Hand ranges

Doyle Brunson was referring to no-limit hold’em as the ‘Cadillac of poker’ over 30 years ago, and summarised a winning strategy for the game in his seminal book Super System. However, Brunson wasn’t talking about the ‘new’ tournament format of no-limit hold’em played today, where the average stack might only be anywhere between 20-30 big blinds and the money often goes in before or on the flop.

What he was talking about was a game played with enormous amounts of money on the table relative to the blinds, where a player could be broken or put to a huge test all in one hand. For this reason, many players weaned on sit&gos struggle when attempting to play cash games where the average stack will often be 100 big blinds or more and there is often plenty of money left to bet on the river.

Find your range

To adapt to these games it is therefore essential for players to learn more than when to go all-in with A-K or fold a small pair pre-flop. The key to deep-stack cash games is the ability to put your opponents on a range of hands. However, the leap is not as difficult as it might seem, as even simple decisions like these rely on some logic and are the basis for learning hand-reading skills.

If a player moves all-in in mid position and you call with A-K, it is clear you will often have the best hand. However, this is less important than the underlying logic that states, ‘I believe A-K is ahead of my opponent’s range for pushing all-in.’ That range might be A-J through A-K and 7-7 through A-A if he is a tight player – or far wider if he is loose.

What is important is that the average of your equity against all of these hands is positive. On the other hand, calling an all-in with 2-2 against the above tight player would be suicide, as, while you would be a small favourite half the time, the other half you would be 4/1 against.

These examples illustrate the simplicity of pre-flop play, where you only have two cards to worry about. But, expert players rely on being able to extend these skills to the flop and beyond, gradually narrowing down their opponents’ range of possible holdings (perhaps to the exact two cards) and considering how best to play against it. Against weak opposition this is surprisingly easy, as the amount of money in play in deep-stacked no-limit hold’em combined with players who repeat the same betting patterns can provide lots of reliable information. In other words, you get plenty of opportunities to observe predictable patterns of play.

For example, you might discern that a certain tightpassive player will only raise under the gun with A-A or K-K in a full ring game and will only limp with all lower pairs and call raises hoping to hit a set. Against such a player your task is incredibly simple, as with an overpair on a flop of J-5-2 rainbow you can confidently fold if your opponent comes to life at any stage, whereas if you hit a set yourself you can play for maximum value against a hand that might as well be face up.

Make notes

The above is an extreme case, but it illustrates how you should be thinking about the game, and at all levels up to $5/$10 no-limit you are likely to find some highly predictable players who give away a lot of information.

For this reason it is important to keep detailed notes, as even those attempting to mislead you will probably have certain dispositions, and even in more complex hands it is more than possible to narrow down your opponents’ ranges and make bets that extract information from bad players. When you next play at a cash table, try to consciously follow this process from the start of each hand and see how far you get.

Who always calls on the flop with a flush draw and who waits until the turn to raise with a set? Do your opponents like to play these hands fast and raise with them on the flop to try and confuse? Do re-raises from certain players pre-flop always mean big pairs, and how do they play trouble hands like A-Q against re-raises or out of position? If you can’t follow the action live, it can also be useful to read hand histories and follow how hands played out.

If you manage to become successful at reading hand ranges, the next stage is to start thinking about how your opponents are likely to play their hands. For example, can our tight player mentioned be convinced to fold A-A on a dangerous board (in which case our cards are irrelevant) or is he likely to lose his entire stack to us on a non-threatening one when we have a set?

These are some of the mind games that evolve when you are able to start thinking correctly about reading hands and opponents in deep-stacked no-limit hold’em, so try to experiment with them until next time, when we will be looking at how to disguise your own hand.