I'm trying to tighten up in some spots, and I feel a little leaky in the BB. (Obviously some of these ranges will change depending on who's in the pot, how spewy oppenents are postflop, etc.).

Average live player (10-20 to 20-40 stakes) raises in EP (let's say AJ/Q-AKo, AT-AKs, 77/88+). I've listed some very approximate ranges (pairs, suited no-gaps, suited one-gaps, suited two-gaps, offsuit no-gaps, offsuit one-gaps, offsuit two-gaps).

Calling ranges:
1) vs. villian plus 1 caller


2) vs. villian plus 2 callers


3) vs. villain plus 3 callers


4) vs. villian plus 4+ callers


Edit: There are obviously some raising hands within the calling range. Calling range = playable hand range, I guess...

You're actually playing way too tight. Villain+ 2 callers= any 2 suited cards.

54s plays better in 1) then KTo.

What do you put the callers on? I'm not sure what ranges to use in your game. As I play around with 1) I get a lot of 22%-25% equity. You're getting 5:1, but post flop would matter to me a bunch. I'd also think about domination on both sides. As I build the 3 betting range for the second villain and look at his cc range, it is almost like he's covering all the Broadway cards that your EP raiser doesn't have. Between the two of them, hands with A through T get chewed up by being dominated.

*******Equity*****Win*****Tie
UTG****47.86%**46.72%***1.15%*{ 77+, ATs+, KQs, AJo+ }
MP3****27.71%**26.50%***1.21%*{ TT-66, AQs-A4s, K8s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, AQo-A9o, KTo+, QTo+ }
BB*****24.43%**24.02%***0.41%*{ J8s }

Hence, 96s lacks domination and plays just as well as J8s. As live players, maybe they blur their ranges to suited cards or at least the cold-caller does. Still, as you stove this, you see hands that are slightly lower and undominated that do better than the equivalent higher hand -- for example, suited 2 gaps.

By the time you get to V+4C, you're getting 11:1 to 11.5:1 closing the action and that's pretty much any two cards so you're playing way too tight in that scenario. I mean you can drop 92o and the like but 54o has got to be in there. The hands I actually hate the most are K2o-ish and J6o-ish ... they feel like they're too strong to fold at 11:1 but too weak to do anything with.

In the extreme of V+1C, you're getting 5:1 to 5.5:1 closing the action and I agree with the budding consensus that domination is a huge issue and that 54s > KTo. Add more of the suited 1-gap/2-gappers and don't add any more offsuit hands, IMO.

I don't think you should rely on pure equity calculations-- (1) you need a good idea of what the range of the raiser is (which you did; I'm just saying it's mandatory), and (2) you should always consider post-flop playability out of position in a raised pot.

If I think the raiser raises wide, yeah, I'll basically call with whatever PokerStove tells me to minus a few percentage points for being out of position. But if I think the raiser is not FOS, I avoid calling with hands that are likely dominated-- for instance, I reject "any two suited" because you only flop flush draws 1 in 11 times and the other 10 times you have to be very careful about being in there with a dominated hand. I basically don't think there's much value in K2, for instance, against a non-FOS raiser no matter what. The RIO's are just too high, because in a normal game, we are almost always paying off AA / KK / AK / KQ / KJ if a king hits and we aren't hitting enough big hands to compensate for that.

But against a non-FOS raiser, the type of hands that do get into my range as the number of cold-callers increase are suited connectors, 1-gappers, 2-gappers, and 3-gappers, and hands like QTo, J9o, T8o, and offsuit connectors.

These are my 'I should tighten up' ranges.

Definitely on board with the idea that we should be playing hands that are less likely to be dominated.

I'm not sure ranges matter as much when you're in a multiway pot and looking to play more implied odds hands, amirite?

Thinking back several years I made a post about playing really tight in the blinds. Kit told me I was way too tight and at the time I disagreed with him. Now I totally agree with him that I was way too tight in the blinds. I just couldn't see it at the time

Its good to have some sort of ranges as your defaults but don't forget other things:

Who is doing the raising? Their approx ranges? How do they play PostFlop? How do you play Postflop? Who else is in the pot with you? Do they fold to Postflop aggression? Can you get free cards OOP. This is something not talked about too much but vs certain players with my own personal image I can get some free looks OOP at times. Sounds lame but it works sometimes.