Tis the season

Ok, I guess my plans of playing some poker recently were ill-conceived. Between a full-time job, wife, kids and the Christmas season upon us, I have had no time to play poker. I have watched some poker, tho, especially the 2008 National Heads-Up Poker Championships.

Lots of fun poker to be seen here, but heads-up is unlike any other form of poker. I have always felt I've been pretty good at heads-up play, and I have a pretty solid record to back it up, including winning a recent double-elimination heads-up tournament, where I went 6-1 in 7 matches played, but I've come to a specific realization about heads-up poker.

There is less skill involved in heads-up play.

It's still very tough to play, and requires a lot of skill, but when it's down to one-on-one play, luck seems to be a much greater factor. You are forced to play a lot more hands, of a lot poorer quality than (hopefully) you would normally want to play. So now you can justify calling a small preflop raise with a marginal hand, maybe even a terrible hand, knowing that your opponent may have raised preflop just to try and make you fold. Also, knowing it is just you vs him, and no chance of a 3rd party entering the pot, you know that even a brutal hand like 7-2 isn't that big and underdog versus 2 unpaired overcards, so calling a $200 raise with $400 already in the pot is mathematically the right thing to do.

So now you're going to see a flop, after calling a small riase, maybe you hit bottom pair, maybe not. Your opponent makes the obvious continuation bet. If you hit something, maybe anything at all, you could probably feel pretty comfortable pushing all-in here, but if you didn't hit anything, it's pretty hard to call in this situation unless you plan on smooth-calling to bluff on the turn or river.

No matter what happens, catching a piece of the flop is more important than ever. All 4 matches I watched last night showed how important it was to be lucky. One player would catch something on the flop, and you could tell they were very comfortable in the hand, because they knew the odds are less than 30% that any 2 random cards connect at all with a random flop.

Mike "The Mouth" Matusow actually made one hell of a brilliant lay down, playing against Chris "Jesus" Ferguson. Mike raised preflop with K-3, Chris called with Q-10, and the flop was K-10-10. I cringed immediately, knowing this could mean the end of the always entertaining Matusow, but after he checked the flop, and called Ferguson's bet on the turn, he was able to fold on the river and not pay off anymore. He did it almost without hesitation, and I was very impressed.

Overall, my point is very simple. Luck is a significant factor in poker no matter what style of game you're playing, it just seems to be a little more prevalent during heads-up, but Mike proves that skill is still the deciding factor in most cases, you just need to have the skill and discipline to make the right plays, despite what odds may dictate.