From one hand to a range

On this page

• Read the 13×13 hand grid and find any hand class on it.
• Build a likely preflop range from a player's seat and action.
• Explain how each action removes some hands from a range.
• Widen and reshape a range for players who play looser or less logically.

Concepts used: Ranges, Raise first in (RFI)

One hand is a guess, a range is a list

When an opponent bets, it is tempting to ask what they have. That question has no answer you can use: they could hold dozens of different hands, and you will rarely find out which. A better question is which hands they would play this way.

That list of hands is a range. Each hand in it carries a weight: some are always there, some only part of the time. Every decision you make is really made against the whole list.

Counting a range in combos

Ranges are counted in combos, the individual two-card holdings. Before any card is seen there are 52 × 51 / 2 = 1,326 of them, grouped into 169 classes such as QQ, AKs and AKo.

The classes are not the same size. An offsuit hand like AKo has 4 × 3 = 12 combos: any of the four aces with any of the three kings of another suit. A suited hand has 4, one per suit. A pair has 6: there are 12 ordered ways to pick two of the four queens, and each combo is counted twice, so 12 / 2 = 6.

So a range written as "TT+, AK" holds five pairs at 6 combos each, 5 × 6 = 30, plus 16 combos of AK: 46 in all, or 46 / 1,326, about 3.5% of all starting hands.

Reading the grid

Ranges are drawn on a 13 × 13 grid, one cell per class. The pairs run down the diagonal from AA in the top-left corner to 22 in the bottom-right; suited hands sit above the diagonal and offsuit hands below it.

Shorthand writes the same thing in one line. "77+" is sevens and every bigger pair, "ATs+" is AT suited up to AK suited, and "T9s-76s" is the suited connectors from T9 down to 76.

Shape matters as much as size. A range that runs solidly from the strongest hands downwards is linear. One with its top removed is capped, and one missing both its top and its bottom is condensed, which is what a preflop call usually looks like.

Every action is a filter

A range starts at the seat and narrows with every action. Position makes the first cut: a player under the gun, with the whole table still to act, opens far fewer hands than the same player on the button.

• Opening removes the hands too weak to play from that seat.
• Calling a raise removes most of the best hands, which would have re-raised, and the worst, which would have folded.
• A 3-bet keeps the strongest hands and a handful of chosen bluffs.
• Every bet, call and check after the flop cuts again; the range narrowing page follows that street by street.

This is also where "initiative" comes from. The preflop raiser still holds the biggest pairs and the best aces; the caller gave most of those away by not re-raising. Who can bet first on the flop follows from that difference, not from a rule about who raised.

Ranges against players who are not rational

A common objection: ranges assume opponents think, and many do not. But a player who calls too much still has a range. It is wider, and it is shaped by habit instead of a chart.

Build it from what you see. A player who limps and calls with almost anything has a huge, weak range until they raise; when that player suddenly raises the river, the range has shrunk to strong hands. A player who never folds a pair to one bet still has every pair on the turn.

The method stays the same: start from the hands this person plays, remove the ones that would have acted differently, and decide against what is left. Only the starting list changes.

Rules of thumb

• Ask which hands would play this way, not which hand they have.
• Count in combos: a pair has 6, a suited hand 4, an offsuit hand 12. One unpaired class outweighs two pairs.
• A call removes the top and the bottom of a range; a raise keeps the top and some bluffs.
• Against unusual players, change the starting range, not the method.

When they break

• Early in a hand, a very loose player's range is so wide that narrowing tells you little until later streets.
• A reliable tell can outweigh the range for a single decision, but treat it as the exception, not the habit.