Video Analysis: Understanding Poker Ranges
In this video, MTT Poker School head coach Gareth James walks you through why it's important to connect the dots when it comes to working out what your range actually looks like for a particular line - in this case, a triple barrel!
James starts off the video by encouraging you to hide your hole cards when you review hands to force yourself to think in terms of range rather than what you would do with your exact hand.
In the hand example, Hero opens from the CO and the BB calls. They're playing roughly 50bb effective. The flop is 7?J?Q?, Hero bets 1/4 pot and the BB calls. The turn is 5? and Hero bets 1.25x pot and the BB calls. The river is the K? and Hero jams.
At this point James encourages you to actively think about what your range looks like and demonstrates how easy it is to believe your value range is wider than it actually is by rattling off all the strong hands you could have in this situation.
We could have Q7s, J7s, 75s, QJ, 77, 55, KK, QQ, AT, T9, AA, AK, KQ, KJ, K7s, K5s.
But actually, we don't!
James explains that for this 1/4 pot flop, 1.25x pot turn and river overbet jam line, we don't actually have all of those hands. We wouldn't overbet the turn with QxQx, for example, when we block so much of the BB's calling range. We also wouldn't overbet KxJx on the turn.
So the key thing he goes through in this video is making sure you're connecting the dots from preflop all the way to the river.
You can watch the video here:
Gareth James is the head coach and founder of MTT Poker School and the lead instructor for MTT Game Changer, an interactive group coaching program aimed at low and mid-stakes MTT players and bankrolls. For more information on group coaching and courses, click here.
