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4 Betting in Heads Up Poker

16,214 Views on 26/2/14

4-Betting Ranges Explained for Heads-Up Poker

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Before you start reading this article about 4-betting in heads-up poker, I highly suggest that you will read about 3-betting in Heads-Up Poker first. You can find my article about 3-bet poker here. The purpose of this article if for you to learn something about 4-betting in heads-up, why and when you should 4-bet and with what purposes. If you have any remaining questions about 4-betting in heads-up poker specifically, then please ask it in the comments below. This whole article will be specifically about 4-betting pre-flop.

In my article about 3-betting, I explained that there are basically two reasons for 3-betting your villain. One is for value, and the second one is as a bluff. In 4-betting it’s almost the same, only will you 4-bet way more for value than as a bluff. And when I say way more, I mean really way more.

Unless you have good reads on your villain, I recommend at the beginning of the game, only to 4-bet for value. This is a really small range, and mostly only the hands you want to risk your stack for. This is about 2 or 3% of all hands. This range contains, AA – QQ, AKs – AQs, AKo.

4-Betting Value Range (Highlighted Yellow)

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When you are comfortable 4-betting all these hands you want to get it in with, you can start (after you have found out some more information about your villain) 4-bet bluff some hands. This is basically only when your villain 3-bets a lot, and you don’t know exactly how to play back. In this case you can either 4-bet some slightly weaker hands, such as AJ or KQ, but you can also try out to 4-bet some hands that are not easy to play on the flop. Note that you should only be doing this when your villain is very aggressive in 3-betting, when your villain 3-bets in a ‘normal’ frequency, don’t try to 4-bet bluff a lot, because the hands that he is 3-betting are most likely better hands than you 4-bet bluff with.

This range is a slightly wider value range, for when your villain 3-bets a lot.

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Your 4-bet sizing should be around 2-2.5 times his 3-bet. When your villain 3-bets to 10 big blinds, you should 4-bet to around 20BB-25BB. As I said in the article about 3-betting, it’s always important to keep consistent in your sizing. This way you won’t give out any information about the strength of weakness of your hand. This sometimes happens without you noticing it yourself, but it is really important to pay attention to such small details, because that is what your villain is looking for to get reads out.

Author

Chris Edwards

Chris Edwards, Heads-Up cash game coach at PokerVIP.com Chris Edwards (AKA Floppynuts09) is a heads-up cash game specialist, playing anywhere from 50nl to 400nl. He started his poker career in 2009, where he occasionally played both live a ... Read More

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