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Open or Fold (2-max)
This is an essential tool in your heads-up poker games. 2-max poker is more difficult than 9-max poker since you will have to play a wider range of hands. In 2-max poker, you must play at least 50% of your hands or your opponent will have the upper hand. But it can quickly become difficult to find your way around if you're not used to it. That's why we have made this tool available to you
The tool is simple to use and will take into account all the factors that will influence the right play to make: the number of antes in play (for cash games, select "none"), your two hole cards, whether they match or not, your position (for heads-up play, of course, you'll be on the small blind only) and your number of blinds.
Once you have entered all the information, you will be able to press "Can I open" to get the right play to make.
For example, let's take a hand like Q7 mismatched with 20 big blinds and 0 ante. Between 20 and 35 BB, the right play to make is to open/fold. In other words, I can open this hand 100% of the time, but when my opponent 3-bets me (or pushes all-in), I have to fold since I won't have the equity to make the call versus his range (which will dominate me).
I can also confirm this information in the following table: https://www.push-or-fold.com/open-range-2max.php
If we look at Q7o, we see that the hand is blue and therefore I have to Open / Fold it.
If we take another example, say AK, a hand with no ante and a stack between 75 BB and 100 BB, we notice that the suggested play is as follows: Open / 3bet / 4bet / all-in. In other words, we should make the most aggressive move. If the pot is not open, we should open. If I open and my opponent 3-bets me, I must 4-bet, etc. Notice that the rectangle will appear in red. The hands in red are hands that are judged to be ahead of the villain's range and therefore we will want to go all-in. All these hands should be played as aggressively as possible. To stay with our AK example, depending on our stack, we will either 4-bet or go all-in. With 20 BB, a simple all-in will be good. We open with 2 BBs, naughty 3-bet to 6 BBs or 7 BBs and push our 20 big blinds. With 100 BB, it will be better to 4-bet. If the villain 3-bet to 7B, for example, we can make a 4-bet to 16B or 17B. The goal of the 4-bet is to be big enough for the times when we are in value (with a good hand, we want to maximize our winnings), but not too big for the times when we are bluffing and villain is going to push all his chips. That way, when we 4-bet bluff and villain forces us to fold, we won't have lost our entire stack.