Heads up against 'All-in every hand' opponents

[DocDerringer]

One of the things I get a little frustrated with is playing against an opponent who decides when it's heads up his best shot at winning is to go all-in every hand.

Typically my strategy is to wait for a decent hand to bust him. But waiting for an A or K often gives him quite a few chips and even when I call with the better hand, the percentages are fairly equal. It's just frustrating to see the end of a game suddenly turn into a "who hits something" lottery. Thoughts?

[pzhon]

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One of the things I get a little frustrated with is playing against an opponent who decides when it's heads up his best shot at winning is to go all-in every hand.

Typically my strategy is to wait for a decent hand to bust him. But waiting for an A or K often gives him quite a few chips and even when I call with the better hand, the percentages are fairly equal. It's just frustrating to see the end of a game suddenly turn into a "who hits something" lottery. Thoughts?

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It sounds like you are getting outplayed.

Someone who pushes with every hand heads-up is making a mistake, but not much of one when the smaller stack is at most 20 times the big blind. A much larger mistake is failing to push enough, and failing to call with hands that are good heads-up, but not at a full table. Pushing a lot is a good way to exploit that large mistake.

Wtih some effective stack sizes, the correct strategy might be to push with 80% of your hands, and call pushes with about 65%. You might try dealing out 26 hands face up from a deck of cards, and then choose which 17 you will call with, and which 21 you would push. You will probably have to lower your standards a lot.

When you are down to the final 2, and your opponent is pushing a lot, there is nothing you can do to gain a large advantage. If your opponent isn't pushing a lot, then it is possible that you could gain a large advantage by exploiting his tendency to fold too much. So, you should push a lot.

[knightmare_37]

He's basically saying that he doesn't want to play postflop, and wants to leave his chances to what he thinks will be a coinflip. You actually have a decent advantage by being able to pick what cards you want to flip with. You have to assume that he's going to be playing all ranges of cards, so you want to pick a range that you feel comfortable with (read HOH:2) and go from there. If you're the cl you have some time to pick, but if you're behind then you have to open up more and more of your range the further you're behind.

[Arjonius]

If the opponent is pushing every hand, then you're truly playing against two random cards. so basically, if you have better than the average hand, which is something like Q8, you have the odds in your favor, albeit by a slim margin in many cases. That doesn't necessarily mean calling as soon as you have Q8 or better; you also want to factor in how far you're ahead and the sizes of the blinds. If they're sizable relative to the stacks, you need to take a stand fairly soon even with a good chip lead since it's getting smaller with every hand.

[Sean Fraley]

If you're in a cash game wait for 88+ and AT+. Boring but profitable.

[Jiganti]

Just wait for the hands to beat him. Not much to it, it's easy money.