Range Balancing

Range Balancing

Range balancing is a poker strategy about balancing your possibility range of hands in given situations.  The aim of range balancing is that it makes it harder for opponents to narrow down your holding.  The idea of range balancing is fairly advanced stuff, and against poor or micro-stake players it doesn’t really make a difference.

Once you start moving up a couple of levels and into the low-mid stakes games like $0.25/$0.50 or $0.50/$1, then range balancing definitely becomes very important.  You’ll bump into a lot of regulars at these stakes who are capable of grinding out $30,000+ per year.  They will also be using live-tracking software and HUD stats with HM or PT to gain a better read on you.  All of this makes you a target for them.  Thus, in order to defend yourself from advanced players you need to make yourself less predictable.  You can think of range balancing as “blurring” your range – or acting as a shield against solid LAGs.

Almost every winning player at the mid-stakes cash games will be able to narrow down your range of hands accurately.  A TAG player at this table would be particularly exploitable since his possible range of hands from the word go is limited pre-flop.  At least by playing LAG with general HUD stats of 25/14, you can start merging and balancing your hand ranges to prevent yourself being too transparent.

It’s not just your predictability and level of thought that you’re trying to protect; it’s about playing poker optimally and getting the most value from your different hands.  For example, if you’re table image is too strong and you’ve only been 3betting premium hands pre-flop and double-barrelling TPTK on the turn, then players will start to adjust.  They won’t call your value bets as often as they should, because they are able to read that you have a strong hand and will fold weaker holdings in those situations.  In multiple instances like these, you’ll be losing value in the long term from overplaying big hands.

Likewise, if your table image is too weak then you won’t be able to bluff or win enough dead-money pots.  If you’re overplaying hands with a VPIP% of 35%+ or are 3betting 15%+ of your hands, then you’ll lose credit where it’s needed.  You’ll start getting hit back into more, 4bet bluffed pre-flop, check-raised on the flop or even floated to the river.   These are all disastrous situations because not only are your bluffs not working, but you’ll also be leaking too many chips to re-raises.  In these situations you need to fold out more hands and wait for your table image to strength up.

How to Balance Your Range

There are two basic ways for you to balance your range.  You can either play the same hands differently, or you can start playing a combination of hands the same way.  If you’re regular c-betting missed hand on the flop for example then start check-raising them instead.  Semi-bluffing with mid-pairs on a board like 7JQ is the perfect time to do so.

If your 3betting range is too polarised pre-flop then you can balance it by 3betting light from CO with hands like 34s or 910o.  This prevents folds around the board and balances out your 3bet%.  The last thing that you want is for nobody to be calling you when you raise pre-flop with AA or KK.  Generally speaking, the optimal 3bet frequency in a 6-max game is about 7% from my experience.  Anything above this will make your range appear too weak, and anything below means that you’re not playing enough hands and iso-raising too often.

There are a number of other ways to mix and mash up your hands.  On loose tables you can sometimes limp-shove your strong hands like AA or KK out of position in order to trap opponents.  Value shoving hands like AK in the late stages of MTTs is also very common particularly when you’re short stacked because it creates an image of weakness.  Likewise, you might want to check your monster hands on the turn rather than betting for value or you can even start floating premium hands more on the turn.

In summary, the more deceptive you make your game, the harder you make it for other opponents to out play or out-level you.  A c-bet percentage of 80% is much better than 30%.  One last point that I’d like to make however is that all seems well and good betting your strong hands and mixing them up nicely with weaker holdings.  This does fool opponents.  But a lot of the time opponents will be able to sense weakness by how often you fold to c-bets or double barrels.  A F/cbet%  of 66%+ for example is extremely high and will make you more prone to steals.  Hence, along with playing a wider range of hands more aggressively you should also be more willing to call and float other raises post-flop.

You can find more poker blogs here, but most of them aren’t going to cover this particular strategy subject.

3 Big Mistakes Everyone should Avoid

It’s often been said that poker is a game where money is made by taking advantage of others’ mistakes.  That being said, you certainly don’t want to be the person who is making the big mistakes in the end.  So I’ve identified 3 mistakes that a lot of people (including myself sometimes) get caught making at the table. 

Loving your hand a little too much

AA, KK, and QQ means jackpot in pre-flop play!  However, this doesn’t necessarily mean jackpot later on down the line as the flop and turn come around.  Still, many players will fall in love with their premium hands just because they jammed so much money into the pot pre-flop and this is a huge mistake.  If the hand goes down to the river, these hands are still just a pair if they’re not improved so it can be dangerous to put so much stock into a premium hand.

Treating drawing hands like made hands

We all like to get flush and straight draws when there are a lot of people in a hand and the pot is under control.  However, a flush or straight draw is still exactly that – a drawing hand.  So you definitely can’t be treating these kinds of hands like they’re made ones, and that also means you can’t be committing too much of your stack to the pot for a drawing hand.

Being blindly aggressive

Some people take the advice that aggressive players are better players and run with it.  But the truth is that aggressive players are only as good as their experience and skill level dictates.  So, if you’re not an aggressive player from the outset, you need to slowly cultivate this skill.  In other words, don’t be aggressive just because you’ve heard this is the way to go.

Picking the Right Ring Game

One thing that really amazes me about many poker players is that they blindly pick cash games to play in without putting any thought into the process.  In fact, some people don’t even consider that there’s a process to picking the right game for their playing style.

