Heads up poker is a game of frequent decisions. Some are harder than others, and because of the nature of the game, some situations are so uncertain that no amount of discussion will give you a conclusive answer. This post is about how to play such, marginal spots.
Here's an example hand:
You've got 88 in the SB and you raise, the BB, a loose-aggressive OOP player, calls. The flop comes 79T and he check-raises your cbet. Do you move all in, fold, or call?
I'll bet that you can go to any blog or twoplustwo forum post and post this hand and get several different answers. Some people fold now, some people try to peel, and some people (probably my line) will just shove and try to fold off some hands that checkraise. Who is right? When is picking a different line a mistake? Sometimes you just can't know. Decision-making when multitabling involves knowing the difference between decisions that require you to click the "time" button and decisions that are so close that nobody really knows what line is best. In other words, efficiency.
Marginal decisions are those that require the most thought, and they're also the ones that only improve your winrate slightly. As a rule of thumb, against loose-aggressive opponents, most of your decisions are fuzzy. You can't put the above-mentioned player on a range, and you certainly can't put him on the two separate ranges "What hands is he check-raising" and "What hands will he fold if I go all in" -- so we aren't ever sure if pushing is better than folding or calling. However, we DO know that you probably have a good 10 outs if you're called, and he may muck something like a pair of nines. In any event, it's all speculation, and that's why the decision is not worth taking a lot of time on. If fold, call, and raise all have similar expected values, then, according to game theory, we are completely indifferent between the three outcomes and we might as well just flip a three-sided coin to choose the decision for us. If you're not sure what to do, don't blame yourself, just pick whatever you like most and either you'll figure it out by the river or you won't.
Did you like this? Mash "Like" below! Have something to say? ...You get the idea.
