Look for Heads Up Hold 'Em online calculator

I cannot find an online calculator for this table game of Heads Up Hold 'Em, but I can find one for the game of Ultimate Texas Hold’Em. Other than the 3x and 4x bet rule difference between these two games, there is another difference in their rules, that is, the bad beat rule on Heads Up Hold 'Em. The Wizard’s website states that the 2x and 1x bet strategy should be the same for these two games, but this seems not very accurate.

I find that the flush draw requirement for Heads Up Hold 'Em should be lower than that for Ultimate Texas Hold’Em, because of this extra benefit of bad beat. Is this correct?

First, for others joining this thread, here is the link for the WOO page on Heads-Up Hold'em.

Heads Up Hold'em

I'm not surprised that there is not yet any on-line calculator for it. The WOO calculator for UTH was written by JB (a talented professional programmer) and I have no idea how he accomplished it, because UTH is a very difficult game to analyze. I imagine it would be a lot of work to write a calculator for Heads Up Hold'em, and it is such an obscure game that it may not be worth the effort.

I think you are right that it may not be worth the effort to program an online calculator for Heads-Up Hold'em, but I am concerned with the basic strategy.

For example, the Wizard's basic strategy is the same for both games: make the 2X raise with four-to-a-flush when you hold a 10 or better to that flush. However, I would make the 2X raise with four-to-a-flush when I hold a 9 or better to that flush, because a flush is a guaranteed win in Heads-Up Hold'em but not in Ultimate Texas Hold'em.

Is this correct?

Okay, here's what I understand about the strategies for post flop and post river decision.

Wizard admits that the UTH strategy he recommends for post-flop and post river decisions is not completely optimum - the player gives up a small amount of EV when he uses Wizards simplified strategy. For UTH, he refers the reader to a James Grosjean card for a better strategy (which is copyrighted and I presume he doesn't have permission to post it on the internet.)

For Heads-Up Hold'em, I believe that Wizard just adopted the UTH post-flop and post-river strategies, again conceding that they are not optimal for eithwr UTH or Heads-Up hold'em.. However, as you are pointing out, they are probably even less optimal for Heads-Up Hold'em.

I even have a question about using the identical UTH preflop strategy for preflop Heads-Up hold-em, particularly Betting 3X on the marginal off-suit hands: K5o, Q8o and JTo rather than check and gather information from the flop to make the 2x or check decision.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't even know whether Wizard calculated an optimum strategy for the pre-flop '3x or check' decision. I'll ask him to check this thread and perhaps he can tell us what he did to define the Heads-Up Hold'em strategy.

However, I can verify that, using the strategy that he posted, Wizard did take into account the Bad Beat payouts and 3X pre-flop wager maximum when calculating the EV/House Advantage for Heads-Up Hold'em.

For the post-river (1x) strategy, it is easy to distinguish between HUH and UTH. If you have a straight or better, you always bet on HUH because you will not lose, but you bet only on some of these on UTH.

For the post-flop (2x) strategy, it is tricky, especially on a straight draw hand or a flush draw hand. I don’t have James Grosjean’s strategy card for UTH, but I have been using Steve How’s strategy on discountgambling. Basically, How says, bet 2x on a JT98 straight draw when you hold a 10 or better towards that straight. Also How says, bet 2x on a flush draw when you hold a 10 or better towards that flush. These two criteria should be good for UTH, but I believe they should be lower for HUH, because the bad beat rule makes a final straight or a final flush non-losing. However, I am still not sure about the math here.

For the pre-flop (4x or 3x) strategy, the Wizard has considered the strategy difference between UTH and HUH, but it is still not clear if he has taken into account the bad beat rule in HUH into his consideration. Maybe the bad beat rule is not important to the pre-flop decisions? I lost money in HUH using these strategies.

Quote: aceside

For the post-river (1x) strategy, it is easy to distinguish between HUH and UTH. If you have a straight or better, you always bet on HUH because you will not lose, but you bet only on some of these on UTH.

For the post-flop (2x) strategy, it is tricky, especially on a straight draw hand or a flush draw hand. I don’t have James Grosjean’s strategy card for UTH, but I have been using Steve How’s strategy on discountgambling. Basically, How says, bet 2x on a JT98 straight draw when you hold a 10 or better towards that straight. Also How says, bet 2x on a flush draw when you hold a 10 or better towards that flush. These two criteria should be good for UTH, but I believe they should be lower for HUH, because the bad beat rule makes a final straight or a final flush non-losing. However, I am still not sure about the math here.

