formats · heads up
Heads up.
Two players, and one fact underneath every decision: you are in a blind on every hand there is. There is no orbit to sit out, no early position to fold from, and no cheap way to wait. A strategy built on patience does not merely underperform here, it loses money by itself.
the price of folding
Three quarters of a big blind, every hand you throw away.
One lap of the table costs one and a half big blinds anywhere in poker: the small blind plus the big blind, once each. What differs is how many hands a lap contains. Heads up it contains two, so the cost lands at 0.75 big blinds per hand, six times what the same folding habit costs you at a nine handed table. Sit down with twenty five big blinds, fold everything, and you have nothing left after about thirty three hands, which is well under an hour online.
That number is the whole argument for playing wide. Every fold is a payment, so a hand only has to beat the alternative of paying, not beat some abstract standard of quality. It also explains why heads up players raise so much from the button: with only one player left to get through, taking the blinds uncontested is a real and repeatable win rather than a lucky break.
what your hand is actually worth
Against a single unknown hand, ordinary cards do far better than most people assume. This is the same evaluator the rest of the site uses, run over hundreds of thousands of deals.
| Hand | Name | All in vs 1 random hand |
|---|---|---|
| A pair of eights | 69% | |
| Ace nine offsuit | 61% | |
| Ace five offsuit | 58% | |
| Queen seven offsuit | 52% | |
| King two offsuit | 51% | |
| Seven two offsuit | 35% |
Equity when all the money goes in before the flop against one unknown hand. Simulated over 400,000 deals per figure and rounded to the nearest whole percent.
Queen seven offsuit is not a hand anybody is proud of, and it is still slightly ahead of a random one. King two offsuit is a coin flip. Even wins better than one time in three, which is worth keeping in mind the next time you are certain your opponent cannot possibly have anything. None of this means every hand is playable, because playing badly after the flop costs more than the blinds ever will. It does mean the reason to fold heads up is your opponent and your position, not the raw quality of two cards.
One rule genuinely changes in this format, and it catches people out. The button posts the small blind heads up, acts first before the flop and last on every street after it. So the player who is out of position before the flop is in position for the rest of the hand, which is the reverse of what position at a full table teaches you, and it is why the small blind can profitably raise most hands rather than complete or fold.
When the stacks get short the format converges with everything else: below roughly fifteen big blinds the choice is all in or fold, and the push fold calculator has the ranges per depth. Above that you are playing real post flop poker with one opponent, which is where the usual starting hand order still helps as a baseline, and the starting hand chart is that baseline. Widen it, do not replace it.
next
Play a heads up match against the bot.
Reading about wide ranges and actually defending one are different experiences, and the second is the one that sticks. Sit down against the computer, play a few hundred hands, and find out how it feels to be in a blind every time. Play chips, no account, nothing at risk.
questions about heads up
What is heads up poker?
Poker with two players. One table, one opponent, and a blind posted by each of you on every single hand, which is the fact that changes everything else about how it is played.
Who posts the small blind heads up?
The button does. Heads up the dealer is also the small blind, acts first before the flop and last on every street after it. It is the one place where the rules themselves change between formats, and it is worth checking on the first hand rather than assuming.
What hands should you play heads up?
Far more than at a full table, because there is only one opponent to get through and because folding is not free. King two offsuit is already a coin flip against a random hand, and a hand as ordinary as queen seven offsuit is slightly ahead of one. The exact ranges depend on your stack and your seat rather than on a fixed list.
Why is folding expensive heads up?
Because an orbit is only two hands. The small blind plus the big blind costs one and a half big blinds per orbit in every format, but heads up you pay that over two hands instead of nine, which works out at 0.75 big blinds per hand. A twenty five big blind stack that folds everything is gone in about thirty three hands.
Is heads up harder than a full table?
It is less forgiving. There is nowhere to hide behind a tight range and no waiting for a premium hand, so mistakes repeat every couple of minutes instead of every hour. That is also what makes it the fastest way to improve: you get many more decisions per hour, and the same opponent in front of you the whole time.
How do you beat an aggressive heads up player?
Usually by folding less, not more. Against someone betting every flop, the correct answer is to keep calling with hands that beat a bluff rather than waiting for a hand that beats a value bet, because a range that bets everything is mostly made of hands that have nothing.
Back to all five poker formats, or see what happens to these same numbers when a third player sits down in a spin and go.