How should you adjust to this guy heads-up?

[mrwatson23]

Heads up limit hold'em. If you call from the sb (button), he will raise from the bb almost 100% of the time. If you raise, he will reraise almost 100% of the time. From the sb, he will raise almost 100% of the time. He never calls pre-flop, he either raises, reraises, or folds (basically never). Assuming he plays pretty well post flop, how should you adjust to this guy's pre-flop play?

[Dov]

Just call most of your PF hands.

If I have T8 or better, I will jam the pot with him PF. Do not continue past the flop unless you have a pair, a draw, or at least 1 overcard, preferrably a face or an A.

Bet many flops, and check most turns. C/R the turn with any piece of the board and cap if he 3 bets.

Play any A or K for the best hand.

After you LAG back at him a few times, he will adjust, so you will have to also.

This will be a bumpy ride, but if you've got the stomach for it, you'll break him by playing tighter on the flop than he does and paying him less when you're beat on the turn than he'll pay you.

Dov

[mrwatson23]

Hi Dov,

Thanks for the response. How can you afford to play tighter on the flop if a lot of money is going in pre-flop. I mean, obviously you would like to know when you have the worst of it on the flop and make a good fold, but how can you ever know that if he is basically betting every time?

[PokerNoob]

I had a guy do this just the other day with me at a 2/4 table. Claimed he was slumming from the 15/30 game to get his LAG/tilt out, but became semi rational on the big streets.

Limp reraise the hands you would normally raise from SB. Do a lot of 3-betting from the BB. Mix up flat calling his last preflop action with raising/checkraising the flop. Keep him off balance. Getting good starting cards helps too.

[Dov]

The point is to keep the pot as small as you can until you know what kind of hand you have.

The reason for ramming with the other PF hands is that they fo better than 50-50 HU.

You will profit because you will win more when you win and lose less when you lose.

[Dov]

That could have been me.

I've been known to do that...

Dov
/images/graemlins/cool.gif

[PokerNoob]

If you kept drawing out on the poor guy, it was me. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif

I've really got to start paying better attention to manipulating pot odds in these scenarios. Maybe I'll look through some hand histories and find something to post.