The game of poker is a card game played among two or more players for several rounds. There are several varieties of the game, but they all tend to have these aspects in common: The game begins with each player putting down money allocated for betting. During each round of play, players are dealt cards from a standard 52-card deck, and the goal of each player is to have the best 5-card hand at.
It could take some time to remember all of the information regarding poker hands odds and outs. However, you have a shortcut to apply correct poker math on the go and quickly calculate the probability of hitting your hand while playing. Therefore, I will explain a simple rule, which will help you a lot with Texas Holdem odds. How many Poker Hands are there? There are only 10 distinct poker hand ranks, but if you randomly deal 5 cards from a deck of 52 cards there are exactly 2,598,960 possible card combinations. Poker Hand Odds for 5-Card-Poker. The poker hand ranking charts are based on the probability for each distinct hand rank. As Poker is a game of incomplete information, we are better off assuming the opponents range rather than putting him on a precise hand. The upside of putting our opponent on a range is that we can narrow his range down further and further as the betting-rounds pass by and we collect information by reading his betting patterns. Poker hands from highest to lowest 1. Royal flush A, K, Q, J, 10, all the same suit. Straight flush Five cards in a sequence, all in the same suit.
It’s incredibly difficult to put your opponent on an exact hand. Therefore, most of the time, you have to think in terms of poker hand ranges. Even though you don’t have a specific idea of what cards are in your opponent’s hand, a hand range gives you something to work with.
Beginners may not have thought of this, but winning players make almost all their decisions based on poker hand ranges and knowing the different types of poker hands you might get is extremely important. Your every action changes an opponent’s idea of your hand range and vice-versa. You can have anything when cards are dealt but every fold, call or raise tells something about the range of hands you can have.
Most players fail to make the effort to figure out a hand range. However, every player who intends to be a long-term winner needs to know how to analyze and weight hand ranges.
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Poker Hand Combinations
How to use a poker range calculator? In order to be able to calculate a range of hands, the first thing you need to keep in mind is how many possible hand combinations there are for different types of hands:
Hand Type | Combinations |
---|---|
Pocket Pairs | 6 |
Non-Paired | 16 |
Suited Non-Paired | 4 |
Off-Suit Non-Paired | 12 |
So what does the table tell you?
- There are more variations of non-paired hands than pocket pairs.
For example, if you think an opponent’s hand range is 44 and 87, it’s more likely for the opponent to have 87 (16 combinations) than 44 (six combinations). - There are four combinations of suited non-paired hands and 12 combinations of off-suited non-paired hands. Knowing this makes it easier to calculate the likelihood of an opponent having a suited hand.
Using Hand Ranges in Poker
Here’s a scenario: you raise with AK-offsuit pre-flop and the opponent calls. You know the opponent calls in this situation 15% of the time. According to Equilab, here’s the top 15% of poker hands (although someone’s 15% can include different hands–for example, one might play 66 rather than KT-offsuit):
Top 15% of all poker hands (in blue). |
You have AK-offsuit, and you’d like to figure out how your hand matches up against the opponent’s hand range. So you use Equilab to calculate it and you see that AK-offsuit has 61.36% equity while the opponent has 38.64%. Sounds like a good deal for you.
Most players assume they’d do well but they have never thought their opponent’s hand range through and evaluated it against their own hand. Once you get the habit of using an equity calculator, you’ll be surprised by how much or little equity certain hands have against certain hand ranges.
Your idea of an opponent’s hand range changes with every decision the opponent makes. So let’s say, instead of calling your raise, the opponent decides to raise, which he does 3.75% of the time. Here’s the hand range:
Top 3.75% of all poker hands (in blue). |
Based on the opponent’s hand range, he’d now have ~57% equity. When he just calls, you’re still ahead of his hand range; when he re-raises, your AK-offsuit is in trouble.
Weighted Hand Ranges
But an opponent may play certain hands out of his hand range more often than others. For example, instead of re-raising 100% of the time with 99, he may only do so 50% of the time. Based on your reads, you assign more or less weight to a certain hand in a range of hands and, just like before, calculate how your hand does against it.
