Master Heads-Up Poker with 46 New GTO Wizard Drills

Heads-up poker is the ultimate test of a player’s skill, nerves, and adaptability.

With Event #7: $25,000 Heads Up No-Limit Hold’em Championship currently playing out at the WSOP, plenty of players will be looking to improve their heads-up skills.

Without a structured study plan, jumping from one topic to another can lead to confusion rather than clarity, especially with such a pivotal area of poker like heads-up play.

Thankfully, GTO Wizard have just solved this problem. They’ve laid out a master blueprint to help players thanks to 46 custom heads-up drills, easily broken up into four separate levels.

Level 1: Preflop Master (The Foundation)

It is a common pitfall: players overlook preflop study because they think it’s “solved” or too simple. However, every single postflop decision you make is entirely dictated by your preflop ranges. In heads-up poker, a single preflop error cascades into a massive postflop disaster.

GTO Wizard’s Level 1 drills utilize a “High RNG” mode. This is because optimal heads-up play requires you to frequently mix your decisions between multiple options (e.g., mixing between a raise, a call, or a fold with the exact same hand). Drilling with high Random Number Generator settings ensures you break bad habits and internalize these mixed frequencies perfectly.

Level 2: Building Flop Fundamentals

When playing heads-up, you see a massive volume of postflop hands in a very short amount of time. To capitalize on this, you need a flawless understanding of the GTO baseline on the flop. Once you know what the solver is supposed to do, you’ll immediately spot when your opponent is deviating, allowing you to exploit them instantly.

Level 2 splits your focus into the most common postflop scenarios across various short-stack depths (under 30bb, unraked environment).

Drills Include:

• Limped & Checked-Back Pots: Mastering the small-blind and big-blind dynamics.
• Raised Pots: Handling single-raised pots from both positions.
• Iso Pots: Navigating those tricky ranges when one player limps and the other isolates.

Level 3: Navigating Skipped C-Bet Pots (The Hidden EV)

Most players have a massive leak: they continuation-bet the flop far too often compared to a GTO solver. Once you master Level 2, you’ll quickly notice which flops your opponents are over-c-betting.

But what happens when they actually check? This is where the real money is made. GTO Wizard’s Level 3 focuses entirely on Delayed C-Bets and Probe opportunities. Because most players rarely study these skipped c-bet lines, they are highly uncomfortable in them. Competence here allows you to harvest the “low-hanging fruit” that will supercharge your win rate.

Level 4: Full Hand Completion (Thinking Ahead)

Once you’ve isolated preflop and post-flop actions, it’s time to put the whole puzzle together. Level 4 forces you to play full hands from preflop all the way to the river.

By practicing full-hand simulation, you continue to reinforce everything you learned in Levels 1–3 while developing the most critical poker skill of all: thinking multiple streets ahead.

Step Into the PokerArena

Once you’ve put in the work on the trainer, how do you know if it’s sticking? GTO Wizard offers the PokerArena. This is a fun, highly engaging environment where you can play ranked heads-up games against real-life opponents.

It’s completely risk-free, giving you an accurate assessment of your current skill level while providing real-time feedback on your decisions. Think of it as the ultimate proving ground before you take your newly acquired skills to the real money tables.

Based in the United Kingdom, Will started working for PokerNews as a freelance live reporter in 2015 and joined the full-time staff in 2019. He now works as Managing Editor.

He graduated from the University of Kent in 2017 with a B.A. in German. He also holds an NCTJ Diploma in Sports Journalism.