Stay Aggressive. When playing heads-up, the more aggressive player is going to be the one that.

• To take this further, in The Mathematics of Poker, by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman, a near optimal strategy is given for heads-up play when both player’s stacks are less than 50 big blinds. This strategy suggests that the only two moves in this scenario should be to jam or fold.
• Want to improve your poker game for FREE? Join our email poker course and learn three CRITICAL SKILLS necessary for tournament success: https://goo.gl/7qQsCf.
• Heads-up sit and go tournaments are played with two players, the small-blind being assigned to one player, and the big-blind to the other. The button is assigned to the small-blind, and is rotated.
• Heads Up Poker If it's one-on-one action you're after, then Heads-Up Poker Tournaments are the perfect solution. They're a special type of tournament made up only two players per table. Everyone plays until one player has all the chips in play at their own table.

The National Heads-Up Poker Championship was an annual poker tournament held in the United States and produced by the NBC television network.^[1] It is a $25,000 'buy-in' invitation-only tournament^[2] organized as a series of one-on-one games of no limitTexas hold 'em matches. The participants include many of the world's most successful poker players, as well as celebrities.

The championship was the first poker event to be televised on and produced by a major U.S. television network.^[1]

In October 2011, NBC announced that the National Heads-Up Poker Championship would not return in 2012, ending the championship's seven-year run.^[3] After a one-year hiatus, the tournament returned for a final time in 2013.^[4]The $25,000 buy-in event ran from Jan. 24 through 26 at Caesars Palace, the same venue where the event was held from 2006 through 2011.

In February 2014, NBC announced the National Heads-Up Poker Championship would not return in 2014.

The Heads-Up Championship had been sponsored by online poker companies before Black Friday. The World Series of Poker (WSOP.com) is the new presenting sponsor.^[5]

Structure[edit]

The single-elimination tournament is modeled after college basketball tournaments. Players who win a match advance to the next round; the player who wins six matches is crowned champion.

The first round is seeded randomly the night before the tournament begins. Players are divided into four brackets – Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades. A participant advances by winning a heads-up match against his or her randomly drawn opponent. The structure of the brackets then determines every match thereafter. The semifinals consist of one player from each bracket, with the winner of the Spades bracket playing the winner of the Clubs bracket, and the winner of the Hearts bracket matched up against the winner of the Diamonds bracket. A best-of-three final match then determines which of the two finalists is crowned champion.

Heads Up Holdem Poker

Brief history[edit]

The National Heads-Up Poker Championship is an invitation-only event. In contrast, the World Heads-Up Poker Championship is an open event with a maximum participation of 128 players.

The 2005 event took place at the Golden Nugget Las Vegas between March 4 and March 6. It aired weekly on NBC from May 1 to May 22 with commentary from Gabe Kaplan and Matt Vasgersian.

The 2006 edition took place from March 4 to 6 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. NBC began its coverage by broadcasting one part of the opening round on April 16. The semi-final and championship matches aired May 21. Kaplan and Vasgersian returned as commentators.

The 2007 edition was broadcast from April 8 to May 20. Ali Nejad took Gabe Kaplan's spot as commentator due to Kaplan competing in the tournament.

Results[edit]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abNBC Spot in the Cards for Poker Tourney February 2005 article from the Las Vegas Sun
2. ^NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship Inks Four-year Deal with Caesars, a May 2008 article from pokernews.com
3. ^'NBC Cancels National Heads-Up Poker Championship'. PokerNews. Retrieved 13 October 2011.
4. ^'NBC Brings Back National Heads-Up Poker Championship'. PokerNews. Retrieved 14 January 2013.
5. ^'National Heads-Up Poker Championship returns to Caesars Palace'. Retrieved 14 January 2013.

Poker Tournament Heads Up Strategy Tactics

Last week, we discussed three-handed strategy for a single-table sit & go. This week, we will tackle heads-up play.

It's important to be able to play the endgame effectively in SNGs. When playing poker online in a standard single-table sit & go, for example, the payouts typically have 50 percent of the prize pool go to the winner and 30 percent to the runner-up.

At this point of a SNG, the effective stack is usually under 10 big blinds or it will be in short order. The shallow stacks tend to make the game simple and relatively easy to play. Generally, you want to be going all in or folding. Which hands you do this with depends on the tendencies of your opponent.

Facing an Unknown or Balanced Player

When you are facing an unknown or balanced opponent, it is best to utilize an unexploitable strategy. One strategy that has stood the test of time is called the 'Sit And Go Endgame' system, or SAGE for short. It was developed and introduced by Lee Jones back in 2006 and is still relevant to SNG strategy today.

Essentially, SAGE is a shorthand memory trick that helps you determine if a hand is an unexploitable shove or call. Here is how you use SAGE.

First, you must calculate the Power Index (PI) of your hand. Number cards are valued at the displayed amount 2 through 10. Then jacks are worth 11, queens 12, kings 13 and aces 15.

To calculate your hand's PI, double the value of your highest card, then add the value of your lowest card. If you hand is suited, add another 2 points. If you have a pair, double the value of one of your cards, add the other one, then add another 22 points.

For example, with , you double the value of the jack (11 x 2) and add the 7, totaling 29. With , you double the eight (8 x 2), add the 7, then add 2 more for suitedness to total 25. With you double one of the sixes (6 x 2), add 6 more, then add 22 for being paired to total 40.

Once you've calculated the PI of your hand, use the chart below to look up the number of big blinds in the effective stack to determine if your hand has a PI high enough to play.

For example, when the effective stack is 7 big blinds, you must have a PI of 26 or higher to shove and a PI of 30 or higher to call. This means it would be recommended to open-fold (PI = 25), to shove but not call with (PI = 29) and shove or call with (PI = 40) based on our calculations above.

This shorthand is game theoretically optimal for effective stack sizes 7 BBs or below. It starts to break down for bigger stacks, so I am including a second short chart with the percentage of hands you can shove or fold 8-10 BBs unexploitably as recommended by Max Silver's SnapShove app.

SAGE Chart

SnapShove

These are great defaults to use when you don't know what mistakes your opponent is likely to make. But when you know he is too tight or too loose, you can deviate from this baseline to exploit him even further.

Facing an Overly Tight or Overly Loose Player

SAGE would have you call a 7 BB shove with a hand like (PI = 30). This is great to know against a good player who is shoving hands as bad as (PI = 26), but not against a player who shoves too tight.

If you know this to be true about your opponent, you should call him tighter than SAGE suggests. If you can determine the bottom of his shoving range, just call him slightly tighter than that.

By the same token, the range of hands SAGE suggests to shove is profitable against a player who calls correctly. But if your opponent calls too tight, then you can shove even wider than the SAGE ranges.

Feel free to throw in a few more hands, especially those that contain big cards, but don't go overboard. There are players and situations where you can get away with shoving any two cards — but this approach can quickly become a slippery slope to Spew Valley, so be careful.

When facing a player who shoves or calls too loose, you can just stick to the SAGE ranges. The fact that he is getting it in with more garbage than you just improves the EV of every hand in your ranges.

Heads-up play is where the real money is in a SNG. But because of the short stack sizes, it can be one of the easiest parts of the tournament to play. If you utilize these tips, you should win at least your fair share of SNGs in the long run.

Next week, we'll wrap this series up with a discussion of sit & go bankroll management.

Also in this series...

Winning Poker Strategy

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