The ability to evaluate an opponent's hand range is an important concept for tournament players. Understanding this skill can assist in making thin value bets, big folds, lasting longer in tournaments, making more money, and enable you to play hands as optimally as possible. So what exactly is a hand range, often referred to simply as range? This article will help define and explain the concept, list tools available online to help calculate hand ranges, and give an example of how one should go about evaluating their opponent's range in tournament play.
I define one's hand range as the following; the set of possible hands a certain player can be holding given the available information. It should be noted that not only do your opponents have a hand range, but so do you. The concept of using your own perceived hand range to make decisions during a hand is a more advanced strategy that will not be discussed in this article; we will focus on the opponent's hand range only.
Narrowing Down
As the cards are dealt, the opponent's hand range is at its largest. Before the player takes his first action their hand range is 100% of hands, meaning one can hold any combination of two cards. Once the first decision is made there needs to be an adjustment to their hand range. A player's position (under the gun, middle position, on the button, etc) will be the first information that helps in evaluating the player's range. Generally speaking, an opponent will have the smallest hand range in the blinds and then it becomes larger and larger as positions change and the player gets closer to the button. For example, a tight player who is the first to act (under the gun) and raises, their hand range may change from 100% to the top 10% of hands, but a player on the button who opens the hand with a raise may have a hand range closer to the top 50% of hands.
Factors to Consider
As a hand continues, knowledge is continually gathered and the hand range becomes better defined. Besides the first factor of position, there are numerous other factors that go into evaluating someone's range of hands. These include, but are not limited to; player tendency (are they tight aggressive, loose passive, bluff a lot, etc); the player's stack size (total number of big blinds being invested), the structure of the tournament (deeper tournaments allow for players to play more hands where shallow play will likely reduce the number of hands they play), every action that has occurred during the hand in question (checks, bets, raises, tells, etc), the number of players involved in the hand (someone betting into six players on the flop is less likely to be bluffing than someone betting into only one other opponent), and previous history of hands during this session or past sessions. (Good factors to consider at this point are if a player showed a hand recently, what their current table image is, if they are likely to tilt or not, and hands played in a similar fashion). The best way to understand how to go about calculating a hand range is through an example. Here is one from a hand I played just a few weeks ago.
An Example
This deep stacked tournament is in the early to middle stages when the following hand comes up. An older gentleman with an effective stack of about 80 big blinds is second to act at a table with ten players and he raises 4 times the big blind. Already I know an incredible amount of information that will help me in deciding what his hand range consists of. The first thing is his history. During the last four or five hours I have played with him he hasn't played very many hands and the few that he has were limped pots. Those two hands that he showed down after the river were A7 suited and 66. This information combined with his position and the large raise (4 times the big blind on a table that has generally been opening between 2.5 or 3 big blinds) give me a good indication that he has a fairly strong hand. At this point his hand range looks something like this; (TT-AA, ATs-AKs, AQo-AKo, KQs). Now while this may seem like a fairly small range of hands I feel confident in my conclusions because of all the information gathered through my observations during the day.
When the action comes to me on the button there has been only one other player who called the bet and I decide to call with my stack size that covers both other players. I hold 77.
After the blinds fold the three of us see the flop of 9d, 7h, 4d. Both players check to me and for various reasons I bet the 6.5 big blinds into the pot of 13.5 big blinds. At this time the range of my opponent's hand has not changed because all of the hands in his preflop hand range could possibly check this type of flop. The original raiser calls my bet and the other player folds. Now I have to update my opponent's range before the turn because another action has occurred. I can eliminate the following hands from the player's range because I don't believe that with the information I have he would play these hands in such a fashion; ATs-AKs (except for diamonds), AQo-AKo, and KQs (except for diamonds). This leaves the player with the possible holdings of only these ten hands; TT, JJ, QQ, KK, AA, AdTd, AdJd, AdQd, AdKd, and KdQd.
The turn brings the 2h. Once again our opponent checks and this time I bet 11.5 big blinds into 26.5 and he calls. These actions do not change the range much since I do not believe that this player would not play any of these possible hands this way. Therefore, I keep all ten hands in his range.
The river is the 3d, bringing the third diamond on board and now five of his hands beat my hand and five of his hands lose to my hand. The pot currently has 49.5 big blinds and our opponent has about 60 big blinds left in his stack. Once the opponent checks to me on the river I believe that it is now more reasonable that he is holding one of the five hands I beat rather than one of the five hands I lose to because a decent amount of the time after making his flush he would bet out on the river. For this reason I decide to bet 18.5 big blinds to get value from those hands. However, he check raises all in and because of the information I have gathered I can easily fold my set and move onto the next hand. His final hand range ends up consisting of AdTd, AdJd, AdQd, and AdKd, all hands that beat me (I eliminate KdQd because I believe he would have just check called the river with this hand).
More Resources
Hopefully this article improves your understanding of hand ranges and how to use them to play hands as optimally as possible. For additional help in calculating hand ranges and the use of percentages check out the resource (www.pokerstove.com), which offers a free download of their software.
One Eyed Mule
I would have gave 10 stars if you checked that river!! sneaky older gentleman huh!! just joking nice article
bigLblazed
Nice article!
poker_stiel
Question. If 50% of what you ranged him beats you, wouldn’t it be better to check the river?
Sjacko8
I also thought this
BugFuzz
“I believe that it is now more reasonable that he is holding one of the five hands I beat rather than one of the five hands I lose to because a decent amount of the time after making his flush he would bet out on the river.” was his reason for value betting river.