And it can make a big difference. For example, an opponent’s hand range is AA and QQ while you have KK. In case the opponent plays both AA and QQ 100% of the time in that situation, you might consider your chances of winning poker around 50%, but if the opponent plays AA 100% of the time and only plays QQ some other % of the time, your chances of winning take a hit. You’d be going against AA the majority of the time.
How to Calculate a Weighted Hand Range
So let’s say you have JJ pre-flop and you’re up against an all-in raise. You think the opponent could do this with AA, KK, QQ, AK, and AQ. How many hand combinations do you beat and how many beat you?
Hand combinations that beat you:
Hand | Combinations |
---|---|
AA | 6 |
KK | 6 |
6 | |
Total | 18 |
Hand combinations that you beat:
Hand | Combinations |
---|---|
AK | 16 |
AQ | 16 |
Total | 32 |
You beat 32 of your opponent’s hand combinations and the opponent beats you with 18 combinations. By using Equilab, we can see that your equity is 42.60%. If, however, the opponent only has AK and AQ 50% of the time (which is a relatively realistic scenario), here’s what happens:
Hand combinations that beat you v2:
Hand | Combinations |
---|---|
AA | 6 |
KK | 6 |
6 | |
Total | 18 |
Hand combinations that you beat v2:
Hand | Combinations |
---|---|
AK | 8 |
AQ | 8 |
Total | 16 |
And by using Equilab, we can see that our equity drops to about 36%. That’s a dramatic difference in the long run. which can make the difference between whether you should call or fold, which obviously depends on pot and bet sizes and how much money you and your opponent have left.
Learning to weight poker hand ranges is worth your while. Weighting hand ranges gives you more accurate information about your chances in different poker situations as long as you determine the hand combinations right. Like in almost every skill game in the world, the more complicated a theory is, the harder it is to execute and the more profitable it is when executed perfectly. With a little bit of work and thinking you’ll get more accurate calculations.
How to Manipulate Hand Ranges
The basic idea of manipulating hand ranges is To make strong hands look weak and the other way around. This way we can get the most out of our hands because either the opponent likes to call when we’ve got a tight range of hands – meaning we can get the money in with a strong hand – or the opponent likes to fold when we’ve got a loose range, meaning we can get the opponent to fold when we have a weak hand.
One of the biggest problems is to recognize what strong and weak play is in an opponent’s opinion. Obviously Lisa and Bart are going to read situations differently and they’re going to end up having different ideas of who’s weak and who isn’t. Another problem is to know who’s been paying attention to the game and who has other things to focus on. You have to rely on the idea that the opponent follows the game at least semi-closely and adjusts his play optimally against your range of hands. Usually it’s easy to tell who’s following the game, though.
The third problem would be to understand how an opponent reacts to the way you play. There are different ways for players to react, obviously, since otherwise all the players would play the same way. Some make logical decisions, some don’t.
All of these points must be taken into consideration when manipulating hand ranges in poker. It’s of no use to build an image for yourself if the opponent pays no attention to the game. It might be counterproductive to build an image if the opponent reacts unlike you expected. You’ll always have to consider these points when building a player image and manipulating your range.
Common Mistakes – Being Optimistic
The biggest mistake when figuring out a hand range is to have too much optimism when making decisions. For example, always believing the best and creating hand ranges that are convenient for you is a huge mistake and misses the whole idea. It’s not just about winning; it’s also about losing the least possible. By realizing your hand range is unprofitable against an opponent’s hand range, you avoid losing money.
Giving Up
Losing is a part of poker and beating most of an opponent’s range doesn’t mean you’ll win all of the pots. You’ll lose a certain percentage of them, and you may even have an extremely unlikely run of losses but such is variance.
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By Alton Hardin
Introduction
We utilize the concept of hand ranges when we are trying to determine what possible hands our opponents can have in any particular poker hand. The reason that we use ranges is because it is much easier to put our opponents on a range of hands rather than on a particular hand. Why is that? Because poker players do certain things in poker, such as pre-flop raises, isolation raises, squeeze plays, 3-bets, 4-bets, steals, and so forth with specific ranges of hands that we can estimate based upon their HUD stats.
Understanding and being able to visualize hand ranges is an important skill set to have in poker because many HUD stats align closely with hand ranges. Additionally, understanding hand ranges is very important when attempting to read your opponents’ hands and put them on a range of possible hands.
