Poker Ranges Explained

well hello everybody it's been a while since we did a video but I plan to gear up a little bit before the world series do some study of my own and possibly give you guys some insight into what people study today and how poker is evolved and we're gonna title this video familiarizing yourself with ranges or something along those lines and essentially for a lot of you this will be somewhat Elementary if you're one of the younger generation you've probably already put in a lot of work using you know sort of common Atrix and and range charts but I think for a lot of players who may be you know were poker fans or players during the era of 2004 to 2010 this is all stuff that's gonna be for the most part pretty new to you so typically when I do a video where I'm breaking down a hand I try to stay as generic as possible like you know he could have this he could have this but then like if I raise this and I try to I try to keep the way in which we discussed the hand to a very elementary level for the most part in such a way that you'll understand it and what I want to do here is familiarize yourself and help to familiarize you a little bit more with the idea behind ranges and sort of how that's developed over the years and when we think back to say again you know the heyday the 2004 era Poker worked there was no where do you actually use the term range it just wasn't a thing I mean obviously people put people on ranges of hands but it looked a lot different than it does today so for example if I raised under the gun and a very tight player to my left re-raise me in 2nd position well I've got him on a range of hands but I didn't think of it in those terms I would think like okay well this guy either has aces kings queens or ace king ok which we're gonna actually really break down this specific situation and to you know combos and how decisions are made based on once you can like pinpoint people on a range but I want to look specifically at this example just to give you an evolution show you how this whole topic is evolved like in the old days you raised under the gun player 3 bets you from under the gun plus one many players existed where their range was simply Queens Kings aces or ace king that means basically those are the only hands they would do that with every other hand they would flat call or fold it's like ace queen they're gonna flat Jack's 10s are gonna flatten right so now let's say you're sitting there with Jack's specifically now the flop comes eight five deuce well there is also a certain number of players who are always betting over pairs and checking back when they don't have an over pair because obviously I raised under the gun which is a strong position and I call the re-raise so typically in this spot what players would do would be is if they had the aces kings of the Queen's they would bet and if they had the ace king they would check so essentially this was like you know the person's range was exactly one hand which was ace king well so obviously you know these types of players are not what you're gonna find in most tournaments or cash games people have a much wider range of hands that they're gonna re raise with some suited connectors but there was a time when there were plenty of players that fit right into this category and it was very easy to have so you know they would have such a narrow range before the flop in a 3-bit pot in the situation then their bet would dictate even more you know closely exactly what that range what and it's been the check specifically represented exactly one combination of hands and that was always a skink so you could play accordingly with your jacks by simply calling the raise preflop and then on the 85 deuce flop check folding I'm not kidding check folding - a lot of these players whereas if they check back you know your jacks are good provided an ace or a king doesn't hit the turn a river Gus Hansen I remember back in 2005 played a hand so strangely where everyone was like what did you do there there was a hand we had jacks and he was pretty confident his opponent had ace king but he didn't get in preflop he the board came really nice for him like eight five dues type situation he checked back the flop check back the turn on a brick and then you know was waiting for he knew what the player had he was quite certainly at Ace King but also felt like because it was Gus Hansen that the player was gonna call him anyway so he decided to just literally wait to see if he would get beat and then he knew his gonna get paid on the river so he checked it all the way down on the river a blank hit he went all-in with the jacks the player called with the ace king I guess another way to look at the evolution and I've mentioned this before maybe in the podcast or whatever but it really rings true is anal Poker used to be or at its elementary level it was like you know the thought process is what is my hand versus what is their hand like what do i what do I have and what do I think they have in my head or am i behind or am I getting the right simple hand versus hand then that developed into you know what is my hand because you know what you have versus the entire range of hands your opponent could have and then you play accordingly from there well that evolved even further to understanding in certain situations you know playing my range against my opponent's range and this is gonna be really important if you really want to get to the sophisticated level of playing this game at a high high level because you have to be very cognizant of what your range can and cannot entail or what it's weighted to or what it's not because against really smart opponents in certain situations if you're trying to make a bluff or trying to make a move they'll understand that based on the way you played the hand preflop and on the flop it it doesn't add up the story doesn't you know hold true if you will and you know another way to look at that too is there's gonna be some flops or some boards where one player is just going to have what's called a range advantage and essentially what that means is you know one player is more likely to have a stronger hand in a certain situation so for example if my dog is barking so for example if under the gun player raises and the big blind calls and the flop comes a seven deuce rainbow well the player with the range advantage there would be the under the gun player because a big percentage of the range of hands that the under the gun player is going to play is going to contain an ace whereas the big blind especially if there's an ease is gonna be priced in to play a lot more like six eights five six and you know garbage hands so the in this situation it's important for the other the gun