Mastering The Fundamentals: Poker Ranges

Understanding ranges is one of the most IMPORTANT lessons you will ever learn in poker!

The first step to CONSISTENTLY win money in poker is to learn how to think in terms of ranges. Stop trying to put your opponents on 1 EXACT hand. Instead, analyze ALL of the possible hands that your opponents could have in any given situation and adjust your strategy accordingly!

Ranges are everywhere in poker, and how ranges interact with eachother will be the backbone for most of the decisions you will make at the table!

Learning preflop ranges will give you a huge advantage over recreational players, as a lot of these players are choosing at random which hands they want to play!

Ranges will also help you make good decisions postflop. By deciding to play your range instead of your two hole cards, you can start to put your opponents into a guessing game where they are forced to make mistakes!

Poker Range Guide Chapter 1 - Understanding Poker Ranges:

Consider your opponent's betting actions, bet sizes & general tendencies (and of course, any tells they display!) and try to narrow down a selection of hands that they will likely play this way - this grouping of hands is your opponent's 'range'.

Poker Range Guide Chapter 2 - Assign Reasonable Ranges:

Not all players play the same way! Learning GTO (game theory optimal) ranges will give you a fundamentally sound strategy to base your decisions off of, and act as a guide to deviate from as your opponent's play-style becomes more clear.

Poker Range Guide Chapter 3 - Preflop Ranges & Postflop Ranges:

Understand that ranges will change constantly! Developing a fundamentally tight preflop range for all of your preflop spots will give you a huge advantage going to most flops - however just because a hand starts strong does not mean that it will stay strong. Make sure you are constantly considering how your range AND your opponents ranges interact with a board BEFORE deciding on your action.

Poker Range Guide Chapter 4 - Get Experience!

Make sure that you assign ranges in every hand you play. Make it a puzzle you enjoy playing! Putting players on ranges will become routine and (with practice!) you will become excellent at narrowing your opponent's range, allowing you to make the best decisions possible.

In order to take your poker game to the next level it is vitally important you learn all the nuances of the game.

Do you know what ranges of poker hands you should be playing from each position? When should you 3-bet, call or fold? When is the right time to make a hero call or a huge bluff? Do you know how to play preflop, flop, turn & river effectively and how should your poker strategy change depending on the street? What difference does it make if you are playing multi-way vs heads-up?

#ranges #jonathanlittle #pokerstrategy

[PokerCoaching]

Let me know if you have any more questions about ranges! 📈

[jayvoncrunx]

Won my first MTT right now!! Again YOU YOU ARE THE MAN😀 After 1 month of adjusting to the new environment (only played for fake money before this) I am now steadily crushing it on microstakes

[EfficientRVer]

I really like this video for its simplicity and lack of assumptions about how the audience already thinks or plays. I also really like how it doesn't assume every opponent is using GTO ranges.

I know one older player at Foxwoods who will never raise preflop with AK or even AK suited. When I say never, I mean 0.00% of the time. The amazing thing is that he is easily a breakeven player at 1-2NL in that pretty skilled-player casino, more likely a slight winner long-term. How can that be possible? One reason is that everyone rules AK, AQ, or even AJ out of his range when he limps preflop, then they overpay him when he hits. I'm not sure he realizes that his preflop play is being mocked when a player losing a pot to him says "Nice kicker, sir."

With enough discipline yourself, against players who treat everyone as a generic/identical player, you don't need to play anywhere near a GTO game to be a winning player.

At the other end of the spectrum, you can also abuse players who form the wrong table image of your play. Either by their being wrong, or falling for some deceptions you do, or just placing too much value on too few observations. One simple example is if they carefully track your VPIP for the first 15 minutes they play against you, then being either card dead or getting hit by the deck, gives them the wrong impression of you. If they enter a "player type" into their notebook, they might be misjudging your ranges for a long time before they realize their error.

How to abuse players who literally pull a little black notebook out of their pocket, especially if they only do it during their first session against someone, might be a good topic for a future video. The ones who do it every hand, even after they've played against you for years, are a whole different story. But they are few in number.

