Heads-up poker, one on one

Heads-up poker rules

Two-player Hold’em uses the same deck, hand rankings and betting as a full table. Only the blinds and the order of action change, because with two players the button and the small blind are the same person. A hand goes like this:

1. Post the blindsThe player with the dealer button posts the small blind; the other player posts the big blind.
2. Deal two cards eachEach player gets two cards face down.
3. Bet before the flopThe button acts first: fold, call or raise. The big blind acts last and can check if the button only calls.
4. Bet on the flop, turn and riverAfter each new board card the order flips: the big blind acts first and the button acts last on every later street.
5. Show downIf nobody folded, both players show and the best five-card hand wins the pot; equal hands split it.
6. Pass the buttonThe button moves to the other player, so you alternate blinds every hand.

The flip is the part people get wrong. Preflop, the big blind is the last to act because the blind counts as a bet that the button has to match. From the flop on, the button acts last — so the player who acts first preflop gets position for the rest of the hand. You get that edge every other hand.

When a table goes from three players to two

When a player busts and two are left, the blinds need a rule so nobody gets squeezed. The big blind keeps moving clockwise to the next live player, as it always does, and the other player takes the button and posts the small blind. Nobody posts the big blind twice in a row. With three players A (button), B (small blind) and C (big blind):

FizzPoker applies this automatically — the same rule the game engine uses to move the button and blinds every hand — so a three-way game rolls straight into heads-up without anyone counting seats.

How hand values change one-on-one

Against one opponent, most hands miss the flop most of the time: an unpaired hand fails to pair either of its cards 67.6% of the time. So high cards and any pair are worth far more than at a full table. The chart shows each hand’s equity against one random hand:

• Any pair is ahead. Even pocket twos win 50.6% against a random hand — a small edge, but an edge.
• Any ace is ahead. Ace-deuce offsuit wins 54.9%; ace-king suited 67.1%.
• Kings and most queens are ahead. All 22 king-high hands and 17 of 20 queen-high hands beat a random hand more than half the time.
• About half of all hands are favorites. 89 of the 169 hand types — 654 of 1,326 combos, or 49.3% — win more than half the time. The worst hand, 32o, still wins 32.2%.

A full table reshuffles this order. Against eight opponents, weak offsuit aces sink — ace-deuce offsuit goes from number 60 of 169 heads-up to number 109 — while suited connectors like seven-six suited climb from 115 to 56. The starting hands chart lets you slide from one to eight opponents.

Heads-up strategy basics

Play more hands

You post a blind every hand, so folding everything costs 75 chips a hand on average at 50/100. With only one opponent to beat, raising most hands from the button and defending the big blind wide are both normal.

Defend your big blind with the right price

When the button raises, you already have one big blind in the pot, so calling is cheap. The equity you need to call depends on the raise size:

Against a button that raises almost any two cards, few hands fall below those prices — even the worst hand, 32o, has 32.2% equity against a random hand. That’s why folding too often from the big blind is the classic heads-up leak. The pot odds calculator works out any other price.

Be the one who bets

Since both players usually miss, the first player to bet wins a lot of pots uncontested. Aggression is worth more heads-up than anywhere else — and position magnifies it, because the button sees the big blind act first on every street after the flop.

Push or fold when stacks get short

When stacks shrink to about 10–15 big blinds, a normal raise commits so much of your stack that folding to a re-raise makes no sense. Many players switch to a simple rule: move all-in or fold. On FizzPoker the blinds rise on a fixed ladder — levels last 3, 5, 10 or 15 minutes depending on the speed the host picks — so a two-player game gets there quickly. Here is each player’s stack in big blinds if the chips are still even, and the minute each level starts at each speed:

With 10,000 chips each, even stacks reach 12.5 big blinds at level 7 — 18 minutes in on turbo blinds, 30 on fast and 60 on normal. At a bigger table the last two players share more chips, so heads-up starts deeper. For how stacks shrink through a whole tournament, see sit and go poker.

Play heads-up with a friend or against a bot

On FizzPoker, open a two-seat table, choose a blind speed and send your friend the private link. Two-player tables need no account and no download — it runs in any browser on a phone, tablet or computer. The game handles the heads-up blind order, the button and the rising blinds for you; pick turbo (3-minute levels) for the quickest match. There’s no voice chat built in, so hop on a call if you want to talk trash while you play.

Lost the first one? When the game ends, one tap on Rematch turns the finished table into a fresh lobby with the same seats and blinds, and both of you land in it — best-of-three grudge matches take no setup at all.

No opponent around? Put a bot in the other seat, no account needed — five levels, from a loose calling station at level 1 to level 5, which plays from precomputed game-theory strategy tables where it has them. Bots are always labeled at the table. After the game, signed-in players get the Fizz Score, an advisory review that labels each graded decision acceptable, inaccuracy, mistake or blunder. More on that in playing poker against bots.

Questions people ask

Keep going

• Starting hands chartAll 169 hands by equity, one to eight opponents.
• PositionsEvery seat name and acting order, 2–9 players.
• Poker against botsFive bot personalities, from calling station to GTO-guided.
• Sit and goHow SNGs work and how strategy shifts as blinds rise.