Heads Up Poker Sites - Best Heads Up Poker & Strategy

Most online poker sites offer a variety of tournaments for players, including heads-up poker in tournament format as well as cash games. Heads-up poker sites will provide you with a wide selection in stakes as well as game variation giving you the ability to play heads up poker in Hold'em, Omaha, and Stud.  Heads Up refers to playing one opponent and this page focuses only on the poker sites offering Heads up tournaments or cash games.

Below, we've ranked the best heads up poker sites based on stakes available, game variety and action found on site. Each of the heads up poker sites you see listed below offer new player bonuses in addition to special promotions such as new player freerolls, VIP & loyalty rewards among others. All of the heads up games can be found in the lobby by either clicking on the ring game tabs, or by selecting the tournament lobby.

Basic Strategy for Playing Heads Up Poker Online

Heads up poker is now one of the most popular forms of poker. Prior to the advent of online poker, heads up play was difficult to coordinate. Dealers would need to work extra hard to get a reasonable amount of hands dealt and the play would generally be slow. However, players have fallen in love with this format, thanks to the online poker sites with heads up games. Some of the biggest stars of the game are known for their heads up play. Take guys like Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan, heads up play is where they thrive and generate a large portion of their poker earnings. Of course, watching a heads up battle is also exciting. When Durrr issue his challenge to beat any player in the world over 50,000 hands, the poker community took notice. With the heads up tables as active as they are, proper strategy is an absolute necessity regardless of whether your playing at a Hold'em poker room or an Omaha poker site.

All About Meta Game
Heads up poker is almost entirely based on various levels of meta game. Meta game, for all intents and purposes, is the mind games that are played between two players. The most basic level of thinking in poker is “what cards am I holding.” The second most basic level of thinking is “what cards does my opponent have,” and so on and so forth.

Low limit heads up play is merely a matter of who understands the fundamentals the best and who is able to minimize their tilt at the table. Since you are only playing against one player, any amount of tilt will absolutely destroy your bankroll. In fact, a lot of ring game players will go to the heads up tables just so they can tilt off their roll. You must avoid the temptation to tilt. If you are unable to control your emotions in heads up games, you shouldn’t be playing heads up poker. Even though emotional control is important in every form of poker, it is a necessity in heads up games.

In Game Strategy for Heads Up Poker

When playing in a heads up game online, attention to detail is of the utmost importance. If you are making small open raises, but could get away with bigger raises, you are essentially throwing money away. Look for small ways to maximize your profitability from the heads up poker sites above. For example, a loose player might be calling all of your raises at 2.5x the big blind, but would they also be calling 3x bb raises? What about bluffs, will a small bet work just as well as a big bet? These types of variable will vary from opponent to opponent. As a heads up player, you need to be aware of your current environment and be willing to make changes whenever necessary. This is why an ABC poker strategy is seldom applicable to a heads up game. It is impossible to apply the same HU strategy to each heads up match when each opponent and game is so different from the next. Heads up play is full of variance, so you need to be consistent whenever you sit down. There is no doubt that learning heads up play will be a challenge, so always take failures (and successes) in stride.