I've been following this thread with interest and now will add some comments.
I recall reading about "Texas Hold Em Heads Up" about a year ago, quite possibly on VPFree. That post included a link to an article on the 2+2 poker forum, which I read and saved.
I recently was in Vegas and played the game at Bellagio, the Venetian, and Caesars Palace for about two hours each. It's POSSIBLE that I was a bit unlucky, but I agree with Ed Miller's earlier post to the effect that you'll get "slaughtered" if you aren't an EXPERT heads up player. I lost $500 in about five total hours of play at $2/$4 limits. As Arnold Schwarzenegger said in one of his movies, "I'll be back," but I'll do a lot of reading and play-money practicing then.
Before live limit poker was basically destroyed by the no-limit revolution, I regularly played $15-30 and $20-40 in Vegas, California, and my home state. I never a big winner, but I was a consistent annual winner at those levels. Also, the 2+2 article prepared me for the machine's extreme aggression, and "calling station" stickiness, which would be suicidal in a 9-10 player game, but are correct tactics heads-up. That background helped me, but obviously not very much.
Some notes follow.
(1) The game is 2-chips/4-chips. That means that if you choose $1 denomination, you'll be playing $2/$4 limit poker. $1 is the smallest denomination I saw, but someone else here has reported seeing a 50-cent option, in which case the limits would be $1/$2.
(2) Except for the very best heads-up players, I think it would be suicidal to try playing the game to generate offers. Bellagio doesn't even award points for play. Venetian requires $6,500 action to earn a Grazie Point. At Caesars, it seemed to be either $90 or $45 to earn a Tier Credit. Even there, you'd have to play at least the $10/$20 limit for many hours to generate decent offers. And you'd have to be good enough to at least break even while playing. I'm not.
(3)I don't think anyone else has mentioned that the game has a "peek" feature that allows you to see the opponent's cards after every hand -- even if one of you folds. When the machine folded pre-Flop, it always had unsuited hands like 9-2, 10-3 and similar -- but it OCCASIONALLY raised pre-flop with those hands. The only pre-Flop fold with a face card I saw was unsuited Q-4.
(4) As advertised, the machine is EXTREMELY aggressive pre-Flop. In position, it always raises when it doesn't fold. Even out of position, it usually raises. I had some success by just calling with good hands in the small-blind/dealer position, letting the machine raise, and then putting in a second raise myself. It seems to be a sucker for that play, but it's also possible/probable that it noted my tricky aggression and played the rest of those hands more cautiously than it otherwise would have.
(5) If I raised pre-Flop and the machine folded, it almost always had a hand that it would have folded anyway if it had that option.
(6) After all the cards are out, it seemed to at least call with any pair, any Ace, and sometimes even any King. So there's no point in bluffing unless you have an absolutely hopeless hand. There were a couple times when I bluffed successfully at the end with a missed draw (e.g., an 8-7 flush or straight draw)and got the machine to fold a "higher nothing" (e.g., Q-6).
(7) On the other side, the machine will bluff with nothing throughout the hand (but not very often at the end) and (with cards still to come) will semi-bluff with stuff as weak as an inside straight draw. It's hard for someone accustomed to 9-10 player games to call those bets without having some kind of hand. I probably should have RE-raised more often when I instead either called or folded.
I hope that those observations help someone. I do intend to play the game again and would enjoy communicating with anyone who's similarly stubborn.
The GMan
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