Trapping when Heads-up???

I have never been a big fan of trapping heads up because my belief is that your hand is only as good as the flop makes it and that if you have a monster you should raise and if the other player folds then thats ok and if he calls he is doing so from behind.

My belief was solidified on Friday night in a live tournament when in the BB I get KQo. The player in the small SB flat calls so I shove all-in and he insta-calls me and turns over AA. I said nice trap, well played.

The flop comes out 10 J A, he flopped a set but I flopped the straight and my straight help up. I then dominated the heads up from there and won the tournament.

While I know this was only one hand it serves notice to me that you should take blinds where you can.

Thoughts anyone.

Well you have to realize, that when you are way ahead of your opponent, chip-wise, you can bluff a lot more. Make your opponent feel that they are going on tilt when they call your raises/bets. However, if it is a tight opponet, make sure your hands are a little better, but you can still steal blinds.

I don't get what you're saying. He made a beautiful trap, you fell right into it, and you happened to get insanely lucky. What are you trying to say? He got you to go all in against his aces preflop. He played it perfectly, and you got lucky. If anything, that hand is proof that you should trap.

silverslugger33 said:

I don't get what you're saying. He made a beautiful trap, you fell right into it, and you happened to get insanely lucky. What are you trying to say? He got you to go all in against his aces preflop. He played it perfectly, and you got lucky. If anything, that hand is proof that you should trap.

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I agree ^. I love the play with aces, particularly if villain had been raising a lot of his buttons and then just flats here to look a little weak. He got his money in preflop with AA, it's all he could ask for.

You guys may be stacking em off in this hand anyway. You said "your hand is only as good as the flop makes it." Turns out the flop made his hand pretty damn good...top set is nothing to sneeze at and he's not putting you on KQ if you just check the BB preflop.

I agree with the previous post. You set a trap to try to get your opponent to put all of his/her chips at risk in a bad situation. It sounds like your opponent played you perfectly, and you just gut lucky. He still had plenty of outs even after the flop, and you managed to dodge them as well.

I agree with the majority, there is always room for trapping, this can lead to a quick finish in a HU situation

So villain traps, you fall right into it and get totally owned drawing practically dead, you hit a miracle flop and are still only slightly ahead, you dodge all his outs, and the lesson is don't trap? I think a better lesson is when you have KQ make sure the flop is AQJ and the board doesn't pair.

Trapping in my opinion is one of the biggest parts of heads up play. It is the easiest way to get all of your opponents chips in the middle when they have the worst of it.