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Ok, promised to talk some poker stuff. Heres where my thoughts have been lately. Ranges and how we can affect our opponents ranges.
Like, we all should be aware of ranges. ISF etc have ground on about them for ages, but I dunno, for me obviously it takes some time to sink in. Its kind of freaky when we think about it. Our opponent has one specific hand. Thats it. He either has a better hand than us or not. However to be profitable, we work in ranges, and somehow it works. I'm not sure why, but it does. I take it on faith.
Anyway, what has basically missed me till now, is how we can affect our opponents range. He has one, so what can we do to change it? At first it doesnt make sense, but lets look at an example:
Average TAG opp raises from the button, and we're in the SB with AQo. His range is very wide since he's somewhat positionally aware and knows he can raise profitably there with a lot of hands. We're way ahead of his range, so obviously we should raise right? However, think what happens when we raise. He probably sees us as decent tag, and we're saying we want to play a big pot OOP against a fellow TAG. He should be aware enough to know our range is fairly tight there. Maybe we're bluffing, but he's in a bad spot to find out. So he only calls us with stuff like 77+, AK. Maybe AQ. Perhaps AJs if he's confident postflop.
Look what happenned to his range. We've gone from well ahead of his range, to behind his range. So by raising, we've moved from a spot where we're well ahead of his range, to manipulating his range to now be behind it. In effect, WE changed his range.
So when playing v's an opponents range, we need to consider what effect our actions will have on our opponents range, and whether thats an effect we really want.
Thats basically the gist of what I was getting at with the 3-bet stuff (and Spenda was the one who mostly openned my eyes to it). When we have a hand we want to play and someones raised ahead of us, we should ask whether we want to play against his raising range, or his 3-bet calling/4-bet range. Thats the starting basis for our 'value' 3-bet range.