How to Put Someone on a Range in Poker (Step by Step, With a Worked Hand)

"Put him on a range" is the most common advice in poker and the least often explained. This post is the explanation: the five steps, and then one full hand where every step is done in the open.

The five steps

1. Type the player. Tight or loose, passive or aggressive. If you've never seen them before, assume a typical player for the stake and revise as you see showdowns. Everything downstream depends on this, so if you skip it, the rest is arithmetic on a guess.

2. Set the preflop range. Position plus action. An early-position raise from a tight player is a short list. A button raise from a loose one is a long one. A cold call sits between: it removes the hands strong enough to reraise and the hands too weak to continue.

3. Subtract on every street. Look at the board, then their action, and ask one question: would this player do this with this hand? Remove every hand where the answer is no. Never add hands back later.

4. Weigh what's left. At the decision point, count the combinations. Sixteen for any unpaired hand, six for any pair, fewer for each relevant card you can see. Sort the survivors into hands that beat you and hands that don't.

5. Commit, then check. Decide before the next card. When there's a showdown, compare. If the hand was outside your range, find the street where you removed it and ask why.

That's the procedure. Now the hand.

The hand

$1/$2 no-limit hold'em, live, nine-handed. Everyone has about $250.

The villain is a regular in the cutoff. You've watched him for two hours: he raises maybe one hand in four when it's folded to him in late position, rarely limps, bets when he has something, and doesn't get out of line. Tight-aggressive, leaning solid. That's step one.

He raises to $8 from the cutoff. The button and small blind fold. You're in the big blind with 9♠ 8♠ and call. Pot: $17.

Preflop: the starting range

A solid regular opening from the cutoff plays something like 25 to 30% of hands:

• All pairs
• Suited aces, most suited kings, suited broadways, and suited connectors down to about 65s
• Offsuit broadways: AK through AT, KQ, KJ, QJ, and a few like KT and JT

Roughly 350 combinations. Hold that list in your head. Everything from here is subtraction.

Flop: Q♥ 9♦ 4♣

You check. He bets $10 into $17. You call with middle pair. Pot: $37.

What does a $10 bet on this board remove from a TAG's cutoff range? Almost nothing. This is a dry board with one high card, and it's the kind of flop an aggressive raiser bets with the whole range, because most of your big-blind hands missed too. So:

• Top pair and better: all the queens, and sets of queens, nines, and fours. Still in.
• Underpairs (JJ, TT, 88 and lower): still in. They'd bet for value and protection.
• Ace-high and king-high with nothing: still in. That's a standard continuation bet.
• Suited connectors that whiffed (76s, 65s): still in, betting as a bluff.

A small continuation bet here narrows nothing. The range after the flop is basically the range before it. That's a real read, not a failure to read. Recognising "this action tells me nothing" saves you from inventing information.

Turn: 2♠

You check. He checks back. Pot: still $37.

This is the street that does the work. A solid, aggressive player who bet the flop and now checks a blank turn is telling you what he doesn't have:

• AQ, KQ, suited QJ, sets. Removed. A TAG bets those on a brick turn nearly every time. There are too many hands you'd call with, and he isn't slowplaying against a big-blind caller on a dry board. Not zero, but rare enough to set aside.
• Weak queens (QT, offsuit QJ). Some stay. Checking back for pot control with a thin top pair is exactly what this player type does.
• JJ, TT. Stay. Medium showdown value, wants to see a cheap river.
• 88, 77, 66, 55. Mostly stay, same logic.
• Ace-high and king-high air. Some give up here, and a check is what giving up looks like. A few will bet the river as a bluff.
• Missed connectors. Gave up. Removed from the value side, kept as possible river bluffs.

The range that checks the turn is now: weak top pair, underpairs, and air. Almost no strong hands.

River: 9♣

You have trips. Pot: $37. You bet $25. He calls.

Now weigh what's left and ask which of it calls $25:

• QT, QJ. Calls. Top pair doesn't fold to one bet on a paired board. Three queens are left in the deck and four of the other card, so QT is twelve combos and QJ is twelve. Twenty-four combos, all losing to you.
• JJ, TT. Calls, reluctantly. A regular will pay one bet with a pair above the nine. Six combos each. Twelve combos, all losing.
• 88, 77. Sometimes calls, sometimes folds. Call it half. A few combos, all losing.
• Ace-high. Folds. Gone from the calling range.
• A slowplayed set. The one thing that beats you. QQ is three combos, 44 is three, and both would have bet the turn most of the time. Call it two combos' worth of risk after that discount. (99 is impossible: you hold one nine and two are on the board.)

The calling range is about forty combos, and you beat all but two of them. Your $25 bet is value, and a bigger one would have been fine too.

He shows Q♦ T♦. You win.

What a different player changes

Run the same hand against a loose-passive player and almost every step changes:

• The preflop range is twice as wide, so 4x, 2x, and hands like 9-5 are all in.
• The flop bet means more, because a passive player bets less often with nothing.
• The turn check means much less. Passive players check back strong hands routinely, so AQ and even the sets stay in the range.
• The river call includes everything from ace-high up, because that's what calling stations do. Your value bet is still good, but the danger is different: it's the slowplayed set that a station never bets.

Same cards, different range, because a range is about the player. That's step one, and it's why it's step one.

Practice this

The best way to make the procedure automatic is to run it under time pressure with an answer at the end. The free trainer deals fifteen hands against five opponent types and grades every range you commit to. There's a one-page summary of the steps on the hand reading cheat sheet, and a list of drills for the table in hand reading exercises.