Heads Up 7CS: Folding to the Bring-In

[PokrLikeItsProse]

You are playing heads up and your opponent brings in. Under what circumstances (type of opponent, quality of door card, quality of hole cards, cash game vs. 2-player freezeout vs. final two of a tournament) would you fold?

Are there any books that discuss the principles involved in heads up 7cs explicitly?

[Hauser_III]

7CSFAP doesn't have a section addressing heads-up play specifically, but does address the analogous situation of how you should play at a full table if you're to the right of the bring-in and you're looking at a bunch of folds in front of you.

Basically, the options are call or raise, and keep applying appropriate pressure. Heads-up play has little to do with your cards, and much, much more to do with your ability to outread or outmaneuver your opponent, so general guidelines are virtually worthless. Don't let your betting patterns get predictable, call occasionally with big hands, rather than raising, and don't always bet 4th after raising 3rd. For example, you can set people up by establishing a pattern, say, raise 3rd, check 4th and then check/fold 5th to a bet when your hand was marginal to start with; do that a few times, hit a good hand, and when you raise 3rd, check 4th, and call 5th, your opponent will still probably bet 6th, at which point you check-raise 6th and either take the pot there or on 7th.

I love heads-up or short-handed play. I'm constantly involved in it playing stud/8 single-table tourneys, and it's practically pure psychological warfare.

[vulturesrow]

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7CSFAP doesn't have a section addressing heads-up play specifically

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Are you sure about this? I am at work so I cant double check but I am almost certain there is a short section (like 1 or 2 pages) on shorthanded/headsup play.

[Hauser_III]

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Are you sure about this?

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I'm at work, too, so I was doing this from memory. I don't recall it having a specific section about heads-up play, but maybe it does. It might have something about short-handed play, but the question was specifically about heads-up, not just short-handed.

Ultimately, though, whatever is in 7CSFAP, heads-up play is one area that I don't think can really be learned about by reading. It is just too opponent-specific.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

OK, haven't bought that yet, in part because, well, I haven't gone far beyond dabbling at relatively low stakes where you sometimes have the 7cs equivalent of no fold em hold em and in part because I'm only playing for a change of pace right now at 1/2 when I normally play much bigger in other games. 7CSFAP is not a priority in the list of poker books I want to buy.

I've been getting by with just my reading of Theory of Poker and some good psychology of figuring out when someone is weak/strong, but I suspect that my main problem is that I almost never merely call the bring-in unless we both have door card of the same or nearly equal rank. But then, that may be because my caliber of opponents tend to fold too often on third and otherwise call too much if they stay in the hand.

If I understand correctly, I could just use a random number generator to determine if I should just call or raise and I merely have to figure out what raise percentage works against what sort of opponent.

[CarlosChadha]

Hi,

I'd like to point out that playing heads up with the bring in a full game is worlds away from playing heads up. 8 handed, you have 6 more more cards to look at and 2 times more ante. This makes it correct to play WAY tighter. If you ever watch good stud players play heads up, it is EXTREMELY boring because over 50% never go past 3rd st., and only about 1 in 15 go to the river. This makes the game much less about the players, and more about the cards than any flop game.

As to when to fold to the bring in, I will just say that it is correct to do any where from 5% to 20% of the time. This large range is a factor of many things, like the ante/bring in structure, how likely the other players is to reraise, how loose the other player is, how good your hand is, whether either of you might be on tilt (or preceived to be on tilt), and how big your doorcard is in relation to their doorcard.

Regards,
Carlos