Hello,

I am trying to improve my hand reading. Lots of texts about hand reading start with:

"The villain has a 15% opening range from this spot. After entering 15% in PokerStove, you see that he has AA-77 pairs and most broadways in his range".

But why does everyone believe in PokerStove ranges? Do these ranges come from actual statistics of hands people actually open with? I guess only poker rooms would have that kind of data, I would be surprised if they indeed publish it.

Analyzing showdown hands probably makes little sense here - because very strong and very weak starting hands are going to be underrepresented (due to villain folding to player's more frequent aggression / player folding more often to villain's aggression).

Or is it because it is assumed that everyone else is using PokerStove ranges too?

I think this is still valid.

From the PokerStove FAQ:

The slider interface for setting the top N% of hands orders the hands according to their preflop all-in equity versus three random hands. This rather arbitrary selection was picked because it balances the value of high cards with the value of drawing cards. It is not an absolute ordering, and depending on the specific situation you may want to edit that range of hands when doing equity calculations.