Balancing Your Range

Now that we’ve talked a little bit about finding your range of starting hands, I’d like to talk a little bit about how to balance that range. This is a relatively simple concept which is meant to keep your opponents from being able to put you on a certain range of hands. For example: say you raised three times the big blind with hands like 77, 88, 99, AT, AJ, but you raised four times the big blind with premium hands like AA, KK, AK, QQ, it will be much easier for other players to pick up on those tendencies. In its simplest terms, range balancing is where you play the exact same way with a wide range of hands in certain situations. Much of this is going to depend on how often you are continuation betting, or betting after the flop after you’ve raised pre-flop.

Let’s say you’re playing a 6-max 1/2 cash game online and you are in late position with JhTh. You raise it to six dollars and get called by the big blind. The flop comes out JdTc4d. With the big blind having only called, you can be pretty sure that you’ve got the best hand. You have a made hand and should bet it for value here. However, any hands like KQ, Q9, or any two diamonds are drawing to a better hand than yours. You want to keep up the betting and give them bad odds to draw to a better hand.

Now let’s look at a different example with the same hand and pre-flop action. You raise $6 in late position with JhTh and get called by the big blind. This time the flop comes out Qh9c4h. This time you don’t have a made hand, but you should be betting it like you do. This is called a semi-bluff because, although you don’t have a hand yet, you have considerable equity (~52%) to make the best hand. You hand an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw. Any K, 8, or heart will make your hand and more than likely give you the best of it. Of course, in situations like this, there are implied odds to think about, but we’ll talk about that later.

Now we’ll look at one last example. Same game, same hand, same situation. You raise to $6 in late position with JhTh and get called by the big blind. This time the flop comes out Ah6d5c. This flop in no way helps your hand, but because you raised before the flop, you can bluff and represent an ace here. Sometimes by just keeping the pressure on and betting the flop you can take down the pot then and there. This obviously won’t always be the case, but this is why a balanced range is so important to have in your arsenal. If your range is balanced then your opponents will know that sometimes you’ll have a made hand here and sometimes you won’t. The idea is to bet it the same way you would if the ace did help you.

Essentially, having a balanced range will make it much harder for opponents to play against you because you could very well be holding any two cards.

As always, comments and questions are welcome.