Poker Articles

By Bond18 | Published Feb 13 2008, 12:57 AM
Unfortunately I’ve been busy lighting money on fire at live poker so I haven’t been able to write for a while.  I don’t have much live poker to play for another two months now, so I’ve got some time to do some writing and want to restart the ‘Things it took me a while to learn’ series.  Hopefully this article is a return to form.

As I wrote in Part 9, tournament hand reading is all about putting players on ranges.  However, I didn’t really elaborate on the enormous impact of understanding hand ranges in general.  The simple fact is this: If you can pinpoint a player's range, you can own his soul.  Pinpointing someone’s range can at times be very easy and at other times, very difficult... and is entirely dependent on the situation.  Sometimes a person will do something so incredibly obvious they make their range basically one or two hands.

Sometimes a person's range will get polarized; meaning the villain either has a very big hand or is bluffing.  When good thinking players come up against other good thinking players, they go to lengths to "merge" their range (fancy talk for being deceptive).  What this means is that they play in a way that could be reasonable for many hands, in order to prevent giving you any clues that allow you to adjust their range towards a certain strength.  Being able to read ranges is simply an extension of hand reading, though somewhat more generalized.

So how do we read ranges?  Well, it does, to a degree, come down to experience.  For example, when I first began playing live poker after spending so many months entirely online, I was not used to how peoples' 3-betting and shoving ranges were VASTLY different.  After some experience, I was able to make the proper adjustments.  Even with some tournaments online, the ranges for a similar, or even exact situation, can differ enormously based on what tournament it is.  Example:

Both CO and button have 40 BB’s with antes in play, both players are 100% unknown to you.  The CO open raises 2.6x. The button 3-bets to 8.5x.  The blinds fold and the CO shoves.  Now, take this example in the $100r, and the CO has a much wider range than in a $50 freeze out.

This is of course, a very basic and obvious example.  However, without knowing anything about the $100r or a $50 FO - and having no experience in either tournament - you may not necessarily realize just how big the differences in ranges are.  Outside the experience argument though, range reading can easily be taught and practiced.  Let’s start with early tournament range reading.


Early Tournament Range Reading

The nice part about early tournament range reading is that people are often making less elaborate or fancy moves, especially pre-flop.  Assuming you know a little about your opponent, you should be able to get a decent idea of his pre-flop range when he takes certain actions.  Now, this may result in his range being fairly wide, but you’ll at least have something to go with which you then can eliminate hands from later.  Example:

Level 1 in a Stars $100 freeze out, with blinds 10/20.  You open in MP2 to 70, and the button (who is a known winning player) flat-calls the button.  What’s his range?  Depending on the player, it’s often something in the area of: 22-JJ, AJ-AQ, 54s+, KJo, KQo, JTs-ATs, 64s-J9s.  This can’t be exact but it’s reasonable - and we can expect QQ+/AK to reraise.

Once you have an idea of his pre-flop range, you can begin eliminating possibilities post-flop depending on the flop texture and action.  This all becomes second nature with experience.  Let’s take a look at some early tournament example hands and think about how knowledge of our opponent plus thinking about his range leads to a decision.

Stars $109 freeze out. It’s the first level, blinds 10/20.  The villain in the hand is a well known 2+2’er, Mattsuspect.  He knows who I am and I know him to be pretty TAG at this stage of the tournament.  I don’t have much information on UTG+2, so I have to give him credit for a standard range.


Hero’s stack: 2880

UTG+2: 6120

MP2 (Mattsuspect): 3010

I hold Kc Ks on the CO.  Blinds are 10/20.

Pre-flop: 2 folds, UTG+2 raises to 80, 1 fold, MP2 re-raises to 280, Hero calls, folds to UTG+2, UTG+2 calls 200.


Alright, at this stage I can feel pretty confident that Mattsuspect re-raising an early position player at this stage of the tournament means he has a very small range.  Many TAG’s are even cold calling AK here since UTG+2 isn’t calling a reraise with many worse hands than AK.  I fully expect his 3-betting range to be QQ+ here, though at times players will add AKs and JJ.  I call because I know if I 4-bet, his range can play perfectly against me.  His QQ/AKs will snap fold since he knows my 4-betting range is only KK+ given the positions, but he may think my cold-call range is something like JJ+/AK.

Flop: 7c Qd 9h (Pot 870)

UTG+2 checks, MP2 bets 700, Hero folds.

To me, this seems like a very simple fold and overall a simple hand.  I know that even if MP2’s range includes AK and JJ, he’s not betting that large into two players, especially not when a thinking player cold-called his reraise.  QQ has now sucked out on me, and I’m of course still behind AA.  Therefore I beat nothing in his range and easily fold.

Alright, let’s go with one more early example that demonstrates how a player's range will react to certain plays: The player in this hand was well-known online player ‘yellowsub’.  In my analysis, I’ll be paraphrasing a post djk123 made in the thread, so he also deserves some credit.  The tournament is the Full tilt $500+50 Sunday Million.  We are without reads.

MP2: 4908

Hero: 4940

Hero holds Ah Qh on the CO.

Preflop: Folds to MP2, MP2 raises to 150, Hero calls, 3 folds.


This seems standard to me so far. We can again give the villain a pretty wide range.


Flop: 5c 3h Ac (Pot 360)

MP2 checks, Hero bets 245, MP2 calls 245.


At this point, the hand gets a little strange.  It’s odd for MP2 to not C-bet a board like this, and that often means he has a polarized range.  A reasonable range to give MP2 is something like 99-KK, 33, 55, AA, A9-AK, or just maybe a very strangely/badly played suited-connector with clubs.  Most of the time though, his hand is in one of the first categories, either a pair with showdown value that doesn’t want to turn its hand into a bluff, or a huge hand that's aiming to trap the hero.

The AJ-AK aren’t really huge, and are often betting, but they will sometimes check hoping to get value and thinking that it's hard for their opponent to hit on a board like this.  The bet seems standard, as we can still gain value from the checking pairs, the rare/odd club draw, and worse A’s.  At this point, I would estimate villain's range towards 99-KK, or 33+55+AA, since A’s and flush draws mostly bet the flop.


Turn: Kh (Pot 850)

MP2 checks, Hero bets 609, MP2 raises to 2120, Hero folds.


Here’s where a lot of the discussion took place.  The real question in the hand is whether the turn was the correct play.  Djk123 came into the thread and broke down the villain's range and his probable actions with those ranges.  He also provided information as to why bet/folding the turn is incorrect.  The logic goes as follows: If we mostly place villain's range towards 99-KK and slow-played sets, there can't be very good value in betting this turn.  The slow-played sets will now check-raise us and we’ll have to make an uncomfortable fold.

The pairs trying to get to showdown will likely give hero credit for an ace and fold.  KK has now sucked out, and will check-raise.  If we check the turn and make our flush, we can of course get it on the river versus anything.  If we check the turn and villain bets the river we can always call, since the villain will at times show up with worse A’s and the occasional missed flush draw.  The villain is also more likely to pay off two streets with a 99-QQ type hand if we check back the turn and look like we were simply taking a shot on the flop, but have now decided to try and bluff again on the river.

Again, we see that the key to ranges is having information and assumptions about our opponents' probable actions with certain hands.  By being observant and learning about how players react to certain board textures, range reading becomes much easier.

This is Part 1 of 2.  The 2nd part of this article will be featured here on the PocketFives.com home page soon!