluffing on draw heavy boards since opponents are scared to raise due to a possible shove putting them in a crap spot and on very dry boards that are unlikely to hit my opponents and as such sometimes they don't cbet them as often.


Essentially... Top pair+ is a strong hand ie bet for value on three streets, in a reraised pot you shouldn't fold top pair (otherwise why are you playing that hand in the first place) and occasionally middle pair too, in just raised pots getting your stack in with 2pair+ is good but again opponent specific. Making lots of small and medium well timed bluffs is important along with the rare 3 barrel after you know a little about your opponent.

Thats all I have time for at the moment, I will add more in the future.

Good luck at the tables.