Heads-Up Poker and Play Momentum

What do we do in heads-up poker play? There are a lot of opinions regarding this topic, but there's just one thing we ought to remember: our play momentum.

When it's a heads-up poker we're in, we have to keep on with the play momentum. Momentum is the ability to stay or survive in the game to gather enough force (or chips stack) till we have enough to switch to a more aggressive play. If we're just given small pots and the blinds in a poker tournament, we have to be patient with this, and anyway, these small wins help us gain and keep up with our momentum till we get to the main part of our strategy or the development of our heads-up poker play.

If we see that we have the smaller stack supply, we are yet in no position to take bigger pots in a heads-up poker. We have to wait till we build enough momentum. Meantime, we settle for small wins and keep a tight grip on our greed. This helps us build our stack so we can later target bigger pots. Say, we raise the pot with an A7, and then the opponent calls. The call should be a wake-up call in heads-up poker---the opponent wouldn't call without a solid hand to back it up with.

For instance, the flop hits rags and we are not intimidated. We kept on, trying to bluff, because we don't want the opponent to win. With a pre-flop call like that in heads-up poker we shouldn't try bluffing. Trying to move tables in a tournament isn't the solution either. We should depend on our stack size and also the structure of the blinds in heads-up poker. Blinds in tournaments mostly increase gradually.

So we take our time with these blinds, bluff once in a while, place feeler wagers, and other play tactics for whiling time away. When the blinds increase all of a sudden, just relax and be content winning a strong hand now and then, here and there. Or, we may also select the small wins and be aggressive with them. No bluffs, no feeler wagers. We have no time for that and the blinds might get too high for our stack. The idea in all these is to get by up the ranks in heads-up poker.

When we are in a heads-up poker, it's important to gather momentum in the play until we have enough to prepare for more aggressive plays.