Building a Balanced Range

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Building a Balanced Range

i am just starting to really wrap my head around the concept of range/nash equilibrium, etc. now that i am doing this, i am thinking about theoretical spots where i need to balance my play more, but am having trouble thinking of correct solutions to my problems. can anyone link some essential reading on building hand ranges?

here's one i was pondering earlier today:

theoretically: say the flop comes Jh9h8d, and I am OOP vs one villian

i want to build a check raising range

so say i am check raising all of my value hands (JJ,99,88,J9,QT). this totals like 2.9% of all possible hands. do i simply build a bluff/semibluff range of 2.9% as well to balance it? also, how would i go about building a check call range? and how does pot equity affect all of this? this is probably a lot to answer, but i am seeing if i am at least somewhat on the right track!

thanks in advance!


7 Comments

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Michael Gazonda 12 years, 3 months ago
This is a really great question! It's also really hard (my opinion - impossible, but who knows?) to give you a straight answer... but we can go back and forth with some questions/answers if you'd like to understand things better.

So, the first thing I'm looking at here is that you want to balance your value hands and your bluffs by having the same number of hands in each. This is a good first step in trying to understand the situation, but it goes much deeper.

There are some things that make the situation more complex. How does stack size play a role here? What range does your opponent bet here? What does he do with various parts of that range to your check/raise now, and on future streets? What does "being balanced" mean to you? What players would that be best against and what players would it be best to not be balanced against?

Now, on to some balance stuff. How much equity does your value range have? How much equity do your bluffs have? How are you going to play on future streets?
ianks 12 years, 3 months ago
i stoved my value range vs. a theoretical range that would call a check raise, and i had ~70% equity or so. seems a lot higher than i would have imagined. a lot of his hands that he will have will have a lot of outs against us in reality, and whether or not he calls with hands like KJo is opponent dependant.

if i am bluffing with mostly decent draws, my equity is around ~40%.

on future streets, i am not sure of an optimal way to play. like barreling a lot of scary turn cards with my bluffs, and value betting blanks with my value range. it's hard to say however, and depends on opponents tendencies to postflop. i know that seems really vague, but i am trying to come up with some ideas for future streets, and there are so many options it seems overwhelming.
frenchfish 12 years, 3 months ago
Ifeel like in this specific example it could potentially be really bad to have a check raising range against a lot of vilains at low stakes, not to go into too much details and stating the fairly obvious, most important for me when building a range is why i am building it, how is my range gonna be the optimal defense against vilain tendancies.Wheter you want to play the exploitative or GTO the same concept applies.
Shiro 12 years, 3 months ago
One thing that comes to my mind is that you don't really need to balance your range at low stakes (since you posted this in low stakes section). It's much more important to be able to correctly extract value. If you really want to do it though, i'd recommend adding some hands with equity like gutshots + backdoors / overcards (AQ, KJ, you name it) to your check-raising range.
angeles 12 years, 3 months ago
^+1

Although Im not suggesting these such elements of poker should be ignored, in terms of their overall importance in low stakes games, they just really arent. (i.e your imbalance w/ check raising or check calling is not going to be exploited by any of the regs at these stakes, and in general the most +ev strategy wont be one that is close to unexploitable)



ianks 12 years, 3 months ago
i agree with the sentiment that it's not that important at low stakes, i am just interested in it from a theoretical standpoint and for general knowledge of the game. i realize i should add some gut shots and what not in there, i would consider that part of my "(semi)bluff" range. i'm just wondering (from a theoretical standpoint), how much i should add into that range. this example might be a little tough for this question, tbh. but you guys are right, it's not super important at the micros.
Sheikh 11 years, 11 months ago
I dont think they is a standard check raising range here as bluffs. It really depends whether its HU or 6 max or 9 max. Then it comes down to the opponent. If u know the guy is calling with every gutterball u gotta size that up well and ship good turns.. esp if 100bb deep. on T97s against certain opponents i might xr 30% of the time and against some i would have 0 airball check raising range. if its a rainbow against a rando HU i would xr fairly often till he adjusts. Hope this helped. Good questions.

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