Setting the Range – Defining Your Opponent's Hand

A clear understanding of the idea of "Range" is what sets winning players apart from the average poker player.

If you've been looking at poker strategy articles, you've heard the term "range" a lot. But do you really have an idea of what it means? This article will lay out the concept of ranges, and once you get a good idea of how ranges can help you play poker, you will be one step closer to playing profitable poker.

The Range

Professional poker players like to make it look like they can figure out exactly which two cards their opponent has at any given time. While that plays well to the TV audience, it's nearly impossible to do in reality. Instead, professionals and other good poker players try to determine every possible hand which their opponent might have, otherwise known as a "range" of different hands.

Your opponent's range basically equals the amount of different hands which your opponent could currently have.

There are 1,326 different starting hands which a player could have when the cards are first dealt. The goal is to whittle that number down to a much smaller range of hands based on the actions of that player.

For instance, one of your opponents is normally very tight and passive, but then he open-raises from UTG. Based on that information, his range goes from all 1,326 possible hands down to only a couple of dozen very strong hands. Unless his brain suddenly broke and he went on tilt, he isn't raising with 73 offsuit, or even a middle hand like QT offsuit. He probably has something pretty good, most likely a pocket pair or face card combination.

We could probably say that his range is currently: 22+, AJ+ suited, AT+ suited, and KQ suited.

We also have an opponent who is really loose and plays nearly every hand. She open-raises from the button. In this case, she is going to have a much wider range than the tight player.

Based solely on her pre-flop raise, we would say that she probably has a range somewhat like this: 22+, A2+ suited, A2+ offsuit, K2+ suited, K9+ offsuit, Q7+ suited, Q9+ offsuit, J9 and T9 offsuit, suited connectors between 54 and JT, suited one-gappers between 75 and J9, and suited two-gappers between 96 and J8.

Why Does Range Help Us?

• We never have complete information in poker, so the best we can do is try to determine a number of different hands, one of which the player is hopefully holding.
• You will never be able to determine which exact hand your opponent has, ever. A lot of players will see a tight player go all-in pre-flop and automatically put them on AA, but there is no way to actually know that.
• When you try to guess the exact hand that someone has, you actually make more mistakes. Sure, if you think the player has AA and fold; that is an easy decision. But there are other times when you might, for whatever reason, be absolutely positive that a player has AK, and when there is no Ace on the flop, you go all-in with JJ only to find that your opponent actually just hit three of a kind.
• What you really need to understand in order to take your game higher is that every decision you make should be the right one for all the hands in your opponent's range, not just one or two of them. This is what the pros do when they claim they knew exactly what the other player had. They pay attention and keeping narrowing the range down to a few hands, making the right decision for every hand in that range. And when they win at showdown, they give the camera a wink and say "I knew he had that." Rarely did they actually know the exact hand, but it was in their range, and they were prepared to play against everything in the range.

How to Narrow Ranges

This is another reason why you need to pay attention to the other players and take notes, as the more you know about each and every opponent, the better you can be at assigning them a range. When you are first starting out, or playing someone for the first time, your range estimates are going to be just that, rough guesses. But after playing against them for some time, you will be able to be much more confident about putting them on a specific range.

Constantly Try to Narrow Their Range throughout the Hand

Example

Let's use our example from earlier with the very tight player open-raising from UTG. He is our Vader. Recall that we put them on a pre-flop range of 22+, AQ+ offsuit, AT+ suited, and KQ suited.

Vader raised from UTG and Luke as BU calls.

The flop comes 7s6d5h and Vader Cbets. Before Luke makes a decision, can he narrow Vader's range?

Well, first we need to know a little bit more about this Vader. How often does he Cbet? In this case, we know that he rarely ever bluffs, and only plays strong hands. Therefore we can eliminate low pairs that don't make a straight draw (22 and 33), and high suited connectors and one-gappers, as there is no easy flush draw (AT, AJ, AQ, AK suited) and broadway offsuits (AJ, AQ, AK, KQ offsuit) as there is no possible straight or straight draw. What's left? Only pocket pairs 44 and higher, as any hand which would have made a straight or two pair was already eliminated from his opening range.

So if we now have Vader with only 44 or higher, there is no reason to worry if the next card is the Ace of spades. If we hadn't tried to determine a range, and simply guessed that he had AK from the get-go, this card would spook us and probably force us into a bad play here. In this case, his hand only improves if he has 55, 66, 77, or AA (and in that case he was probably way ahead anyway). Assigning him a range has made our decision making process much easier.

Vader checks after the turn of As, and the board is currently 7s6d5hAs. We know that he bets with strength, and 55, 66, 77, or AA would give him a monster hand at this point which he would probably bet with. So we can tick those hands of the list, and narrow the range down to just 44, 88, 99, TT, JJ, QQ, and KK. If we have better cards than the ones in this range (for instance, we have two pair, or made a straight) we should value bet. If we are losing, we can choose to bluff or simply surrender by checking. Since the As on the turn did not make our opponent happy, we can use that knowledge, plus his range, to make big bluff bets or good value bets.

Range Master

It is going to take a while to really become a master of ranges, for many players it takes tens of thousands of hours at the poker table. But you now have a basic idea of ranges and can start to think about them and how you can use them in a poker game.

Next time you play poker, begin to take that next step and start thinking about what your opponent has, and after a little while you can even begin assigning them ranges of hands. The more you concentrate and practice this, the better you will become.

There is one final thing to be noted about assigning ranges. Although they should be as precise and accurate as possible, you will never actually know which cards your opponent is holding. And while people tend to follow patterns, they are also people, and they can be unpredictable. No matter how good you are, sometimes your opponent will have something completely outside the range you assigned them. Just learn from that experience and over time that will happen less and less.