I've recently been trying to advance my playing by learning to "play range" as opposed to only putting the opponent on a range of hands (with all the associated tactics for playing range, such as calculating Range asvantage, Nut advantage and more).
From what I have gathered sofar, NLHE coaches, including Johnathan Little, suggest to strictly start that process of range thinking PREFLOP, by assigning a range to the opponent strictly PREFLOP, and then deduct hands from it with every new action.
I have sofar found doing this construction preflop challenging to do, because of not being clear about how to work out the opponent's range preflop since there could be way too many hands to consider.
Today, I came across this post on Reddit where this guy in this post does NOT assign a range to the opponent preflop. Apparently he creates a range for the opponent on the flop.
https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comme...onents_ranges/
If this guy had followed the advice of NLHE coaches to the letter and has assigned a range to his opponent preflop, I would expect that his thinking on the flop should have been reductive, and largely along the lines of "now my opponent can't have A, or B or C" etc. "therefore his remaining range consists of X, Y and Z".
I am all for following guidelines to the letter when they are correct, but this had me thinking.
In the hand on the above post, and as often happens in games, there is little action preflop, and effectively too many possible hands to consider for the opponent's range if we assign a range to him that moment. In contrast, we have a bit more information available on the flop after some action to construct a likely more accurate range to the opponent, so, likely, that range as constructed on the flop is probably more reliable than one preflop, and that also saves the process of having to eliminate numerous hands from it anyway.
I am all for RTFM, following guidelines to the letter, and not applying shortcuts not instructed, when the guidelines are correct. But are these guidelines I stated above correct?
Is it entirely wrong here that this Reddit user skipped constructing his opponent's range preflop and only started considering it on the flop?
Isn't that a more correct method here, and since there is more info to consider on the flop rather than preflop?
Are there exceptions where you would rather start constructing the opponent's range on the flop instead of preflop? I mean, if I just don't manage to construct a range for the opponent preflop - such as if I don't have enough info about them to construct any range in a way where it is helpful, is it wrong to try and do it this way?
Or is the guy on the Reddit post actually doing it wrong?
Last edited by tilted9042; 03-15-2023 at 08:22 AM.
