Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the right forum to ask this question. If not, please feel free to move it.

Sorry if this is a noob question. This is my first post. So I just purchased a membership in Doug Polk's Upswing poker and found that there are preflop charts for many different situations.

First, obviously there are raise first in (RFI) charts for each position so 8 charts there.

Then, there are RFI vs 3 bet charts in which if you RFI'd in a certain position and someone in a different certain position 3 bet you, what is your raise, call fold range? There are 36 charts for this.

Then there are 36 more charts for when you're not first in the pot but someone else raise in front of you (or is this something else? I'm not sure but there are 36 charts).

So there are 8 + 36 + 36 = 80 different preflop charts and that's just for online cash games. There are 88 more charts for live cash games and 80 more for MTT whatever that is...

I read somewhere that you have to have a clear range you want to play for every situation and not just a vague one. I guess I've been playing with a vague range in my mind because I certainly don't have 80 different ranges memorized by heart. I play conservatively

Do good players all have their own 80+ charts and ranges memorized by heart and mostly follow? Is this really necessary to become a better player?

I don't completely agree with how the hands are ranked in some books and apps. I have an app called PokerCruncher that has hand ranges and rankings. I think their ranking system is the same as that of Equilab's. I don't know exactly how they came up with these rankings but I don't agree with all of them. For example, PokerCruncher ranks 99 over AKo. This can only be justified putting these hands against a completely random hand in which case 99 has about 72% equity while AKo has about 65%. If it's ranked based on equity vs a random hand then why isn't 88 and 77 ranked above AKo? They both have higher equity. Also, we're not interested in how our hand fares to a completely random hand. We want to know how it fares against our opponent's range and given that out opponent plays a certain non random range, we can have a new rank of hands against that range. Moreover, someone else can have a newer rank against our new range and so on. I used to mess around with PokerCruncher to put hands up agains certain ranges to make rankings and getting new rankings against those new range, etc. and concluding that there is no clear answer. There is no one top 10% hand range that is always right. Am I wrong in thinking this way? Is there a consensus in the community as the correct ranking of the hands?

So my two questions are,
1. There is no absolute hand rankings and you just have to come up with your range based on the type of opponents you are facing. Correct?
2. Is it necessary to have 80+ different charts of hand ranges that you can follow strictly or just approximately for every possible situation to become a better player? Do you guys do this or know of other good players who actually do this?

Thanks.

Hello,

I'm the developer of PokerCruncher. I'll comment on just the PokerCruncher part of this post and will leave the rest for others to give input on.

The iPhone, iPad, and Android versions of PokerCruncher have 1 hand ordering, the same as PokerStove's hand ordering, where hands are ranked according to preflop all-in equity vs. 3 random hands. This has become a de-facto standard hand ordering and is a good general purpose ordering for many types of game situations.

The Mac-Expert version of PokerCruncher has 8 different hand orderings, listed on this page:

http://www.pokercruncher.com/ipPoker...lHandOrderings

You'll want to use different orderings for different types of game situations. For example when deciding if you want to move all-in preflop in a heads-up situation, the Sklansky-Karlson(Chubukov) All-In No-Limit Hold'em Rankings would be the best ordering to use. This ordering gives a higher ranking to Ax hands, and a lower ranking to suited connector hands, than the PokerStove ordering. For example 54s has higher value in a general game situation where you're seeing a flop against at least several opponents than in a preflop all-in heads-up situation. The above webpage has descriptions of the 8 orderings.

Wow, thanks a lot for your response! I've been using your apps casually for a few years now and I really like it. I actually purchased the PokerCruncher for android, PokerCruncher, OddsTeacher and OddsQuizzer for iOS. I never understood where the rankings came from. Thanks for the explanation.

80+ hand charts? I struggle with 3.

If you play gto I assume this is a must.

There's different types of equity. 99 is better than AK but does not retain its equity well. It makes marginal hands a lot which isn't as good as strong hands a little. Unless short stacked or heads up. Deep stacked or multiway its more important to make nut type hands so suited connectors increased in value.

Don't try to memorize them all at once, just keep learning them as you progress in poker. Certain situations will pop up and you will be like "oh, I actually have a chart for this" and thats basically how you will learn.