“I was at the top of my range!”
“He doesn’t have many 7’s in his range. How could he have it?”
“Well, her range was capped.”
I’m sure we have all heard versions of these statements at the poker table. Poker players love to vocalize their thought processes and one of the most common words one will hear is the word “Range.” But what is a range? How do we define this term in the game of poker? Let’s get into it.
Definition of Range in Poker
I’d define a player’s range as any combination of cards they could be holding at any given moment in a hand. While this is a relatively simple definition, there is quite a bit of nuance and fluidity to ranges.
The most important facet of ranges is that they are constantly changing. Any time a player acts, he or she is giving more information, and therefore as poker players we can make more assumptions about the possibility of the cards that player is holding. Putting a player on a range of hands, or “hand reading” is a huge part of poker. Adding up all the pieces of information from preflop to the river can often narrow down a potential range of hands to only a few holdings. The best poker players in the world excel at hand reading.
Adapting Ranges to Opponents
The difficulty of putting an opponent on a range of hands can vary from player to player. Oddly enough, it can often be easier to put a better player on a specific range of hands than a weaker one. A stronger player — while playing a good winning strategy — will be playing a predictable set of hands. Starting with reasonable preflop ranges and continuing down the postflop game-tree, their decisions (while profitable) will lead to representing a certain range of hands.
A wild recreational player or amateur can be much more difficult to put on a range of hands. These types of players can play erratically preflop, choose “favorite” hands that they always play and are impossible for opponents to know, and take counterintuitive lines postflop. All these factors contribute to the difficult problem of putting these players on a range. Elite exploitative players are especially strong in peering through the mayhem to observe patterns and deduce ranges on these players.
Perception
There is another aspect of ranges and strategy that I find particularly interesting. That is the gap between a player’s actual range and their “perceived range”. Poker players often make the mistake of assuming that their opponents may play a style similar to their own. This psychological misconception can lead to errors in ranging opponents.
For example, let’s say a strong, capable player finds himself facing a river raise from an unknown opponent. Our strong player deduces that the opponent may have some bluffs in this spot and notes some possible hands he would bluff with in his opponent’s spot and put them into his opponent’s range. He then calls his opponent’s raise and loses to the nuts. In actuality, the player only raised because he had the nuts and would never bluff in that spot. This is a common example of problems in perception and how it can affect range. It may give you something to think about during your next game!
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