Opponents' range of hands

[JordanIB]

After finishing SSH and beginning to apply some of the concepts to my .5/1, I often find myself trying to narrow down the opponents' possible range of hands in order to better dictate my play. However, I also often find that I am completely lost and clueless when trying to do this.

What combination of factors should one use when trying to narrow this down? The only guildline I started thinking about last night was for pre-flop raisers. Looking at their PFR%, (let's say it's 10%), I'll say to myself "Ok...so there's about 17 hands he's raising with here" and then modify that based on position and other factors, and go from there. For a 4% PFR%, I start to key in on 6 or 7 hands. I find this to just be an easy way for me to equate a PFR% to a range of hands.

But outside of this isolated case (PFR for which I have decent stats), I find it very hard to try to start reading opponents, and I fall into a "Well...it's .5/1 Party, he could have anything" type of mentality and declare it nearly impossible to narrow down a range of hands (especially after seeing some of the stuff that goes to a SD). I wonder if that sometimes leads to a tendency to just play my hand without enough consideration of what the opponent may be holding, and what that means for what actions I should take (kind of like the sports cliche of "We need to play our game and not worry about the opponent"). And I know this can't be good...

Any thoughts for how to begin getting comfortable in reading hands, or at least pegging a range of hands that you're going up against? (Which I would think would be fairly important, as it affects your calculation of outs and odds). After playing poker for the last 4 years, I'm finally deciding to try and get serious and methodical about my play, but this is one area that I know haunts me.

Thanks.

[dellcosta]

[ QUOTE ]
I wonder if that sometimes leads to a tendency to just play my hand without enough consideration of what the opponent may be holding, and what that means for what actions I should take (kind of like the sports cliche of "We need to play our game and not worry about the opponent"). And I know this can't be good...

[/ QUOTE ]

Before the flop, definitely just "play your game," so to speak. The only time I've found that giving consideration to what my opponent(s) are holding is if my hand doesn't improve after the flop, and I find that my opponents are raising me. At that point, I look at the flop to consider the range of hands that could put me in a weak position. You should be concerned about what your opponents are holding, but probably not as much as you are at the moment. Try to avoid letting it become a preoccupation, distracting you from estimating odds and such.

[detruncate]

Ok... nobody else seems to want to touch this, so here we go. I start by seeing if there's anything I can learn by their pf play. This usually means that villain is doing something out of the ordinary (e.g., a passive player who raises, an aggressive player who limps, a tight/passive player who sees the flop). Most of the time players act according to type, so you don't learn as much as you'd like about the players who tend toward the extremes. Maniacs raise, calling stations limp.

Evaluate the flop for dangers, then see if you can rule any of them out. TAGs and rocks are relatively easy to put on a fairly narrow range of hands. Other types are much more difficult. The result is your starting point.

Now we see where the aggression comes from (if we're not the one dishing it out), and how they react. Passive players getting frisky is a danger sign, so you need to carefully evaluate the strength of your hand wrt the potential dangers on the board. Also tend to discount the possibility of them pushing draws. Passive players bet made hands. LAGs will overplay, which means that you have to be prepared to push a little harder than you otherwise would unless the board is particularly scary.

It's mostly just common sense stuff. You build a picture of what you think your opponents might have by gradually narrowing down the range of their potential holdings based on their pf and flop actions relative to their player types. In other words... you start with what's possible and then do your best build a case for what's likely.

Finally, you think about card distribution. Certain combinations of available cards are more probable than others. For example, we all know you're more likely to be dealt AK than AA, so you can try to estimate your "weighted outs". Without going into the math... if you have AK vs a pf TAG capper and Kxx flops, you're obviously much better off if he has AA or QQ or AK(s) than KK. One K is in your hand, so you can count up the number of card combinations you'd be behind to and "weight" your outs based on the likelihood of villain having any of those particular hands. There are actual examples out there if you're interested in reading more about this. Try a search for "weighted outs".

It's a similar thing when you're dealing with things like aggression on a monotone flop. If you can't rule out a flush draw based on villains player type, you still know that he's much more likely to be on a draw than to have flopped a flush (from an odds perspective). Of course, the numbers are just a starting point. You have to factor in an estimate of the chances of villain pumping a flush draw based on what you know about him, and the longer he shows sustained aggression, the more convinced you have to be that he has the goods.

So to review:

1) See if the pf action tells you anything that will help you minimize or eliminate possible dangers on the flop

2) See what the flop action tells you wrt the possible dangers

3) Try to factor in at least a rough estimate of the likelihood of various hands based on card distribution

4) Determine your relative hand strength based on the results

I'm not sure that this is exactly what you were looking for, but it might be a good place to start.