Heads Up Against A Maniac

From my article for Cowboys League
Heads Up Against An Over-Aggressive Opponent
Hello, My name is Ty Jordan and I am a professional online player for Aced.Com and I will be writing several articles for this poker league that hopefully will be of help to league members.
Heads up play is one of the most aggravating parts of poker because it takes you away from everything you hold near and dear as a poker player. You’ve played probably around 6-8 hours to get to the final tables, then you’ve played another 2 hours to get down to heads up. You versus your opponent for the cash, and the glory. The only problem is, the guy is completely over-aggressive, the style that usually dominates heads up play. Your afraid he is going to railroad you and you will have to settle for second right? No. Absolutely incorrect in fact and today I hope to show you how to take his aggressiveness against him.
First of all you have to understand his range of hands that he is going to raise with. A typical aggressive player will always raise from the small blind(sb) heads up, it doesn’t matter if they are holding Rockets or 72 offsuit. This makes it very hard to get a read on a guy heads up who is always raising, so as a player with that style I am here to give you the key things you need to look at when you are playing heads up with this maniac.
1.) Are his raises always standard?
This meaning does he always raise 2.5-3 times the big blind when he raises? Or are you noticing a different betting pattern everytime. For instance, does he raise 5 times the big blind when he is weak and only 3 when he has the goods?
2.) Does he always continuation bet the flop?
If he always continuation bets the flop then this gives you the understanding that this play can be trapped, that you can check to him and he surely will bet out with the worst hand, which in my opinion is the single most important piece of information you can gather from a player.
And finally:
3.) Does he possess the capability to check-raise?
If the answer is yes to this question then you have to watch yourself because he has two different sides. Usually for an aggressive maniac such as myself checking is a sign that we are giving up on the hand and that even if you bet a wooden nickel we are going to fold. Aggro Maniacs love love love to put pressure on you. Its what we do. But if you see that this player has the ability to check-raise, I tell you to read the rest of this article with caution.
Ok now that we got those things out of the way, lets talk about the steps we need to take to be successful against this villain. First of all you have to understand the heads up odds. For instance, if you are holding an ace there is a 70% chance that your opponent is not holding an ace, or if you hit a pair on the flop there is a 66.67% chance that your opponent did not hit the flop.
I’m sorry but if you are a tight, never play anything but the nuts kind of player, you will not be successful heads up. You will get blinded out because you are waiting for aces or kings. BROADEN YOUR RANGE!!
So against a maniac I want to classify the three types of hands you should be RAISING preflop with and they are as follows:
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
Ax-(any ace) Any two face cards (KQ,QJ,etc) Suited Connectors
Any pocket pair K10, Q10, J10 Unsuited Connectors
Ok now lets look at these groupings and why I grouped them this way.
Group 1- These are the hands that you raise to a reraise. For instance:
You pick up 88 and raise to 3x BB but your opponent reraises you. This would be a hand that you would repop him with.
Group 2- These are hands that you would call reraises with. For instance:
You pick up KJ offsuit and raise to 3x BB but opponent reraises. Here you would just flat call.
Group 3- These are the hands which we let go after a reraise.
Now, lets move on to the most important part, bet sizing. First and foremost we want our bet patterns to ALWAYS be the same preflop when we raise. This takes away the opponents ability to put a read on us, about what starting hands we could possible have,etc.
Now, notice I said PREFLOP raising. Because we do want to change up our betting POST-FlOP to throw a curveball at our opponent. The typical bet POST-FLOP after a raise is ½ size of the pot. We want to change this depending on the strength of our hand. Typically an overbet is a sign of weakness ( showing that we do not want to be called) and an underbet is a sign of strength ( showing that we are dying for him to call). So what we want to do is switch up our betting POST-FLOP almost every time. This way there is now way for the opponent to put a read on us.
As, I close this article I want to stress how important it is that this is coming from an AGGRESSIVE online players point of view. But what better way to beat an aggressive maniac then to think like one. Thanks for reading everybody.
Ty Jordan