Heads-up poker

Alternatively, heads-up poker may be played on purpose, either in a cash game format, or as a SNG, where two players play a winner-take-all tournament for a fixed, previously agreed upon amount of money.

Usually, in order to ensure the fairness of the game, all players finishing at the same level of the tournament bracket will be paid out the same amount of money, no matter what their finishing place is.

The rules of heads-up poker are the same as in a game with three or more players, except in community card poker, the blinds are usually reversed in order to decrease the positional advantage in matches between two players of similar skill.

Bluffs for example become easier to pull off in a heads-up game since it is only necessary to bluff a single opponent in order to win the pot, whereas in a multi-handed game there is a greater risk of someone having a big hand that cannot be bluffed.

The heads-up limit Texas hold'em variation has been claimed to be "essentially weakly solved" in January 2015 by the Cepheus poker-playing bot.