How to apply ranges

Does anybody know any good exercises at or away from the poker table to help with putting a villain on an accurate range of hands?

I'm asking because my inability to do so is costing me alotta $$$.

P.S i don't have any tracking software or HUD.

All help will be MUCH APPRECIATED.

Pokerstove.

How does pokerstove help you come up with hand ranges? pokerstove calculates equity based on the range you give it, but garbage in, garbage out.

Read hands posted by others and post your ranges on each street -- you can be sure someone will tell you if you're off

Originally Posted by d0zer

How does pokerstove help you come up with hand ranges? pokerstove calculates equity based on the range you give it, but garbage in, garbage out.

Read hands posted by others and post your ranges on each street -- you can be sure someone will tell you if you're off

Yes it's an equity calculator but the grid + slider was a good start for me when figuring out what 15% vpip could actually mean, is all.

Originally Posted by Lucothefish

Yes it's an equity calculator but the grid + slider was a good start for me when figuring out what 15% vpip could actually mean, is all.

OIC. Yeah I see how that could be useful to beginners as a rough guide -- I always get a little wary of using those ranges as gospel because often the specific situation will alter ranges considerably, and people ignore this and use some number off their HUD mindlessly, often before the stats have even come close to converging. Also, what stove considers "top x%" is pretty rarely in total agreement with what some fish considers "top x%". It's also only useful preflop, but postflop ranges are tougher, and more important to drill down.

Trying to get into the minds of your opponents is tough for beginners I realize, but it's such a valuable skill that I'd say use the stove top x% ranges, but then ask yourself questions like "will villain really be opening that hand here?", and modify the ranges accordingly.

In conclusion, yeah probably a decent learning tool to start out with, but if you're doing so, try very hard not to be mentally lazy and just completely discount some hand from their range postflop because it's not in the preflop range stove told you from their VPIP.

rant rant rant I'm obv bored at work

+1 d0zer.

As pointed out, stove is good for preflop (which is where ranges start) but not gospel. YMMV

7D, think of it as a game of elimination.

To start with your villain's range is anything. Then based on their actions you're slowly removing (not adding) possible combos from their potential hand, based on how they've played.

One example is when you watch a tight reg limp from EP, you can pretty much put them on a low-mid PP, or SCs or some other low value hand that can't take much action. They would have either folded or raised every other hand in their range. With every subsequent action you narrow it down.

The best practice is to watch the tables, especially in hands you aren't playing. That, and post here. Or find someone else's post where they have tried to put the villain on a range and see why they have drawn the conclusions that they have.

As far as I'm concerned, putting villains on ranges is more important than looking at my own cards. I simply MUST think about villains' motivations for every move they make in order to win big. (Poker is NOT a card game played by people; it's people engaged in psychological warfare via cards.)

As you probably know, the basic idea is that you try to make a complete list of what a villain might be holding to have made THAT play (whatever they just did).

If a villain has 3-bet pre w/ ATs a couple of times, and I am in a pot with this villain and they DID NOT 3-bet pre, then I am pretty sure they do not have ATs+. Their range is the bottom part of what they would continue with, otherwise they would have 3-bet.

Start w/ Pokerstove and see what is up with the slider. It ranks the starting pockets from 1 - 169, then adds them and their percentages one at a time as you move the slider.

1st exercise: Rank the pockets yourself from 1 - 169 and organize them into 5% blocks. (pocket pairs count for 6/1326 = 0.4% ; suited pockets count for 4/1326 = 0.3% ; off-suit pockets count for 12/1326 = 0.9%)

2nd exercise: What are you a masochist (on Bovada like me)? START USING A HUD! Both PokerTracker and HoldEm Manager have free trials.

Other than that, you might consider keeping track of villains' VPIP/PFR/3B by hand. I watch a couple of orbits when I sit down, before I play a hand. After 3 or 4 orbits, I pretty much know what I can expect from them. After I've folded a hand, I have the choice to go over the HH's and see if certain villains have changed their starting ranges.

A good exercise would be to find hands you aren't involved hand that gets to the river.

Step 1) Play through the hand very quickly without getting to showdown and write down a range for villains that you believe they can have.

Step2)Open up 2 pokerstoves(one for each villain). For EVERY action that takes place eliminate hands from villains ranges.

This will allow you to see how taking time on every decision and being careful to accurately think of what villain has will show more accurate results for you then quickly deciding villain has XX or even not hand reading at all and getting to the river quite clueless. Of course for this you will need HEM or PT so get those programs and get a HUD!

Thanks guys this has been very helpful, Icanhastreebet that sounds like a very interesting and worthwhile exercise, soon as my hard drive is fixed i will be focusing a lot of my time on this exercise until i see improvements. Probably won't be playing much until 19th may after my exams so expect the BC to be polluted with my HH's after that lol.

And lucothefish i will start replying to others HH's as well, i thought my advice is more likely to harm somebody's game rather than improve it but i didn't realize i was missing out because more experienced players would correct me if my thought process was totally wrong or just slightly off and point me in the right direction.

Once again thanks all.