For the pre-flop (4x or 3x) strategy, the Wizard has considered the strategy difference between UTH and HUH, but it is still not clear if he has taken into account the bad beat rule in HUH into his consideration. Maybe the bad beat rule is not important to the pre-flop decisions? I lost money in HUH using these strategies.
link to original post

Grosjean is supposed to have a book out by .Christmas on many of the Carnival games including Heads up Holdem. So your answer might be forthcoming

Quote: aceside

For example, the Wizard's basic strategy is the same for both games: make the 2X raise with four-to-a-flush when you hold a 10 or better to that flush. However, I would make the 2X raise with four-to-a-flush when I hold a 9 or better to that flush, because a flush is a guaranteed win in Heads-Up Hold'em but not in Ultimate Texas Hold'em.

Is this correct?
link to original post

First, here's the discountgambling strategy for UTH. UTH strategy at discountgambling On that link, scroll down to find a better UTH strategy for flush draws, with examples.

For the flop decision, when you have a 4-card flush draw (with no pairs) there are two kinds of 'outs' you may get when the next two cards are dealt to the board:
- a suited card to give you a flush
- a card that pairs one of your hole cards

In Heads-Up Hold'em (HUH) poker, any suited card will pay either as a winner or as a bad beat bonus. So, there is always equity whenever you draw a suited card.

However, the possibility of pairing one of your hole cards is another source of equity, and that equity is higher when your hole cards are higher -because, obviously, higher pairs will beat the dealer more often than low pairs. In this instance, the advantage of having higher hole cards depends in part in whether your hole cards are high in comparison to the cards in the flop -because those ranks in the flop correspond to the pairs that the dealer's hand is most likely to make. So, it is complicated, lol.

I may attempt to do some analyses of selected flush draw hands for HUH (on the flop bet, i.e., 2X or check bet) when I get some time. Perhaps one of the other strategy analysts in the forum will take a crack at it though: Hint! Hint!

Quote: aceside

For the post-river (1x) strategy, it is easy to distinguish between HUH and UTH. If you have a straight or better, you always bet on HUH because you will not lose, but you bet only on some of these on UTH.

link to original post

I've never heard of this before. In what scenario do you think you wouldn't post river 1x a straight or better on UTH?

Quote: ThisIsMyJam

Quote: aceside

For the post-river (1x) strategy, it is easy to distinguish between HUH and UTH. If you have a straight or better, you always bet on HUH because you will not lose, but you bet only on some of these on UTH.

link to original post

I've never heard of this before. In what scenario do you think you wouldn't post river 1x a straight or better on UTH?
link to original post

This is sharp. I thought about this again. The only scenario I can think of is the quads board with a small kicker. You may fold this when you hold two small cards.

Quote: aceside

Quote: ThisIsMyJam

Quote: aceside

For the post-river (1x) strategy, it is easy to distinguish between HUH and UTH. If you have a straight or better, you always bet on HUH because you will not lose, but you bet only on some of these on UTH.

link to original post

I've never heard of this before. In what scenario do you think you wouldn't post river 1x a straight or better on UTH?
link to original post

This is sharp. I thought about this again. The only scenario I can think of is the quads board with a small kicker. You may fold this when you hold two small cards.
link to original post

Yes, this is the only scenario I can think of as well. Given the blind on quads pays 10 to 1 I'd be willing to risk the 1x with a fairly low kicker. I've had that opportunity once and it actually paid off. Easy to do if playing at a low level.

Quote: ThisIsMyJam

Quote: aceside

Quote: ThisIsMyJam

Quote: aceside

For the post-river (1x) strategy, it is easy to distinguish between HUH and UTH. If you have a straight or better, you always bet on HUH because you will not lose, but you bet only on some of these on UTH.

link to original post

I've never heard of this before. In what scenario do you think you wouldn't post river 1x a straight or better on UTH?
link to original post

This is sharp. I thought about this again. The only scenario I can think of is the quads board with a small kicker. You may fold this when you hold two small cards.
link to original post

Yes, this is the only scenario I can think of as well. Given the blind on quads pays 10 to 1 I'd be willing to risk the 1x with a fairly low kicker. I've had that opportunity once and it actually paid off. Easy to do if playing at a low level.
link to original post

This has been considered on discountgambling. For a four-of-a-kind on board, you call with your 8th nut kicker or a 5th nut kicker on board. If you win, the payout is 12:1.

However, I am still not confident with the post-flop 2x calling requirement for a straight draw or a flush draw.

I found out that Eliot Jacobson had researched this and published the result here:
https://www.888casino.com/blog/novelty-games/heads-up-holdem-basic-strategy-and-house-edge

The article listed the basic strategy for all possible hands as four spreadsheets, HUH Hands Check 1, 2, 3, and 4, each about 21M in size, but I cannot download them for some strange season. Can Eliot or anybody help download these files?

If I have them, I will be able to compare HUH with the UTH online calculator. However, there is another problem. Eliot’s results were calculated using this bad-beat-odds pay table (straight or better 500-50-10-8-5), but the casino I play has a cheaper one (straight or better 500-25-6-5-4). How much does this affect the strategy? To an extreme degree, if we totally remove the bad beat bonus, how will the strategy change?