A near-optimal strategy for a heads-up no-limit Texas Hold'em poker tournament

We analyze a heads-up no-limit Texas Hold’em poker tournament with a fixed small blind of 300 chips, a fixed big blind of 600 chips and a total amount of 8000 chips on the table (until recently, these parameters defined the headsup endgame of sit-n-go tournaments on the popular PartyPoker.com online poker site). Due to the size of this game, a computation of an optimal (i.e. minimax) strategy for the game is completely infeasible. However, combining an algorithm due to Koller, Megiddo and von Stengel with concepts of Everett and suggestions of Sklansky, we compute an optimal jam/fold strategy, i.e. a strategy that would be optimal if any bet made by the player playing by the strategy (but not bets of his opponent) had to be his entire stack. Our computations establish that the computed strategy is nearoptimal for the unrestricted tournament (i.e., with post-flop play being allowed) in the rigorous sense that a player playing by the computed strategy will win the tournament with

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ATAL
• Authors: Peter Bro Miltersen, Troels Bjerre Sørensen
• Keywords: ATAL 2007, Computed Strategy, Heads-up No-limit Texas, Optimal Jam/fold Strategy