player whether he has the ace or not to understand that he has a range advantage so even if you do have something like ten Jack suited you should still often be betting here because you simply have more hands in your range that are connect with that flop then the big blind will we're gonna look back again at the the classic one you know the Jack's versus where you think the players range is aces kings queens or exactly ace king so there are going to be situations where even today you still may find yourself in this situation so the question is like how do you figure out if that's the opponent's range should you continue with the jacks let's say for example you opened the players gone all-in and you're sitting there with Jack's well there's obviously other considerations like where you're what stage you are the tournament you know there's a whole bunch of others and you know things to think about but if you're just thinking about in a vacuum you know do JR Jack's getting the right price to continue well the way to do that or one of the ways to do that is of course we look at the pot odds we're getting right but then we can count the combinations of cards that or hands that the player could have that beat us versus the ones that don't so for example what is the one that we were ahead of if you will well we're ahead of Ace King only right because we're behind aces kings or queens well how many combinations of Ace King are there think about that for a second alright so you got one ace plays with four kings you got another ace plays with four Kings another ace with four kings in other race with four Kings 16 combinations of Ace King that your opponent could have if this is the range that you put them on well how many combinations of aces kings and queens are there well the simple way to do that is figure out how many combinations of a pair could there be well if a pair of aces how many combinations of aces could there be right well I mean you do the math here you got ace of spades you know a sorry ace of spades ace of clubs ace of diamonds ace of hearts that's three then you got the next two and then you got one so six combinations per pair so now if you're in the situation you're looking at eighteen combinations that have you destroyed where he's got aces kings or queens and then 16 combinations where you're actually ahead so it's pretty close but of course you have to factor in the fact that like when you are gonna play against that range you're in some big you're in some trouble because the ace king is still gonna beat you a really significant part of the time we call it a coin flip for a reason because it's close to a coin flip so 16 times you'll be in a coin flip situation 18 times you're gonna be a four-to-one dog so if you did put your opponent on a range like that it would probably be especially in a tournament when you're looking to conserve chips and not get into as many coin flips if that was your opponent's range and that's all they could have unless they're very short on chips chances are you should still probably fold the jacks there's another term I want to touch on briefly and I don't want to get too deep into it because it requires an entire video to itself but when you're counting combinations as we did there with you know the 18 combinations of pairs versus 16 combinations of ace king sometimes you're gonna have a piece of information that will block if you will we call these you know we you will block a certain number of combinations so let's say for example you've got those jacks and you're up against that player who has ace king aces or kings or Queens right well what if you saw the dealer expose an ace so there's one ace dead and you're in this exact same situation well what does that do to the khamenei tricks well for one it takes away four combinations of the Ace King so you go from 16 down to 12 but it also takes away you know three of the pocket aces combo so then you're down from 18 to 15 so again now typically when you're looking at situations where you're gonna use blockers to make a decision it's usually you're not gonna be because you see a flash card it'll be because you have a certain card in your hand and again I said as I said I don't want to get too deep into that because what I really want to get you familiar with is understanding ranges and how that leads into combinations of cards and how that's gonna help you in tough situations make more sophisticated decisions right so it's not like old-school poker it's like well you know what I think he's got that well let's count if we put them on a range of hands like how many combinations have me be how many combinations are value and then how many combinations could he have that might be Bluffs and so we're gonna do a series of videos I think leading up to the world series where I'm gonna sort of extend this kind of thought process in breaking down hands a little bit more from a sophisticated manner rather than just kind of like you know he's got s he's got that but I want to do so in such a way that you really understand so in the comments down below if any of this mumbo-jumbo starts to sound like huh what are you talking about you know you're jumping ahead put the comments down there myself or maybe somebody else who's smart will will explain that to you but I really would like to do some more high end hand-to-hand breakdown videos but that's going to require I think a different type of way that we speak about hands in general we're gonna have to get a little not nerdy per se but we're gonna have to get a little more high end so hopefully you guys enjoy this style of video we are going to roll out probably about one a week till the World Series of Poker and then likely kick up the world series of poker vlogs daily and throughout the World Series of Poker we're also going to be doing of course as he's part of any poker blog a bunch of hands and I'm gonna try to give a little bit more nuance higher end breakdowns than what you're used to but we're gonna do it at a pace that you're comfortable with so please let me know in the comments down below as I said whether you feel like there's value in this in that you are digesting it in such a way where you feel like you're really getting it

Channel: Daniel Negreanu

Views: 2,039,773

Rating: 4.9128017 out of 5

Keywords: Daniel Negreanu, Poker, Ranges, WSOP, Pokerstars, Kidpoker, daniel negreanu poker, top poker hands, poker videos, poker hands, high stakes poker, daniel negreanu reads, poker tournaments, daniel negreanu best reads, best poker moments, top poker moments, poker tips, world series of poker, poker 2021, GG Poker

Id: f7rLc7mx000

Length: 11min 31sec (691 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 30 2018