Beating a Calling Station
How to play against a calling station in a heads up sit and go
Heads up poker is a variant of poker that most poker enthusiasts love to play. There are many reasons for this but to many poker players, the sheer thrill of feeling as if you have 'out played' your opponent is a hard one to beat. Ironically this same desire to out class your opponents is where many budding heads up poker players come unstuck.
There are so many misconceptions in
heads up poker that stem from edited heads up battles you'll see on TV. The most major one is that 'any ace is likely good heads up'. Now although in probability any ace is in fact 'good', it's not to say that it's just an automatic, fist pump get it in pre flop, no, no. There are many factors to take into consideration such as how deep are the effective stacks (the effective stack is whoever has the shortest stack as this is effectively all you can win or lose at the time), how has your opponent been playing (loose, tight, aggressive or passive), what is the dynamic like between you (has your opponent just seen you pull off a bunch of epic bluffs or have you come off as tighter than an accountants wallet)? These are just the tip of the ice burg when it comes to playing heads up poker but the most major misconception that I witness when playing is that in heads up you can play any two cards and you have to bluff a lot.
Adjusting to your opponents
Many of these myths all essentially add up to the same thing and that is the fact that many people do not know how to correctly adjust to the opponent type that they are facing. This is further compounded by the fact that a lot of new players don't even know how to tell what kind of player they are facing in order to make the correct adjustments to their play.
The Calling Stations (players that never fold)
In this article I am just going to show you how to spot a calling station by their actions and then give you some solid guidelines to crush these giant tuna.
If I had a penny for every time I saw a post in a
strategy forum saying things along the lines of "I hate playing people that never fold" or "I need to move up to higher stakes where players can respect my raises" then I'd be a multi millionaire from that alone. Truth is that if you have ever caught yourself thinking or saying such things then you are the fish!
That may sound a bit harsh but it's best to have a short, sharp shock to get your attention. The good news is that you can easily do something about this and players that never fold are where the money is at in poker, trust me!
How to spot a calling station?
Now that's out the way let us march forward into calling station crushingville. Spotting these guys is easy, they never fold! Ok there is more to it than that.
Calling stations by nature are loose and passive. The fact that they are passive means that they will not raise too often. This is great for a couple of key reasons. Firstly you will get to see lots of flops for cheap and post flop is where these giant Nemos go seriously wrong. The second major benefit is simple, if a player hardly ever raises then his raising range is small and most of the time that's a strong hand which means you can get out of the way of trouble and not go making stupid call downs with 'ace high' (you see how ace high isn't always good? I told you).
Take for example a player that never folds to your
continuation bets (you know the types that drive you crazy for not respecting your manly, poker god bluffs) but instead they nearly always call down and show up on the river with hands like mid pair, bottom pair, an under pair, etc. well now imagine he comes to life and suddenly check raises a flop, what could it mean? Yep, you guessed it, a monster hand. you see heads up is very much about frequency and as you only get strong hands infrequently you can correlate hand strength to frequency of actions from fishy players.
Let us now look at some other considerations to think about our soon to be tinned tuna opponent. These often tend to be level one players. What is a level one player? It's a player that is just thinking about his cards and not a lot else. A level two player may think about his cards and also about what you are likely holding. A level three player does all of that and thinks about what you think he may be holding. Ok you see how this can get complicated eventually and where terms like 'out leveling' players comes from.
Good news is that when you play a level one player you don't actually need to think too much, which isn't to say don't concentrate on what you're doing but at the same time don't try to over complicate situations and out think yourself. Because of this fact you can play your hands really face up, there really is no need to disguise your hand strength or slow play or try and get tricky like Tom Dwan in an epic, climatic poker moment of such genius that children will talk about it for decades to come. No the truth is that the game becomes, dare I say it , boringly easy. It really is as if money is falling off trees.
So how do we actually play our hands?
The first thing you need is a plan for your pre flop hands. I like to simply break them down in terms of
hand strength (as I said you can play them face up against this opponent type which is essentially 'out playing them'). This is my general rule for a regular speed heads up sit and go.
