While watching a video on improving exploitative play, I noticed the pro had hand ranges constructed in Flopzilla for nearly every situation and position. For cash, he had open, defend vs. 3 bet, and defend vs. open, with ranges within those categories for MP v UTG, CO v UTG, CO v MP, BTN v UTG, BTN v MP, BTN v CO, SB v UTG, SB v MP, SB v CO, SB v BTN, BB v UTG, BB v MP, BB v CO, BB v BTN and BB v SB. For MTT, he had categories for > 80bb, 60-80bb, 40-60bb, 30-40bb, 25-30bb, 20-25bb and 17-20bb (that I could see; there's obviously more).

1) Could anyone point me to some resources that specifically refer to constructing hand ranges from various positions, as well as resources regarding the theory behind it? (I've been reading about GTO ranges, but I believe this is a combination of GTO/exploitative.)

2) How much difference will there really be in these ranges? Or put another way, how do you accurately add/remove hands from such similar positions? (Such as deciding the difference between BB v MP and BB v CO?)

Thanks for the help.

there is no such thing as GTO preflop (yet) but donkr.com have a good series of articles on this using the AKQ model. It will help you understand balancing ranges preflop.

http://en.donkr.com/Articles/Categor...%27em-6-Max-16
think it will answer most of your questions, just dont think after reading this that youre the next Hollywood Haxton

A note of caution: Memorizing ranges like this doesn't work well for everyone. I am pretty bad at rote learning. I find reading up on strategy helps me think better about poker but when I try to commit lots of ranges to memory it just detracts from my ability to concentrate on the table, make good reads and opponent specific decisions.

I'm not saying don't spend time working on your ranges - just be sure you tailor your approach to suit your own abilities, strengths and weaknesses.

Also, one aspect of ranges you haven't explicitly mentioned above is how these different ranges hit different flops. You should use flopzilla to analyse how your ranges hit different flops using some suitable example boards that are representative of the different types of flops. Also get a good idea of the frequency with which various flop types occur.

If you struggle to remember lots of ranges just look for similarities between different ranges and interpolate a single range that works ok for two+ situations. Similarly with board analysis: An A63 board is basically the same as A72, A83, A64 etc. You can cut your workload and amount you need to remember by working smart.