The last few months the amount of time I have to play poker has been pretty limited. There have been numerous obligations for school, family, and other day to day activities. Since I did not have a lot of time to sit down and play poker tournaments, I have been playing cash games because of the convenience. I am a player that tends to like a lot of action, so after I got bored playing microstakes short-handed ring games I decided to take $100 and play some heads-up at the .25 / .50 NL level.

First, I just want to say that I have learned a lot from playing heads-up. I did not want to risk more than $100 so that is all I allowed myself to play for. I also avoided playing on the deep poker tables since I am more comfortable playing with relatively equal stacks and I did not want to put my entire heads-up roll on the table; most of the time I simply bought in for $25 and tried to build from there.

Playing such low stakes, it is hard to beat the rake. For the most part I was not concerned about this because I was just looking to have some fun. If however you want to make some serious money playing at the lower limits, you will want to play in heads-up Sit-and-go’s where the rake taken is a flat rate and you play with chips instead of cash. The downside of course is that if you bust you cannot reload. On Full Tilt Poker the lowest limit heads-up cash game is at the .25 / .50 NL level. Playing with $100 I was severely under rolled, normally I would never play with such a shortfall but I only wanted to risk $100 and was not willing to commit more money to laying heads-up.

Even at these small stakes, if you play long enough you will see the same players. You will see the same players consistently because they are making money at this level. Game selection is critical. If you are new to heads-up or uncomfortable playing more advanced opponents, sitting down with them is like burning money. Make sure to take extensive notes on your opponents because you may see them again later on or your notes will come in handy during the match.

Overall I stopped my little heads-up experiment after losing almost half of my original bankroll for the games. It was a lot of fun and after I have more time I would like to take it more seriously. While everyone thinks aggression is important playing heads-up, so is changing gears. Nowhere is it more apparent than playing heads-up when someone develops a pattern. To win consistently you must be able to adapt to the situation and your opponent.

Purple Lounge Poker