Balancing ranges from early positions

Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 30 October 2009 / Leave a Comment

It is forcing your opponents into this confused and unreliable decision making process that allows good players able to consistently force mistakes from those around them.

One of the most important aspects of poker is thinking about how your actions affect your opponent's decision making processes. A great example of this is in balancing your range from early position, and here I want to look at a situation which shows why this point is true, and how it does affect your opponents.

Imagine you are sitting in middle position with ace jack off suit. We are going to consider three different player types who all raise under the gun, and see what effect each player has on you. The first player type is very tight aggressive. This player plays very few hands, always comes in raises, and is basically never seen raising under the gun without a big hand. Against this kind of player, your life is very simple - you just fold as ace jack is very far behind your opponents range.

The second player type is a wild maniac. This player plays a huge number of hands from all positions, and a raise from under the gun is basically meaningless in terms of telling you how strong their hand is. Against this player type your life is also quite easy, you simply re-raise and try to isolate the maniac with a hand that is very far ahead of their wide range. As you know they likely have quite weak hands, you end up in position, with a good hand, in a large pot - always a good result.

The final player type is a well balanced pro. This player raises from under the gun at a high enough frequency that you know they don't always have big hands, but not so much that they are obviously raising lots of junk. Against this player type your life is much more difficult. Although ace jack is ahead of the portion of their range that is junk, it is crushed by the hands that account for the most part of their range (which is big hands on the whole). So do you re-raise? Fold? Just call?

It is forcing your opponents into this confused and unreliable decision making process that allows good players able to consistently force mistakes from those around them. Balancing your range well from early positions is a great way to do this, and you can create situations where any choices your opponent is making will be genuinely difficult to judge, and this typically leads to them making mistakes, and mistakes are where all the money to be made in poker is.

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