Identify Poker Hand Ranges

By Jonathan Wanchalk

How to find the hand range of your poker opponents.

Putting your opponents on a range of hands is not very hard to do, and is actually one of the easiest elements of the game to master. While you are never going to be right 100% of the time, experience and critical thinking will allow you to effectively pinpoint where any given player is in a particular hand. Context clues, your history with the player, and the existing action will be the primary factors when putting a player on a range of hands. Remember that the entire premise of hand ranges is that someone can have anything from XYZ to ZYX. Sometimes you will say that a player has a strong hand, but won’t be able to determine whether a strong hand is JJ or AA. This is why it is best to focus on a range rather than trying to pick out hands on the dot.

Hand ranges are beneficial but tend to confuse amateur players. As a result of putting players on ranges, you will occasionally run into the top end of ranges that cause some inevitable short term variance. The idea of playing against a range is that you need to beat the majority of what you think you are up against, not everything. For example, if you are 3bet pre flop and feel like the player likely has something between AJ and QQ, you should have AK or better to continue on in the hand. Given the range that you put your opponent on, you will be behind some pocket pairs, essentially flipping a coin, but will be in dominant shape when they have AJ or AQ.

History is something that is going to change from game to game and hand to hand. Playing against a regular opponent will allow you to identify more precise hand ranges than if you are up against a random player. Take these general guidelines into consideration when putting players on a range of hands…

Amateur players will not typically 3bet anything worse than AQ or JJ, they are afraid to put too much money into the pot without a big hand or something that could realistically win without improvement. They don’t 3bet or 4bet light and want to play with a pre flop edge, not with required post flop play.

Advanced players will 3bet to re-steal and/or to see where they stand in the hand. A solid player will occasionally re-raise with AQ or JJ to see if they get a call, fold, or even re-raised. While this will lose short term money when re-raised, it will save a significant amount of money when you play JJ against KK on a dry flop of 6 4 T. Raises are a great way to gain valuable information when you have a hand that is uncomfortable to play.

Expert players are the toughest players to put on a range of hands because they can always have just about anything. With that said, there are certain sets of hands that winning players will tend to play one way or another. Good players will look to get involved in the action with big suited connectors and other similar hands, while weaker players might actually think they warrant a raise. If you see a good player limp in and then call a raise, small pocket pairs and suited connectors are a good range to start with. Likewise, a 3bet will either mean a monster or nothing at all. Expert winning players look for spots to 3bet in order to steal the dead money in the pot, while more amateur players won’t even consider this idea.