But veteran players know that some thought definitely needs to be put into picking the right ring games.  I always use 4 different criteria when selecting the cash games I play with the first thing being the limit I’m comfortable with.  After playing poker for a few years now, I’ve found that the limit I’m most comfortable with is $1/$2 No-Limit Hold’em.  And since I have never really tried to be some big-time pro, that limit has worked for what I do.

Another thing I like to look at when deciding what ring game I’ll play in is the percentage of players seeing the flop as well as the average pot size.  These two stats are easy to see since they’re right next to each table, but many players still ignore the numbers.  They are very important though and should definitely be taken into account when choosing ring games because avg. pot size and players seeing the flop show if a table is loose or tight.  And depending on what type of player you are, you’ll want to pick the table that suits you.

One last thing I check into when choosing the table I want to play at is the people I’m playing with.  On loose tables, players are going to make huge raises and go all-in which can make some people – including myself – uncomfortable.  I normally like to play against tighter players since the pots are smaller and the action moves a little slower, but some people hate this because they want to make lots of money.  But no matter what your preference is, the key thing to remember is that some thought needs to be put into picking ring games.

The Value of Small Pocket Pairs in Sit and Go’s

I am a person who definitely likes to play in Sit and Go poker tournaments.  They’re quick, they’re easy, and the action is intense.  And through all of the Sit and Go’s that I have played, I’ve noticed how valuable small pocket pairs can be at certain points of a Sit and Go tourney – especially in the earlier stages!

That’s because the low blinds in the early stages of a Sit and Go really allow you to maximize the effectiveness of small pocket pairs since they are most useful when flops can be seen for cheap.  If you can get to the flop cheaply then you’ve got a chance to flop a set and double up through somebody who doesn’t realize this.  Get lucky and you might even be able to see some turns as well with small pocket pairs when a weak board hits and nobody wants to bet.

Unfortunately, small pocket pairs aren’t quite as effective in the middle part of a tournament since the blinds are too high to see flops cheaply.  And even if you do limp in, other players could raise which definitely makes it not worth seeing the flop.

However, once a Sit and Go is in its later stages pocket pairs become effective again.  If you’re sitting on a big stack you can use small pairs to steal blinds and other hands since they at least give you something when called.  And if you have a small stack a small pair will give you a chance if you’re called when trying to steal hands where nothing is on the board.  In the end, you really just need to focus on where you’re at in a Sit and Go and base your use of pocket pairs on that.

Playing in Shorthanded Poker Tournaments

Back in the day, shorthanded poker tournaments weren’t much of a draw since man had yet to even conquer traditional Texas Hold’em tourneys.  But now that regular Hold’em tournaments feature so many good players, people have moved on to new types of tourneys and shorthanded tournaments happen to fall into this category.  6-max table tournaments have especially gained popularity since they’re prominently featured in the FTOPS series. 

I’ll admit that I have yet to master the shorthanded tourney, but I have employed some strategy that has helped me cash in plenty of these 6-max tournaments.  The first thing I always do is open up the range of hands I am willing to play.  This not only includes playing hands like pocket 9′s more often, but it also includes playing them out of position too.  For instance, if I’m two seats to the left of the big blind, and first seat has called then I’ll almost always play the pocket 9′s (assuming they’re not a major rock).

Another thing I do when playing in shorthanded tournaments is play more loose and aggressive.  In a shorthanded tournament, you don’t have time to sit back and wait for everyone to beat each other up; if you do this then you’ll be blinded out of the tournament in no time!  So you’ve really got to open up your play and start being more loose and aggressive.

One more thing I like to do when playing in 6-max tournaments is spend the first 20 minutes of a new table studying opponents.  Now this might sound a little contradictory to playing loose and aggressive, but you’ve got to play tight in the beginning since you don’t have the luxury of sitting back and gathering info like in traditional tournaments.  If you do these things then you should be pretty successful in 6-max tourneys right off the bat.

The Overuse of Three-Bets

When people start studying poker strategy, three-betting is one of the first things they learn since it is a rather easy concept to grasp.  All a three-bet involves is betting over the top of someone who has just made a raise at the table.  And three-bets are definitely useful when you know how to properly make that third bet and get the maximum value out of your hand.  However, lately it seems that the concept of three-betting is just becoming fashionable rather than a useful tool.

Whether it’s the recent influx of strategy articles centering on three-bets or the fact that TV commentators are constantly talking about three-bets nowadays, it’s hard to deny that people are overusing them.  Every time I get online I manage to play with somebody who wants to three-bet every 5 or 6 hands.  But to me, people are just fooling themselves when they overuse three-bets.

For starters, you have to be sure that your hand is the best at the table when trying to pull off a successful three-bet.  Otherwise you’re just raising more money for someone else to take from you.  Another thing you need to make sure of when three-betting is that you’re getting the maximum value out of the wager.  Nobody is going to call your re-raise if their hand isn’t strong enough and they’re a tight player.  On the other hand, you also need to be mindful of getting aggressive players to commit as much to the pot as possible with a three-bet by not underbetting. 

It’s a delicate balance that I think most people have forgotten when they use three-bets, but I’m glad because it’s not money that is coming out of my pocket when three-bets are misused.