What Is a Range in Poker? How to Think in Ranges

Thinking in ranges is the single biggest shift between casual and serious players. Putting someone on one exact hand is almost always wrong, and it leads to bad folds and bad calls. Ranges are how solvers, coaches and every strong player think about the game.

What a range is

Your opponent does not play one hand; they play a strategy. Every time they open the cutoff, they do it with a set of hands. That set is their opening range. When they call your 3-bet, the hands they would call with form their calling range. Each action narrows the set further.

Your own range matters just as much. If you only bet the river with the nuts, your opponents can fold everything else. Balancing what your range contains is the core idea of GTO poker.

The 13x13 grid and 169 starting hands

There are 1,326 ways to be dealt two cards, but many are identical strategically: A♠K♠ plays like A♥K♥. Grouping them gives 169 starting hands, which fit in a 13x13 grid:

• The diagonal holds the 13 pairs, from AA in one corner to 22 in the other.
• Above the diagonal are the 78 suited hands, like AKs and 76s.
• Below the diagonal are the 78 offsuit hands, like AKo and 76o.

Every preflop chart you will ever see is this grid, colored by action.

Range notation

Combos and card removal

Not all hands are equally likely. Counting combos, the number of ways to hold each hand, is what makes range thinking precise:

So an unpaired hand like AK has 16 combos (4 suited, 12 offsuit), almost three times as many as a single pair. That is why “he has AK or QQ” leans toward AK.

Cards you can see remove combos. This is card removal, or blockers. If you hold an ace, your opponent has fewer ways to hold AA (3 instead of 6) and AK (12 instead of 16). If the flop has a king, there are only 3 combos of KK left. Blockers are why A5s makes a good 3-bet bluff: it removes some of the aces an opponent would 4-bet with.

Range shapes: polarized, merged, capped

• Linear or merged: the top of the range, strongest to weaker, with no gaps. Typical of thin value bets and of preflop raise-or-fold ranges.
• Polarized: very strong hands plus bluffs, with no middle. Typical of big bets and overbets.
• Condensed: mostly medium-strength hands, without the nuts or the air. Typical of calling ranges.
• Capped: a range that cannot contain the strongest hands, because those would have raised earlier. A capped player is vulnerable to pressure.

Narrowing ranges street by street

Hand reading is just updating a range after every action:

1. Position sets the starting range. A UTG open is much tighter than a button open. See poker positions.
2. Preflop action narrows it. A call instead of a 3-bet usually removes the very best hands.
3. The flop sorts it. Ask which hands in the range connect, which are draws, and which missed.
4. Each bet or check splits it. Which hands would bet here? Which would check? Remove the hands that would have acted differently.

Once you have a range, compare your hand against all of it. That comparison is your equity, and together with the price you are getting from pot odds it tells you whether to continue.

Frequently asked questions