Thank you thank you thank you.

My list of things to do include something like this - for each playable starting hand outline for myself the things I need to look for to determine if it is profitable to play it.

An addendum I'd make to the Axs hands is probably that AKs-ATs > A5s-A2s > A9s-A6s.

One thing I didn't really get into is also that when we ask ourselves which hands are in a range we tend to do it the way Robb described here and Renton did in his ABCD theorem post: By imagining for the sake of the exercise (to make it manageable) that there is a single true way to rank hands from strongest to weakest and then we can take the very top as our nut range (monsters), next section as our showdown range and the next section as our semi-bluff range and the last section as our folding range. This is simplistic and flawed because it establishes habits such as thinking that AJo is always a better hand than 76o where situationally this may not be true.

Fnord makes a terrific point in saying how strong certain drawing hands are based on how multiway a flop is, but similar principles must logically apply for villain's playing tendencies. If he chooses to play certain types of hands very aggressively for instance - like a player who overplays overpairs and always stacks off with them regardless what's on the flop: 76o might be better against him than AJo because with 76o if you hit two pair or your straight you know you're good, where as with AJo you can't know if you've been outkicked or is up against a set.

So basically when I do a hand range practice for a given villain I should consider his playing tendencies and determine based on that whether he is more likely to have broadways over suited connectors or naked unsuited aces over other cards etc - then I need to consider which hands he will fold or play for small pots and which hands he'll stack off with - then I need to consider which starting hands I can play that is likely to make which type of showdown hands (if they hit) and decide to play the starting hands that are most profitable against the playing tendencies of this particular opponent, and based on his tendencies create an EV hand ranking against this particular opponent. Then I promote the top of this range to my nut range (in preflop terms this means 3bet with intent to stack off for value), decide on the profitability cutoff point, weigh the factors that decide how big a ratio of bluff to nuts I need in my 3bet range and add in that amount of weak EV hands to my 3bet range and flat call the rest.

I think that is the theoretically correct way to do it, and I'm of course pretty incapable of doing it because I haven't done anywhere near enough range practice. Also something that's on my todo list is creating a library of tendencies. My hope there is to familiarise myself more with what tendencies are possible and find an easier time remembering them as applicable for a specific player when I have them mentally steeped in the context of how they are exploitable and what range/play adjustments are appropriate for this specific tendencies. This should make note shorthand more effective - and in turn make it easier/more possible to make a proper detailed range practice.