What are hand ranges?
Hand ranges are the overall range of hands that a person can play ranging from a 0% range to a 100% range. In Texas Holdem, there are a total of 1,326 hand combinations for a 100% range. In this article we will use PokerStrategy.com’s free Equilab software to help us visualize hand ranges.
I recommend that you download this free software application and utilize it. You can easily find instruction tutorials on how to use it online. It is invaluable, especially for pot equity calculations.
Visualizing 100% Range
Below is a visualization of all the possible two-card combinations in Texas Holdem, which equates into 1,326 hand combinations. For each pair, there are a total of 6 combinations and each non-pair hand there are a total of 16 combinations. Let’s do some quick math to show you how we get 1,326 hand combinations:
- 78 Non-Pair 2 Card Hands x 16 Combos
- 1,248 Hand Combos
- 13 Pair 2 Card Hands x 6 Combos
- 78 Hand Combos
- Total Hand Combos = 1,326 Hand Combos
Visualizing a 9% Range
A 9% opening range is fairly conservative UTG pre-flop opening range. With Equilab, we can easily visualize this range, which would be 66+, ATs+, KQs, AJo+, KQo.
Visualizing a 45% Range
A bad, loose passive calling station will typically have a VPIP of around 45%. Let’s take a look at a 45% range to get an idea of how many hands are in that range. As you can see in the image below, that is a lot of hand combinations! That is why bad players miss the flop so often and end up having to fold on the flop so often. This is why it is so profitable to play against bad, loose passive poker players.
Relating Hand Ranges to HUD Stats
Now that you have an idea of what hand ranges are and you know how to visualize them with Equilab, let’s relate hand ranges to HUD stats. Remember that HUD stats are displayed as percentages, so we can look at particular HUD stats and correlate those to estimated hand ranges.
VPIP and PFR Example
Poker Hand Ranges Explained Symbols
For example, let’s take a look at a player’s VPIP and PFR. Let’s hypothetically say a player has a VPIP of 45% and a PFR of 9%. In a HUD this is usually shown as VPIP 45/PFR 9 or 45/9. So if someone tells you villain was a 45/9, they are referring to your opponent’s VPIP/PFR HUD stats.
What this is telling us is that this player is voluntarily putting money into the pot pre-flop with approximately 45% of all possible hand ranges; moreover, he is raises pre-flop with approximately the top 9% of all possible hand ranges. So majority of the time, he is limping in pre-flop and a small percentage of the time he is raising.
We already visualized a 45% and 9% hand range previously in this chapter, so we know that this player’s ranges look something like this (using Equilab):
- 45% VPIP: 44+, A2s+, K2s+, Q4s+, J6s+, T6s+, 96s+, 86s+, 76s, A2o+, K6o+, Q8o+, J8o+, T8o+, 98o
- 9% PFR: 66+, AJs+, KQs, AJo+, KQo
We now know that this player is playing with a huge range of cards pre-flop, but when he is raising we know his range looks something like the estimated 9% PFR listed above. When he is limping, we know he has the other mediocre / implied odds hands in his 45% VPIP range that we can attack, but whenever he raises pre-flop we should be cautious and understand this means he has a strong starting hand.
Other HUD Stats
We can also correlate hand ranges to other basic HUD stats. A player’s 3BET and STL stats directly correlate to hand ranges. So, whenever you are looking at VPIP, PFR, 3BET, and STL HUD stats do your best to use those numbers and Equilab to estimate hand ranges for your opponents. If you are new to HUD stats and hand ranges, it is good to have Equilab open while you are playing so you can quickly plug in the numbers, but over time this process will be second nature and you’ll be able to rough-guess estimate hand ranges in your head.
Poker Hand Ranges Explained Drills
Summing Up
This article is a gentle introduction into hand ranges. Understanding the concept of hand ranges is vitally important to becoming a good hand reader. Once we understand hand ranges, we can then dive into the art of hand reading our opponents’ range of hands they may play in different situations. If you are interested in learning more about developing poker reads, please check out my Fundamentals of Exploitative Online Poker: Learn to Exploit Your Opponents Through HUD Stats, Player Tendencies and Table Selectionbookavailable at Amazon.com.