88 -AA, AK and AQ - Raise to 4 or 5 x the blind for value (normally 5 x) and I will scale this down as the blinds get higher and the effective stacks get shallower. So for example with 1500 stacks and 10/20 blinds I'll raise KK to 100 but at 50/100 blinds I'd likely just raise 3 x the blind as it still creates a huge pot and an easy one to get stacks in post flop.
Broadway cards (hands like KQ, QJ etc), A8 - AJ - raise to 3 x the blind for value and ease of play post flop. Again you can scale this down to 2.5 x as the blinds get higher.
A2- A7, 22-77 and any playable hands (like J8, K7s, 45s etc as examples there are many hands you can play vs passive guys) I like to limp in with and see a flop. Now before every man and his dog jumps on the bandwagon to scream "what? I've seen poker videos and they say to raise 100% especially ace hands, ace hands are likely best heads up.
The truth is that you should never have a one size fits all
poker strategy for heads up because the key to heads up player is adjusting to your opponents. How you play hands vs different player types should change for example against a more aggressive player I would almost certainly min raise A3 pre flop as having the initiative against that player type will be very worth while but against a calling station you are best to see lots of flops with your playable but not super strong hands and then build huge pots post flop when you hit. I call this the slot machine effect.
The final range of pre flop hands are the utter junk. just fold your utter junk. Although these guys do let you see lots of flops they will also force you to go to showdown a lot so either start with some high card value or playability in your hand. Also do not fall in love with some junk just because it's "suited" 72 suited is still a rubbish hand regardless of your cards being the same color. Basically fold really low, unconnected, unsuited hands that just don't play well post flop.
What about post flop play?
There are a few golden rules when it comes to plucking
the poker fish from the sea and putting him on your plate. Firstly DO NOT try and pull off any crazy huge bluffs on these guys, just don't do it (some
semi bluffs are ok). No matter how scary the board gets, no matter how weak you think he may be or how cool the bluff looks just don't do it! I think i may of just made my point there and following that advice will save a lot of would be Gus Hansens a lot of money.
Make sure you get good value for your hands. Don't go making really small 'milking bets' if you think you have the best hand. Instead just bet big and keep doing so all the time that you think you're ahead.
Do not get caught up in fancy play syndrome. By this I see far too many players slow play their monster hands or get cute by going for check raises etc against these guys, but don't. Take a moment to think about it, your opponent is loose and PASSIVE so what is the likely outcome of checking to a passive opponent, is it that he bets? or is it that he'll check back? If your opponent is checking back in these situations then you'll find it hard to build pots well to finish him off and you'll let him draw to free cards which means you'll get more 'bad beats'.
Play your draws passively. Now I know people are thinking I'm crazy right now, every poker video in the world says to go crazy with your draws. Again this is one of the adjustments we are making for a specific opponent type. I could give you a lot of mathematical reasoning for playing your draws passively against this guy but let me break it down in to simple terms that are more logical to me. If you have a draw and this guy is calling you down on every street then you likely are behind. So by betting three streets, all you are effectively doing is charging yourself to hit your own draw, you see? However when you hit your draws there will still be monster value to be had from these guys by then just making huge best (remember not to get cute and slow play).
To summarize
This is only one part of the heads up puzzle. It's straight talking and to the point because I feel that too many players are making huge mistakes and over complicating what in many cases is a very simple game.
Keep it straight forward, don't pull off (or try to) crazy huge bluffs, bet your hands for their straight forward value, don't get cute and try to get all fancy (you'll often just loose value for your hand or get out drawn), enjoy printing easier money than finding oil in your back garden and remember to always try to improve your heads up poker strategy by studying as much as you can and learning how to adjust to the many other types of opponents you will face.
Check out our must see pages
There is so much information on Tagpoker to make you a winning poker player that some people are not sure where to start. If heads up poker is where you want to begin then you need to check out:
The beginners guide to beating heads up poker.
Tagpoker's free poker training videos
Brokerstar's full heads up sit and go poker course
6 Max Cash Training
Tagpoker students forum
Best of luck at the tables.
