What´s a range, Dad?
Alright this is going to be long and detailed and quiet boring for everyone who´s been around for more than two weeks. This guide is aimed at new posters and it´s meant to enable you posting hands to which you will get constructive replies.
It is fairly common to put our opponents at a table on a range of hands rather than guessing one or two likely holdings for him. It won´t take long to understand this concept, but it will take a lot of time and effort to fully internalize and apply it. If however you spend some time playing around with ranges, understand how they are working, how they alter over position, players, streets, actions and whatnot you´re on your way out of the BC.
The general principle is as follows:
o Before any action is taken every player has a range of 100% of hands minus those combinations your own hole cards are blocking (ie villian can´t hold AhAc when you´re holding AcKc)
o A players range changes with every action he takes. A player has one range to call a flop bet and another to raise it, yet another to fold to a bet.
o A players range can only get narrower over the course of a hand. Hands which aren´t included in his preflop range can´t be in a river-raising-range. Now this sounds easy and logical, but look around how often inexperienced players do actually guess hands on the river which arent making sense when we consider earlier streets. You can also generally expect ranges to exclude one another, ie if a person does usually raise a top pair on the flop we can discount those holding from his calling-range (this changes as players get better and competition gets harder but you prob won´t have to worry about it much below 1kNL)
o Keep in mind that the wider a range we assign, the more likely it is for his "true" range to be a subset of the range we gave him. This means that the fewer hands you include in a range, the more likely that range is to be incorrect and vice versa.
o Ranges are depending on twelve million factors. Some of them are
- Type of player
- His position
- Table dynamics
- Board texture
- His perception of other ranges
- Actions he is responding to
- Stack sizes
So how does it work in practice?
First and foremost you are getting pokerstove. Get it now and don´t come back here before it is installed on your comp.
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u.../pstove1-1.jpg
That´s the pokerstove main window. For the rest of this post we will be working with pokerstove and the following hand as example
CO ($23)
Hero (Button) ($115.95)
SB ($121.30)
BB ($108.20)
UTG ($24.20)
MP ($100)
Preflop: Hero is Button with 7http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...iles/spade.gif, Ahttp://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...iles/spade.gif
3 folds, Hero bets $2, 1 fold, BB calls $1
Flop: ($4.50) 6http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...es/diamond.gif, 10http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...iles/spade.gif, Khttp://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...es/diamond.gif (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $4, BB calls $4
Turn: ($12.50) Ahttp://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...es/diamond.gif (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks
River: ($12.50) Qhttp://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...es/diamond.gif (2 players)
BB bets $7
Hero faces two fairly passive players in the blinds. SB shows 19/19 over 59, BB shows 25/13 over 59. The BB has 3bet us once, while we were stealing moderately wide. To keep this post below many many words we let the SB aside and see what the BB does, using the little information we have on him.
The amazing thing about pstove is that it visualizes ranges. You just click on the "Player X" button (1) and then select the "Preflop"-Tab to see this window
http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u...1k/pstove2.jpg
Holdings are selected or put in a range by clicking on them. For every holding you will also get to select, how many of the possible combos you want to include, by clicking on the combos represented by their suits in the bottom right. This is particularly important when we are a) not sure whether or not a hand should be included and we just want to include half of the combos or so and b) when our hole cards or the board block certain combos (read spoons article on blocking combos here).
If you consider yourself entirely illiterate with ranges, you can start by using the slider at the bottom to select the (in theoryland) top X% of hands and go from there.
In our example we need to figure out a range the villian would call our raise with first. All we know is that he fits the description of a small stakes regtag with a 20ish vpip, he perceives us as fairly aggressive, he will be out of position, playing a full 100BB stack, there´s no one left behind to act, he already 3bet me, he´s getting a decent price and I can possibly be a weird or weak player because minraising is quiet uncommon and fishy at these stakes. Asking stove for 20% we get
{66+,A4s+,K8s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,A9o+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo}
which isn´t accurate but a decent basis to start out with. Let´s include 22-55 as well and exclude TT-AA, AQs+, AK of which we can be fairly sure he´d be 3betting for value. I would personally discount QTo, KTo, A9o and include 43s-87s. So we´re at
{99-22,AJs-A4s,K8s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,98s,87s,76s,65s,54s,43s,AQo-A9o,KTo+,QTo+,JTo}
To find out how our hand performs against his range we fill in our holding under "Player 2" and enter the board cards. Hitting "Evaluate" gives the following output
Giving us 28% equity.Code:Text results appended to pokerstove.txt
205,920 games 0.061 secs 3,375,737 games/sec
Board: Kd Ts 6d
Dead:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 71.326% 68.98% 02.35% 142043 4830.50 { 99-22, AJs-A4s, K8s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, 98s, 87s, 76s, 65s, 54s, 43s, AQo-A9o, KTo+, QTo+, JTo }
Hand 1: 28.674% 26.33% 02.35% 54216 4830.50 { As7s }
Now we need to figure out a range he´d be checking with and lacking a read on his leading frequencies we assume he checks his entire range.
What happens when we bet this flop?
Suprisingly his formerly solid range splits in three. One which folds, another which calls, yet another which raises.
o Folds: 22-55, half of 77-99, no draw 43s-98s, no draw A high
o Continues (either calls or raises): This is where all the clicking begins, we now have to de-select all hands which fold. This is annoying work, because you´ll have to de-select all non-flushdraw combos manually. Since things are getting closer you must also pay attention to de-select all combos including the board cards and our hole cards.
By counting hand combos and calculating our EV we can already see whether or not a cbet is in order on this flop vs that range, but I´m too lazy right now and this post isn´t about ev calcs.
Anyway, the villian calls, which again narrows his range. We can now discout sets and two pair holdings, 66, KT. We can probably also discount most of the big combo draws such as QdJd, Qd9d, Jd9d and the like, at least some of the nutflushdraws as well. (Yes you got it, we discount those as he´s likely to check/raise them)
The turncard takes away the remaining nutflushdraws he could be holding narrowing it down to
{9d9h,9d9s,9h9s,8c8h,8d8h,8d8s,8h8s,7c7d,7c7h,7d7h ,AcTc,AhTh,KcQc,KhQh,KsQs,KcJc,KhJh,
KsJs,QcTc,QhTh,JcTc,JhTh,JsTs,Td9d,9d8d,8d7d,5d4d, 4d3d,AcTd,AcTh,AdTc,AdTh,AhTc,AhTd,
KcQd,KcQh,KcQs,KhQc,KhQd,KhQs,KsQc,KsQd,KsQh,KcJd, KcJh,KcJs,KhJc,KhJd,KhJs,KsJc,KsJd,KsJh,KcTd,
KcTh,KhTc,KhTd,KsTc,KsTd,KsTh,QJo,QcTd,QcTh,QdTc,Q dTh,QhTc,QhTd,QsTc,QsTd,QsTh,JTo}
A range made up of many one pair holdings and few weak flushes by now. Turn actions dont yield much information and we see the river.
By now you should be able to figure out his river leading range on your own.
