I was just wondering what peoples thoughts are on using ranging in different situations. I am just getting a handle on how to estimate my equity against different ranges, but since I am just starting to do this I have to start simple and practice with tighter/smaller range sizes. For example I will put a UTG raise into equilab (pokerstove gone now) and try to estimate the equity against different hands. So now as I continue to practice this, naturally I'm going to want to throw wider ranges into the mix, and more the one villain as well. Does ranging go down in value the wider the range? Should I even be thinking about combos if someone is playing 30% of hands in a situation?
I noticed a lot of the threads on here today that I was looking to participate in, the villians were listed as LAG or Donks. Seems it would be more beneficial to use ranging in a 3 bet pot or against TAGs.

You should always be using ranges, but ranges are more obvious when your V is more predictable. It is more difficult to range accurately, the wider the range is. That doesn't mean just throw the concept out when you can't estimate the range well, though, it just means that we need to get better at hand reading.

I'll work my way to broader ranges then

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When ranges start to get really wide small errors at the margin rarely have a substantial effect on the final results.

It's really not as broad as you may think.

Pre-flop, yes, villain could be very wide.

However, as you go into a flop, there are really only so many combos of hands that could continue depending on size of your bet.

Turn, even fewer, and river so forth.

RP gives you the lowdown on how many successful LLSNL players handle ranges.

The only thing I can add is that many posters are unaware of what many terms actually mean. To start off with, they are confused about what the difference is between a LAG and the average loose player. They start a description with the villain is a LAG and then the villain limped when first to act and calls pf. If queried about it, they'll see nothing unusual in the hand in question. A donk is nothing more than someone who's play they don't respect. They've rarely noticed if they are putting a lot of money in the pot bad on the turn and river, or just they see a lot of flops cheap in position.

Ok that's helpful. I was looking at a topic "crushing small stakes nl" under one of the stickys".the thread was about playingLag in deep stack situations when conditions are right. Now i understand the point of playing loose aggressive which is to generate action for yourself amoung other things.

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I am planning on reading harringtons book with sections about styles and stack sizes to understand LAG playing style.

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Check out books and publication sub forum.

FWIW, Harrington won't help with your objective.

The goal should be to get Vs down to a type of hand. Saying someone has flush draws/TPTK/sets in this spot is most useful if you're calculating an AI EV. In game it doesn't do a lot. You'll have a tough time finding an amount to bet that's high enough to price out a combo draw but also low enough to get TP4K to call drawing nearly dead. Whatever the majority of my V's range is, I size my betting to play best against that type of hand.

If you flop TPTK with AdKd on a Ac5c9s flop, and V only has fd's or Ax, and he only plays broadway Ax, then only 2 Aces are left in the deck so there are 24 combos of AQ/AJ/AT. But if V plays everything suited under the sun, there are 11 clubs we don't see and 11choose2 = 55 combos of flush draws. So 70% of V's range is flush draws, let's price out the flush draw which he has the majority of the time.

Preflop there are other very important factors like position, history, drunkenness, etc. I wouldn't try to range a pf raiser for every possible hand he can have. But post flop you can really start to narrow it down.