Balancing your ranges
Marcus Bateman
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Marcus Bateman /
21 January 2009 /
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Striking the balance between the right amount of deception and of actually having the goods is critical at the mid stakes and higher
This is one of the most important concepts to be able to understand as you start moving your game up the limits. 'Balancing your ranges' simply refers to making sure that when you make a specific play, you do it with a wide enough range of hands to stop your play being too predictable.
The most basic example of this is to imagine two opposing extremes of player at your table. One who only ever plays aces, and one who players every hand they are dealt. The first player's range of hands is simple - it is only aces and you can play against them accordingly (just robbing their blinds will quickly bust them in this case); the second players range is everything, which means you just have to wait for hands and try and get as many chips in the middle each time you have a big hand.
Neither of these player's range is at all balanced - it is skewed far too far in one particular direction. This makes their play predictable, easily exploitable, and as a result both players will go bust very quickly. In reality, no one really plays quite like these two (although there are players who come pretty close), and most people have slightly more balanced ranges than these two.
A better example of this concept in action in terms that you will often come across is early position raising. Many players will only every raise QQ+ and AK from early position - reasoning that they need to be very strong due to the number of players to act behind them. The problem with this is that an observant player can quickly pick up on their specific range and act accordingly (knowing that you have a big hand is a great opportunity to get involved with a marginal hand, hoping for a good flop and a big day in no limit and pot limit games). If this type of player started raising some more marginal hands from early position, such as suited connectors or small pairs, they would balance their range a bit more, and leave it much harder for any observant players to decide how to play their hand.
Striking the balance between the right amount of deception and of actually having the goods is critical at the mid stakes and higher. By making sure that for every play you make with one hand, you also have a similar play with a different one, he will keep all opponents guessing about your holdings - and this is one of the most important concepts in higher stakes games.
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