A range is the full set of hands a player could hold in a given spot, given everything they have done so far. Instead of asking “does he have ace-king?”, a student thinking in ranges asks “of all the hands he would play this way, how many beat me, and how many do I beat?” The answer is a count, and counts are something a player can actually work with at the table.
Why one guess is not enough
Putting an opponent on a single hand is how most players start. It fails for a simple reason: almost nobody plays only one hand a given way. A player who raises under the gun, bets the flop and bets the river might have a set, top pair, or a missed draw. Picking one and acting on it is a coin toss dressed up as a read.
Ranges replace the guess with arithmetic. They also work in reverse: a thoughtful opponent is reading the hero’s range, not just the hero’s cards, which is why balanced play matters (the GTO meaning note covers that side).
Counting combinations
The building block is the combination, or combo: one specific way to be dealt a hand.
| Hand type | Example | Combos | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pocket pair | 8♠ 8♥ and the others | 6 | 4 suits choose 2 |
| Unpaired, suited | A♠ K♠ and the others | 4 | One per suit |
| Unpaired, offsuit | A♠ K♥ and the others | 12 | 4 × 4 = 16, minus the 4 suited |
| Unpaired, any | AK | 16 | 4 × 4 |
| All two-card hands | 1,326 | 52 choose 2 |
So “QQ+, AK” is 6 + 6 + 6 + 16 = 34 combos, or 2.6% of all hands. A pocket pair is less likely than it looks: AK has 16 combos to aces’ 6, so an opponent is almost three times as likely to hold AK as AA before any cards are seen.
Reading range notation
Players and study tools write ranges in a shorthand:
- 77+ means 77, 88, 99 and up to AA.
- ATs+ means AT, AJ, AQ and AK, suited only.
- KQo means king-queen offsuit; KQ with no letter means both.
- T9s-65s means the suited connectors from T9 down to 65.
A range chart is usually a 13 × 13 grid, with pairs on the diagonal, suited hands above it and offsuit hands below. The grid has 169 cells, but they are not equal: each pair cell holds 6 combos, each suited cell 4 and each offsuit cell 12. A range that looks like a third of the grid can be a much smaller or larger share of the 1,326 hands depending on which cells are filled.
Board cards and blockers change the count
Every card the hero can see removes combos from the opponent’s range. Cards on the board and in the hero’s hand are dead.
On a flop of K♦ 7♣ 2♥, how many combos of “QQ+, AK” are left?
- AA: still 6
- KK: one king is on the board, so 3 kings remain: 3 combos
- QQ: still 6
- AK: 4 aces × 3 kings = 12 combos
- Total: 27, down from 34
If the hero also holds the A♠, the opponent can only have 3 combos of AA and 9 of AK. These “blocker” effects are small one at a time and large in combination, and they are the reason strong players care which suit their ace is.
A worked river decision
Here is a full hand, using a range built for illustration, not a solver output.
Setup. $1/$2 no-limit, nine-handed, $200 stacks. A tight regular raises under the gun to $6. The hero calls on the button with K♣ Q♣. The blinds fold. Pot: $15.
Flop: K♥ 9♥ 4♣. The regular bets $10, the hero calls. Pot $35.
Turn: 2♦. The regular bets $25, the hero calls. Pot $85.
River: 7♠. The heart draw missed. The regular bets $85, the size of the pot.
What the hero needs. A pot-sized bet means calling $85 to win $170 already in the middle: 85 ÷ 255 = 33.3%. The hero’s top pair needs to be good at least one time in three.
The opponent’s betting range. Suppose this regular bets three streets with strong value (sets and AK) and with a handful of missed heart draws:
| Part of range | Hands | Combos before blockers | Combos given the board and the hero’s K♣ Q♣ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Value | KK | 6 | 1 (only K♠ K♦ is left) |
| Value | 99 | 6 | 3 |
| Value | 44 | 6 | 3 |
| Value | AK | 16 | 8 (4 aces × the 2 remaining kings) |
| Bluffs | A♥Q♥, A♥J♥, A♥10♥, Q♥J♥, J♥10♥, 10♥8♥ | 6 | 6 |
| Total | 21 |
The verdict. Bluffs are 6 of 21 combos, 28.6%. The hero needs 33.3%. Against this range, calling loses money, and the disciplined play is a fold, painful as it is to fold top pair.
Change one thing: the regular bets half the pot ($42.50) instead. Now the hero needs 42.50 ÷ (85 + 42.50 + 42.50) = 42.50 ÷ 170 = 25%, and 28.6% bluffs is enough, narrowly, to make the call profitable. Same range, same hand, opposite decision. The bet size sets the price; the range sets the odds.
The blocker twist. Now give the hero K♣ Q♥ instead. The Q♥ removes A♥Q♥ and Q♥J♥ from the opponent’s bluffs, leaving 4 bluffs against 15 value combos: 21.1%. Holding a heart made the bluff-catch worse, because it blocked the very hands the hero wanted the opponent to have. A good rule: a bluff-catcher wants to block value, not bluffs. (In this case the K♣ already blocks some value; the extra heart works against it.)
None of this needs perfect accuracy. If the hero’s estimate of the opponent’s bluffs is off by a combo or two, the conclusion often holds. What matters is replacing “he could be bluffing” with “he has about six bluffs and fifteen value hands.”
Range shapes
Three words come up constantly in strategy talk:
- Linear (merged): the best hands down to a cutoff, such as “TT+, AQ+” for a preflop 3-bet. No bluffs, no gaps.
- Polarized: very strong hands and bluffs, with the middle removed. River bets are often polarized, because medium hands prefer to check.
- Capped (condensed): a range that has lost its strongest hands. A player who just calls preflop rather than re-raising often has few or no aces or kings, and an observant opponent can push on that.
The 3-bet meaning note shows a linear and a polarized 3-betting range side by side with their combo counts.
How to practice
- Pick an opponent type and write down a preflop range for one position.
- After each street, cross out the hands that would not play the way the opponent did.
- Count the combos left that beat the hero and that lose to the hero, adjusting for board cards and blockers.
- Compare the share with the pot odds.
Range viewers and solvers make the counting faster and visual; the poker solvers comparison lists them by published features and price. Counting by hand first, though, is what makes the software readable.
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