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 You Can't Play Poker Without Putting People On Ranges
I'm going to x-post this here from my blog because I think people should see it.
I remember when I was only very new to poker I read some TV pro saying that each and every game he saw he would try to deduce in his head the types of hands that every participant could be holding and that doing this really helped him further his hand reading skills. I remember I tried to do it at my 10NL tables and trying to concentrate but I only very sparingly guessed the hands. As I moved up grinding and grinding I forgot to do this and started to just play based on the strength of my hand. I knew things like if I flopped top pair and got raised than I was likely beat, I knew that I should 3bet people who have loose raising stats and everything was fine and I was a small winner in the low/mid stakes games for ages. I remember just like last year actually saying something along the lines of 'you don't really need to know how every player at the table plays you just need to know how the average player at your stake plays and adjust based on their stats'. I grinded out about 400 thousand hands in the Party 1/2 and 2/4 NL games without ever making a note on any of the regulars. I used to wonder how people ever made 'reads', I didn't have any. I never 'levelled' anyone. And so I grinded and grinded and wondered why I was only a marginal winner. I'm only really realising now what it means to put someone on a range of hands and how vitally vitally important it is to do this in every situation you find yourself. So, why is it important?
Well firstly the term 'hand reading' makes so much more sense when you try to think in ranges a lot. I used to play a shit ton of hands by raising preflop and auto-continuation betting every flop without even thinking. If my cbet got called or raised and I didn't have a strong hand that was it, check/fold/muck, move on to the next hand and pray that I got dealt a pocket pair, hit a set and stacked someone with aces. 'Who needs to hand read? He raised my continuation bet on a dry flop so he obviously has a set.' Looking back now I'd say I must have thrown away at least 3 or 4 thousand dollars just auto-cbetting towards the end of my stay at Party 400NL. It used to tilt the life out of me but I didn't know what to do about it. I'd think, 'ok so people keep calling my continuation bets so they must have some pair and I know I have no pair so maybe I'll go to twoplustwo and try and find some posts where people fired a second barrel and I'll copy that'. Then I'd go back to my game and start firing turns and get called/raised way too much because I didn't know when to do it and I didn't know how to learn other than try to read more posts.
BUT.. when you realize that the two most important questions in poker are a) What is the villains range, and b) if I bet here then what parts of his range fold and what parts call, everything becomes sooo much easier. If enough better parts fold or worse parts call then the bet is good. When you do this you can start to think things like 'well this guys range is something like Ace high overs, low pairs and monsters. If I bet he'll probably fold the overs and lowest pairs and call with the rest. I guess theres way more combinations of A high overs than medium pairs so I should double barrel here'. Next situation comes up and you might think 'ok this is similar to the last spot except I've got a note on him that I've seen him slowplay big pairs. I guess I better add a few of them to his calling range, hmmm... that squews things closer to giving up on the hand but I think it's still a bet'. And if you apply this deduction to every bet you make than deciding whether to bet or not in each and every situation that arises becomes much much easier. You don't need to try and learn off a bunch of forum hands you just need to know the system. Deciding whether or not to call a bet is even easier, you just need to think a) that is this guys range and b) am I ahead of that range (obviously pot odds need to be considered too)? Deciding if raising might be good becomes a) what is this guys range, b) if I raise here then do enough of the better parts of his range fold or worse parts call? If they do than a raise is profitable.
Once you start putting people on ranges another huge part of the puzzle pops into place. You start to develop reads. Basically you develop a read on someone when they show up in a spot with a hand that you did not think was in their range. You now have a tool which will allow you to be more accurate when deducing that persons range in the future. You have a read! If you make a value bet which you think will get called by a range of medium strength hands and a villain calls with a really bad hand then you have a read that he is likely to make calls with a range which is worse than what you would normally think. You can now use this to adjust your notions of this persons ranges in the future. Thats what a read is! You can also start to get a fix on each players psychology and mindset when you develop reads. You see what they do with the different parts of their ranges in each spot they play and if you think about why they do what they do you can learn perhaps about what they will do when faced with other, different situations. Like in the example above we might try to decide why out value bet was called by a very low strength hand? Did the villain think that he was snapping off a bluff or did he just overvalue the strength of his hand? We can then use this information against the villain in future hands.
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