[patrickzimowski]

Always jump out of my seat when I see the new JL video notification!

[brettmorton]

THIS MAY BE THE FLUCKING GREATEST POKER VIDEO I WILL EVER SEE!! MY CONFUSION WAS JUST CRUSHED LIKE A WEAK, FAVORABLE NL 1-3 CASH GAME!!! Love and thanks to you. Please come back to Stones in Antelope, Ca. in the near future brother Jonathen!

[silentkaster]

Jonathan, although I don’t play NLHE yet very much (I play every other poker game) the few times I do, I always hear your voice and try to remember things you’ve said/mentioned about particular situations.

By the way, will you be in Vegas the entire series? I will be there playing in a couple mixed events and would love to get my (your) book signed by you!

[mercury]

Thanks for the educational videos! I have one question about GTO play: suppose I'm playing heads up trying to mimic GTO as much as I can. If the opponent at the end reveals cards that were not in the expected range, I could adjust his range estimates and try to exploit, but I can also make no adjustments and just say: "oh well, he didn't play GTO poker, otherwise his cards would be in the estimated range, so I'm profiting from his worse play". And this is a simple approach for study purposes, because I can focus on learning the GTO and not worry about my concrete opponent strategy. However, what to do if the opponent makes a move that is not part of GTO recommendation? E.g. opponent is an UTG preflop and makes a raise to an unusual amount of 37BBs, that solver never recommended for him. How should I proceed trying to play correct poker from that point on?

[garrettmckuin]

Great video man. Could you do one about positional play and how ranges differ preflop based on position?

[raziel]

Can you do a video about the optimal poker ranges for full ring cash games?

[tphuynh]

Always have mid pairs 77 to JJ. This helps

[WarrenD]

Do you have any tricks for remembering multiple ranges for multiple opponents? I'm thinking of something like the old Hellmuth method I read in a book once where he categorizes each player as a type of animal. If there were a few different flavors of preflop ranges based on the players' category and you labeled them as "that type of player" I think it would help. What about remembering the ranges themselves? The chart looks a bit daunting to memorize.

[vectoreyes]

In my weekly family/friend game, the ranges are ridiculous. Some will raise or call with Ace high no matter what. Several of the players go all in with draws. It's crazy.

[HemantYadav-bt]

On online cash game, players are keep changing very frequently. The come, play few hands and leave and some another player will join. So its very difficult to understand one's playing strategies. Pls suggest.

[thomasroman]

I’ve been watching all these for a year or so and only recently realised I should press like 👍🏻 jeez 🙄, LIKE LIKE LIKE….

[RandyofWash]

How many hands do you have to play with someone to be able to accurately assess their tells and tendencies to assign ranges?

[OddBall]

how do people go about studying charts and ranges and whatnot?

[loganadolf]

Hey Jonathan, I'm a novice & have a question...

Say I'm at a table where I don't have too much specific player information yet. A middle position player open raises, & I call from BB. Flop comes something like Ah-Qh-7s. I check then pre flop raiser overbets pot...

It seems to me the PFR has the range advantage & makes a mistake; instead of betting small with almost all of their range they put in a big bet, & I assume because most players aren't gonna make BIG bets nearly every time with all of their range, is that a situation where i can begin to put them into a more polarized range? i.e they flopped a great hand with the top part of their range/they are on some sort of draw & would be fine with me folding my hand?

Obviously there are other factors that need to be considered with that player's tendencies (perhaps they never bluff & it's an easy fold or perhaps they just are terrible at bet sizing in general etc) but is this train of thought in the right direction?

[timothyishyc]

Quick questions...

1) How to assign ranges to more than one players?

2) How to memorize these ranges?

[dharryg]

A player advances much deeper into a successful career once he realizes that he is not playing against an opponent with a mirror image of his own ranges in various positions.

[CesarGomez-kplm]

Where can i play poker online without betting or downloading stuff?