Whether you play in heads-up tournaments and sit and go tournaments you’re going to need to learn how to play heads-up poker. Learning how to play heads-up poker takes time just like anything else and you need to take it one step at a time. Today we’re going to be looking at how to play heads-up poker against an aggressive player. I figured this would be a great topic since most heads-up players are very aggressive.

The first thing you need to learn is how an aggressive player typically plays in a heads-up match. Often this type of player will like to raise every pot preflop on you, so you can’t be scared of calling a small preflop raise. They will also usually make a continuation bet after the flop and this is where you need to decide whether you want to play the hand further or not. The one thing that an aggressive player doesn’t like is when they’re re-raised so you need to be willing to show your own controlled aggression or else your opponent will walk all over you.

Ideally you should be playing few hands against an aggressive player because you don’t want them to grind away at your stack. When you do play a hand you need to play strong with premium cards. For instance, if you have pocket aces and you’re opponent raises 2X the blind, you want to re-raise to about 5-6X the blind. If they just flat call then you need to go all-in on the flop. When you have a marginal hand you’ll want to see the flop for as cheap as possible so that you can try to hit a big hand. If you hit a marginal hand that you feel is best then your best bet is to try and take the pot down after the flop. If you happen to flop the nuts though, then you need to slow play your opponent into the ground.

Playing against an aggressive opponent is easy as long as you’re patient and don’t try to push the action too much. Aggressive players make lots of mistakes when they’re trying to steal pots so it isn’t hard to catch them. The only time playing an aggressive opponent is horrible, is when you’re hitting absolutely no cards at all. It can become frustrating being raised every hand when you aren’t hitting any flops, but you need to try and remain calm and hold out for some decent hands before committing your stack.

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