TOP Five Heads up Ranges
I’ve been working toward finding an optimal poker online strategy for opening ranges in Heads up Hold ‘Em. In this two series we’ll look at both positions and what hands you should be opening with, when and against whom.
First, let’s look at the button. This is where you’re going to be opening the most hands. In heads up, I like to keep a very big range of hands to open with on the button AA-TT obviously fall into this category. But after that, the opening range against an unknown opponent is fairly light. All pocket pairs are fair game. Any suited Ace or King, and if you’re comfortable with it, any Ax hand or Kx hand. Suited connectors down to 56, or gapers down to 57 (some people will play 58; I see this as a hand to add depending on the aggression of my opponent). If the opponent tends to be really weak tight, or a calling station, I’ll add in any suited cards.
These are your button raising hands. You have a lot wider range to play HU, since hands are “stronger” in this type of game.
You’re standard here will be 3 big blinds. So if you’re playing a 1-2 dollar poker games, your open raise will be to 6 dollars. This may sound high, but you have to look at it in light of a full stack at 100 big blinds which here would be 200 dollars.
You’ll run into three types of poker players generally, and after a few hands, you should easily enough be able to classify the person. First up, you’ll encounter the maniac. He will 3 bet you like no body’s business. This player is probably savvy enough to realize that you are opening up a wide range, and will justly 3-bet you into submission unless you make some adjustments. First, tighten up your range of raising hands against this guy. Obviously you’ll be 4-betting getting ready for the shove with your big hands, but you’ll also have to pick some hands to defend your raises with as well. Since you won’t be raising quite as much against this player, pick your defense spots with strong Aces (AK-AT) KQ suited or non, JK or JQ suited, and JT suited. You’ll also probably be playing with pocket pairs down to 8s or 9s. If you’re sitting on AK, AQ or AJ suited, AA, KK, QQ and possibly JJ, you may consider not defending but four betting in order play your hand strongly. You may be playing it face up, but you’ve still extracted value from his 3-bet if he folds.
