Heads-Up NLHE Strategy with Anthony Zinno, Brock Parker, and Faraz Jaka
Editor��s Note: Last night Boston-based Anthony Zinno earned his second career World Poker Tour title after besting a field of 419 to win the WPT Fallsview Poker Classic and a CA$380,021 first prize. Zinno��s earlier WPT title had come in 2013 in the WPT Borgata Poker Open where he topped a huge field of 1,189, earning $825,099 for the victory.
Both of Zinno��s WPT wins concluded with difficult heads-up battles. At the Borgata, Zinno faced Vanessa Selbst at the end, and trailed for the first 20-plus hands before earning a big double-up and then going on to win. Meanwhile last night saw Zinno battle eventual runner-up Mark Bailey for more than two-and-a-half-hours before Zinno finally finished on top.
At last summer��s World Series of Poker, PokerNews�� Jonathan Zaun caught up with Zinno and a couple of other pros with considerable heads-up experience �� Brock Parker and Faraz Jaka �� to ask each for insights regarding no-limit hold��em heads-up strategy.
In addition to winning three WSOP bracelets (including one last summer), Parker reached the semifinals of the $10,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold��em Championship at the WSOP in 2012. Meanwhile Jaka has likewise finished numerous tourneys with victories after successful heads-up duels on his way to collecting over $4.5 million in earnings, including making it to the quarterfinals of the $10K Heads-Up NLHE Championship at the WSOP in 2010.
Read what this trio of tourney titans had to say about heads-up strategy:
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PokerNews: How do you prepare for a heads-up match, and how important is studying your opponent before the match begins?
Brock Parker: You have to know your opponent, and it��s usually best to play pretty tight in the beginning before you can see what he��s capable of. I look at who my opponent will be, but I don��t dig too much into it. If I know somebody who knows them well, I might try to get some info, but it��s really about playing and feeling them out.
Faraz Jaka: I definitely think it��s important to know who you��re playing and what they��re capable of, and what their style of play is. Heads-up is just so player-dependent. There are a lot of different things you can do, you just have to make sure you have some logic, and rhyme and reason. Don��t come up with some heads-up strategy that you just do all the time�� you really need to adjust to your opponent.
Anthony Zinno: Going into the match, I find it best to classify my opponents a little bit, so against a world-class multi-table player like Vanessa Selbst, for example, I��m changing my game such that I��m trying to get her out of her comfort zone. She��s used to being able to run a table over, because it��s nine-handed, but heads-up she might not be used to spots where she��s going to get three-bet or four-bet super light, and she has to make folds.
Heads-up opponents that play tons of heads-up, like I used to play years ago... those guys, they are just so good at knowing board textures heads-up, and where their hand range fits, you know what I mean? So [against] guys like that, you don��t really want to be making intricate three- and four-bet bluffs, because they kind of see it coming after playing so much heads-up.
That��s just part of heads-up play... making moves whenever you can find the spot to do it. Whereas in nine-handed, you can��t just take every spot, because unfortunately your opponent has it a lot more, and when they have it, you can��t just take something like the nut-flush draw and shove there and take it down. Because when you��re nine-handed, they��re going to have two pair, or top-pair/top-kicker, or a set too often. In heads-up play, though, you can make moves because they just have it so much less often.
How do you approach heads-up play from a personal standpoint, as far as your own style and strategy?
Jaka: Typically when I play heads-up, my matches do go significantly faster than others, and that��s because I put a lot of pressure on my opponent. That causes my opponent to have to take thinner value spots against me, so it just makes the match a bit more high-variance. Some opponents may not be comfortable playing that style, so I think it��s a matter of knowing what your opponent is comfortable doing and not comfortable doing, and making them do what they��re uncomfortable doing. If I��m playing against a guy who��s very comfortable five-betting and getting it in light against me, then I probably shouldn��t play that style against him, and should switch it up instead.
Zinno: The good news is we all know the other players and what they��re good at, so if you pick someone like Scott Seiver, we know he��s just like Vanessa �� a live MTT crusher. But if I get some internet whiz kid... it��s not even worth researching him, because it��s pretty much just going to be like playing against a robot who just plays like perfect, mathematical�� as if you��re playing against a heads-up poker bot. As far as researching the player beforehand, it depends on the opponent I get, but it��s more about knowing what they specialize in. That��s what will determine how I play against them.
How and when do you know the best time to mix things up, change gears, and play a different style?
Jaka: It��s very important that you mix up your game a bit.... Sure, you should always three-bet hands like AxKx or AxQx. But sometimes it��s good to mix it up and flat with those hands to protect the other times you��re flatting, because if you��re only flatting marginal hands then it��s pretty easy for your opponent to read you. When you mix it up with some big hands and switch up how you play them, it allows you to represent a lot more bluffs as well, so it just makes you that much tougher to play against.
Parker: There��s a lot of shoving that goes on later in the match as the blinds escalate, and sometimes if you feel like the guy��s going to be tough to beat, you might want to shove on him a little lighter. And if you feel like he��s a little weaker, you might want to limp some hands, if you��re getting short-stacked, to try to keep the pots small since the blinds are so high.
Zinno: I was actually practicing on the heads-up poker machines they have at Bellagio and other places, and I think the heads-up poker bot is great practice, because it plays perfect GTO �� game theory optimal �� so it mathematically knows when to call you down with ace-high, knows when to get the check-raises in, and knows when to call your check-raises, say if it��s a draw-heavy board. If you play against that bot a few times and put that into your no-limit game, you at least know when to not miss bets, and which boards are very bluff-heavy in texture.
So I practiced with that a lot, and if [I��m in a heads-up tournament and] I draw one of these whiz kids, I��m going to kind of play as if I��m playing against the robot �� a brilliant, perfectly playing robot. So I��m going to try and throw it off of its game by varying bet-sizing and [doing] anything I can to change the pattern that it��s used to. Now, against someone like Seiver or Selbst, changing patterns�� they��re pros, they��re better than I am at that, so they��re going to see through that, they��re used to opponents trying that.
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Much thanks to Anthony Zinno, Brock Parker, and Faraz Jaka for having taken the time.
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