Determining Your Opponent's
Range
The ability to determine your opponents range
is a skill upon which all other skills can be
built. You could make a killing in poker if you
always knew what your opponent had but did not
have much clue how to play a hand otherwise.
There is nothing more valuable than information
when you are playing poker.
You won’t be able to know with exact
certainty what hands your opponent might have
but if you are able to narrow their range down
to a select group of hands you will be able to
better play against their range. That is a key
line to remember, you don’t want to play against
someone’s exact hand, you want to play against
their range of hands.
There is a distinct difference between
playing against someone who flips AK over and
someone who could have any pocket pair better
than 8s or any ace better than AT. AK falls
within this range, but you have to play against
the 9s in his range as well. The more accurately
you can narrow down someone’s range the more
money you will be able to make in the long run.
Pre-flop will be the biggest help when
determining a range of hands
Even if you have no clue about how a
particular player likes to play, you can still
assign them a general range based upon the
pre-flop action in a hand relative to their
position and bet sizes. Lets look at a hand and
assign ranges. We have never seen these players
before.
An UTG player opens for 4 big blinds, a
player in LP re-raises to 12 big blinds and the
action is on us in the BB. Our hand does not
matter, all we want to do is assign our
opponents a range.
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The UTG player’s range is much wider than the
LP player’s. The UTG player could have any
pocket pair and AT+, maybe an occasional JK or
JQ as well.
The LP player’s range could be narrowed down
to JJ, QQ, KK, AA and AQ+. I would often
eliminate JJ and AQ from their range as well.
That being said, for us to make another raise
our hand would have to beat over 50% of the LP’s
range. KK and AA would be the only hands we make
a 4-bet with in this situation.
Now, had it folded to us after the UTG player
opened we could widen our range so that it beats
50% of their range. This would include hands
like TT, JJ, QQ, KK, AA and AQ+.
Post-flop, playing against their range
We know which hands the UTG player would have
opened with, but what would they call our 3-bet
with? We said they would open with any pocket
pair and AT+, we can cut the calling range down
to 8s+ and AJ+.
If the flop is A J 9 we should know that it
hit their range very hard. It may have missed
their exact hand completely, but many times it
will have hit one of their possible hands. This
is the difference between determining a range
and putting a player on an exact hand. Since
their range was hit we can slow down on the flop
(provided it missed us) and give them credit for
a hand if they make a bet.
In summary
You will have a higher rate of success when
playing poker if you can effectively put an
opponent on a range of hands than if you try to
put them on one or two exact hands. It makes it
easier for you to play your own hand and it
makes it easier for you to play against their
hand. Even if you miss the board with your own
hand, you can still win many pots if you know
that it likely missed their’s as well. Poker is
about small advantages, many of which are
generated through the proper determination of a
player’s range.
