Playing Against a Range????
Posted by Max Lober
Posted by
Max Lober
posted in
Gen. Poker
Playing Against a Range????
I understand the concept of playing your hand against your Opponents whole range, rather than putting him on an exact hand but I am having a little bit of trouble with it. How do you have enough time in the middle of a hand to think on each street all of the possible hands they can have in that spot? I do my best to think of most likely hands, but I always end up making a bet or call or fold based on an exact hand that I think he may have. I am struggling to consciously make decisions based on his range, I am a winner however which leads me to believe I do it with out thinking about it, however if that is the case I am still missing out on a lot of value, or making bad calls. Does anyone have a good video, or any tips on hand reading in regards to playing against a players whole range rather than an exact hand you put them on???
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Its not really possible to think about the entire range of hands your opponent has in every situation or even in most situations. At least not exactly, but the more practice you put in on it away from the table (reviewing your hands after a session and then figuring out the right play vs his entire range) the better you are at quickly estimating your equity vs his likely range or estimating how often he has a certain part of his range (like for example, how often he has air when deciding to c/r bluff him).
Really the best way to improve at it is just to go over hands where you arent sure about your decision or where you feel unsure of what his range is (mark them during play then go over them later) and then figuring out what you think his range is and think about what the correct play would have been. Also since you never can know exactly someones range, its important to play around with it some, figuring out how tight hed have to be before play X is a mistake, how loose he has to be for play Y to be better, etc etc. Its this work thats going to make you better and give you confidence in that skill.
thanks for the reply man......Will look into doing that, one of the things I hear pros say is " It hits our range more than it will hit his" so does that really mean he knows in his head all or most of the possible hands our opponent will show up with on a flop, and balance that out v.s the hands that you show up with?
in a general sense yes. I mean its not so much the he knows them all, but if say your range is mostly broadway cards and suited connectors, and the board is KJT, now I dont need to know the exact number of combos of my broadway hands or the ratio of suited connectors I have to know that for the most part I hit that board really hard. Obviously thats a pretty simplified example and doesnt take into account our opponents range, but I think it kinda illustrates the concept.
Its like if you were standing on a balcony over looking some club in Vegas, and when you look below you see a ton of dudes standing around and nowhere near as many girls. You don't know the exact number of each, you just have a general sense, but that's all you need in order to know its a sausage fest. Now if you practiced a lot or were some kind of savant you might be able to look at it and say "there are 52 guys and only 18 girls", and if you were making bets with other people about the room the closer you got to the true number the better, but I dont think anybody is that accurate when it comes to comes to thinking about ranges on the fly during a hand. I mean maybe someone like Sulsky could look at all the button down shirts with flames on them and say "I'd estimate there are about 3 times as many guys as girls in this room" but I dont think anyone is more exact than that in the bulk of situations on the fly. Maybe im wrong. But I also dont think it matters that much, you dont need to be that close to perfect to beat the game.
Wow great examples. Thank you so much, that really made a lot of sense to me!
glad I could I help!
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