Heads up BB vs raise

[AleoMagus]

If I am the Big blind heads up, and the small blind raises by the amount of my blind, what gets folded here? this is obviously a very common situation in limit tourneys and not too rare at NL either.

I ask this because I have been doing a bit of thinking about this lately. I used to fold quite a lot of hands here, but more and more over the past year, I find that my requirements have been dropping. I recently found an online odds generator for hold'em situations and it would seem that heads up, about the only situation where the required 25%+ win rate is not there is when your opponent has a pocket pair equal or higher than both your hole cards.

Add to this the fact that you have position for the rest of the hand and I am starting to wonder if ANY TWO cards are worth a fold. Can this be true?

In terms of the win rate of any two cards, this might be even more true in a larger game, but I KNOW that isn't true.

Where is my reasoning falling apart? Position, I am sure has a lot to do with it when the raiser acts after you in a larger game. There is also the matter of being less sure that you have the best hand when making smaller pairs and the fact that you could see a re-raise after you. Still, when heads up, I find it hard to convince myself that my original reasoning is wrong.

Somebody talk me out of this before I start calling every small heads up raise.

There is also the reverse implications that I don't like. Why would I ever try to steal in a limit hold'em tourney (from the small blind) when I know that the BB is always justified in a call and will have position on me. I suppose we could both have positive EV given that his Big blind is already in the pot but it still worries me.

Perhaps I will get a response back like "Yeah, dummy. You always call there. sheesh". That said, I'd still appreciate any feedback.

Regards,
Brad S

[CrisBrown]

Hi Shrub,

Heads-up, I'm going to call a min-raise every time, no matter what two cards I have. My strategy heads up is that I want to win every pot where I have or hit anything, and every pot where neither of us has or hits anything, leaving my opponent only those pots where he has or hits something and I don't. Obviously, it doesn't always work out that way, but that's what I'm aiming for.

Cris

[eastbay]

If your stack is big, I don't think calling anything is a huge mistake.

When your stack is suffering, you might want to pick your spots a little more carefully.

In any case, not folding here can go a long way to not getting run over heads-up, which is an easy mistake to make.

[LetsRock]

Just like anything in poker, I don't believe there is ever an "always" or "never" in poker. So, I don't think you should revert to calling with "any two cards".

You should lower your standards dramatically and even fire back with hands that you normally wouldn't raise with. If it's a mini raise (or limit) then I'll find any reason I can to call and invent reasons to raise, but I won't go into the defend any two mode.

Di I really want to give him 2 BB defending this 93o?

[hockey1]

I've been struggling with the identical question recently. The complication, as I see it, is that depending on the aggressiveness of the min-raiser, you may be OUT of position. My thinking -- and please everyone correct me if I'm wrong here since, like I said, I've been struggling with this -- is that, as you point out, HU pretty much any 2 cards are good enough to call given the 3:1 odds you're getting. BUT that assumes you see the river for free. What do you do if you've got a random slightly below average hand, the flop doesn't help you, and then the min-raising SB min-bets into you? Do you commit another SB (or more if you raise) to the pot with your crappy hand? What if you just call and then then min-raises you again on the turn? This can be a major chip bleed, especially once the blinds start increasing.

My points, I suppose, are two. First, if anything I actually prefer to play this hand "out of" position -- i.e., first to act, HU against a min-raiser, so that I can take the initiative and take down the pots when neither of us hits. Second, I'm still a little selective about the min-raises I call from the BB.

[AleoMagus]

lol. It's funny you should make this point. I just finished a tourney ($30+3 NLHE sng at party). Anyways, I am in this situation with three players left. Blinds are 200/400 and we all have about 2500+ chips. Actually, I think I was the smallest stack with about 2400. I get 84o, button passes and the small blind makes it 800. Normally a fold, but I'm thinking about my post and I say "lets try out the any two method". I call

Flop comes blank (237 no flush draw). he puts in a little 200 bet and I'm thinking, No way that flop helped that raiser, besides, isn't that Brunson's "gutless poast oak bluff"?

I raise it to 800. He thinks and thinks and thinks and I'm getting ready to count my winnings when - he calls. Turn brings T and puts a flush draw on board. What does he do? bets out another 400.

well, at this point I have put 1600 chips into the pot with 84o and ten high. I can't call and I don't have enough to even try to push him out of this pot now. I fold

Chip-bleed is right. In retrospect, my 800 raise was pretty gutless also considering the 1600 already in the pot. To do it over again I'd have folded or pushed all in.

I am still unsure. I know I played it badly but was the preflop call my biggest mistake? I don't know.

Regards,
Brad S