Range

What Is a Range in Poker?

A range is the entire collection of hands a player could hold in a specific situation. Instead of guessing that your opponent has one exact hand, strong players assign them a range of possible holdings based on their position, preflop action, and betting patterns. Thinking in ranges is the most important conceptual shift separating recreational players from serious students of the game.

How Ranges Are Constructed

Your range is shaped by the actions you have taken. An under-the-gun open raise represents a tighter range than a button open. As the hand progresses, each bet, call, check, or raise narrows the set of hands you could logically hold. By the river, a player who raised preflop, bet the flop, and barreled the turn has a much narrower range than they started with.

Ranges take on different shapes. A Polarized Range contains mostly very strong hands and bluffs, while a Condensed Range is weighted toward medium-strength holdings. Recognizing which shape your opponent's range takes is critical for making optimal decisions.

Practical Example

You open from the cutoff and the big blind calls. The flop comes K-9-4 rainbow. Your range includes pocket pairs, broadway hands, suited connectors, and suited aces. Your opponent's calling range is wide but lacks the premium hands they would have 3-bet. This asymmetry gives you an advantage on king-high boards, allowing you to c-bet profitably with most of your range.

Range Analysis and GTO Strategy

In GTO strategy, every decision is evaluated at the range level. The question is not "what should I do with this hand?" but "what should my entire range do on this board?" Understanding Equity distributions across ranges is the foundation of modern poker.

GTO Ranges+ provides visual range charts for every preflop scenario. Download GTO Ranges+ on the App Store to drill these ranges on the go. Use the Range Asymmetry View to see how ranges interact on different boards, or read Preflop Ranges: Building Your Opening Strategy for a comprehensive breakdown of range construction.