Have you ever been in one of those heads-up battles where you know you're better than the guy you're playing, you know exactly what he's doing, but you just can't seem to get rid of him? This could be in a heads-up sitngo,a one-table sng, or, more commonly in my case, at the end of a larger multi-table tournament. Well, that was me last night, as I attempted to win my way in to FTOPS Event #6, the Pot-Limit Holdem tournament of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series coming up next week. I entered the FTOPS Event #6 satellite with 9 other players vying for one seat in the 200k guaranteed prize pool PLH tournament on Thursday, November 16, so we made the final table after just a few minutes when the first player in the pool was eliminated. In the end, I eliminated four of the other eight players at the final table before entering heads-up play at about a 2-to-1 chip deficit, and little did I know then that the fun was just starting.
My opponent in heads-up play was startlingly easy to read, and his overall strategy was in my view highly dubious at best, especially with the chip lead he had at that point in the satellite. But at the same time, as friends jec and JJ can attest after railing me through most of the heads-up play, there was very little I could do to combat the lack of cards I received and lack of flops I hit, which is generally to be expected in heads-up holdem action. First off, my opponent basically failed to raise it up preflop with anything but his strongest hands. This meant he was barely ever raising preflop, which left me to put in a pot-sized raise to many of his preflop limps, and made it easy for me to steal loads of chips that way while holding absolutely nothing.
Similarly, just about every single time I failed to lead bet on the flop, my opponent would min-bet the flop back at me. Like the lack of preflop raising, he made this move almost like clockwork, probably at least once every five hands or so, and again left himself open to abuse by me as I would check almost every hand to him on the flop and then would only continue on with my good hands. This is also a bad place to be in as a heads-up holdem player, because from his perspective, the only times I got involved in a large pot (in pot limit games, it is often not until after the flop that the pot really gets big enough to care much about), I was usually ahead. Couple my opponent's tendency to auto-bet every flop that I checked with his general calling station nature, and the end result was that I didn't even have to bet the few big hands I was able to come up with during our marathon one-hour heads-up session. I just kept check-calling all the way through the river, and my opponent managed to lose a few key large hands to me where I had made something even as small as third pair on the flop but decided to stay in against his basically automatic betting without any real purpose.
Eventually, after I took the lead for the third or fourth time in the matchup a good hour or more after we had begun heads-up play, my opponent finally got tired of the monotony and started playing reckless. He began raising every single hand preflop, after an hour of never raising except with pocket pairs and AK, but this strategy was equally easy to exploit my just keeping my cool, playing good starting hands and not putting too much money into the pot without a solid hand or at least a draw to a winner. It did not take long before I got my opponent to call off his chips with just a nut flush draw against my top pair King kicker, and when his 35% shot did not fill by the river, I took down the satellite for my second seat in one of the FTOPS tournaments that run on Full Tilt from November 11 through 19. So far I will be playing in the Pot-Limit Holdem 200k guarantee on November 16 as well as the Razz 75k guaranteed event on Friday the 17th, and I still hope to win my way in to the 6-max event as well as the Pot-Limit Omaha high tournament through similar nightly satellites sometime this week or next. 
And the moral of the story? Although this is true in almost any form of poker and any form of holdem, you simply cannot play a mechanical, unvaried game in heads-up holdem play and expect to beat an experienced poker player. Anyone who has played enough to learn to recognize common patterns will only have you and your play to focus on, and will quickly decipher your strategy and easily figure out the weaknesses. In my case, I just had to fold every time my opponent raised preflop early on since that meant he had a monster, and otherwise just play my strong hands slowly and allow my opponent to repeatedly bet for me on all streets where I had a likely winning hand. It is crucial in the endgame of almost any significant holdem tournament online that you not only be able to but also be ready and willing to mix it up all through a heads-up poker session, to keep your opponent on his or her toes. If you don't, an observant opponent with even an average amount of good cards will be able to pick apart the cracks in your strategy and you will be left needing a good setup of the cards in order to pull out a victory. Always be cognizant of what your opponent knows and thinks of you given your play in any heads-up session, and always use that perception to your advantage. Predictability is definitely a losing character trait, in any form of poker but especially in heads-up holdem poker.
