Whether you like it or not, you will at some stage be forced into playing heads up poker. This even applies if you are sitting in a full-ring game with nine or even ten players: imagine you are in the hijack seat in a nine handed cash game and action has been folded around to you; you open raise with Qs-10s and action is then folded around to the big blind, who calls. In spite of being in a nine handed table, you are effectively in a heads up situation. Of course there is a massive difference between a heads up situation in a ring game and a heads up match. In both instances it is merely one hand against another, but the technical differences – not to mention the psychological ones – make the situations quite different. For instance, if you raise from the hijack (or even from later position) the big blind is less likely to take your raise personally like they can do in a heads up match. In that environment you are raising that player directly and no one else. Also your raise is coming from a much larger field of players, so your opponent must factor this ...