14 Jan 2026 Intermediate This material is for medium-skilled players ranges The ability to put your opponent on a hand is one of the most important skills in winning poker. However, many players misunderstand what this concept really means. They believe their main goal is to guess the exact two cards their opponent holds. That would be ideal, of course, but in reality this is very rarely possible. To do this consistently, you would need to know your opponent extremely well and have played thousands of hands against them. Only then could you sometimes narrow them down to two exact cards. Occasionally, you will face very straightforward players. Against such opponents, it may be obvious when they are strong and when they are weak. If you ever find a player like this, enjoy it — they are rare. But here is the problem: every poker book tells you that you must “play the opponent.” How can you do that if you cannot realistically put them on a specific hand? The answer is simple. Why You Should Not Guess Exact Hands In poker, the number of possible actions is very limited. You can raise, call, or fold. In No-Limit Hold’em, you can also choose different bet sizes, but in practice most players tend to use similar sizes in similar situations. Because of this limited set of options, players often take the same actions with many different hands. This is exactly why it is so difficult to put an opponent on one exact holding. Trying to guess specific cards leads to bad decisions. Instead of guessing, you should focus on what hands make sense given the action. What a Range Really Means The key is not guessing. The key is understanding that even limited information is still information. This information is called a range. A range is simply the group of all hands a player can reasonably have when they take a specific action. For example, at a 6-max $200NL table, a solid regular opening from UTG might have a range such as: 22+ JTs+ QTs+ KTs+ AJo+ KQo This is a very tight range and represents only about 17% of all possible hands. In some ways, playing against a tight range is easier. You fold your weak hands, re-raise your strong hands, and call with hands that have good implied odds. The real difficulty begins on postflop streets. Range Thinking in Practice: A Full Hand Example I am dealt on the CO at a $200NL cash table. Everyone folds to me, and I open to $8. Everyone folds except BB, who calls. The BB is a slightly loose player. He calls too much preflop, is not very aggressive postflop, and tends to overplay his hands. He starts the hand with $158, so there are $150 effective going to the flop. I am in position. This context matters. I open very wide from CO, stealing the blinds around 35% of the time. My range contains many weak hands. The BB likely knows this, or at least feels it. Bad players often respond to frequent open-raises by calling even wider. So at this point, both of us likely have wide ranges. Flop Analysis The flop comes . After rake, the pot is $15.50. This is one of the best flops possible for QQ. Unless the BB has TT, 55, or 33, I am ahead of almost everything. Most of his hands have five outs or fewer. He checks, and I bet $10. I do not want to bet big here. If I bet big, he will fold hands like 77 or 76. He will never fold sets, and he likely will not fold a ten either. On this board, I want many calls. He makes a big mistake by calling, so I am happy to extract value over multiple streets. I make money here from many small, frequent calls, not from rare large ones. He check-raises to $27. This is unexpected. The sizing looks like a pot-sized bet button click, which many players use. However, this particular opponent usually bets smaller, which makes this raise suspicious. He could certainly do this with a set, but he might also believe that top pair is strong enough to raise. Hands like T9s, KTo, AT, and JT are all possible. Since he is not a strong player, I cannot remove these hands from his range. I call the remaining $17. At this point, I put him on the following range: T9s+ JTo+ TT 55 33 Turn Analysis The turn is the , making the board . The board is still rainbow. The opponent checks again. This is strange. Check-raising twice with a set would be very unusual, but weak players often take illogical lines. Two pair is not in his range, and the six does not meaningfully change anything. This is a classic way-ahead/way-behind situation. I keep his range the same. He did not improve. I believe he will still call with many top pairs, so I bet $40. Again, I am not trying to bet big. I want calls. If he calls with anything other than a set, he is making a serious mistake. He just calls. At this point, I am almost certain he has a ten. River Analysis The river is a , which only improves T9. He checks. I shove his remaining $85. He calls with pot odds of 2.7:1 and shows . How The Hand Changes Against a Strong Player At first glance, the hand looks simple: overpair versus top pair, stack won. But everything changes if we imagine the same hand against a strong player. After the flop check-raise, I would put a good player on a range such as: ATs 88–TT 55 33 76s some bluffs Good players bluff these boards at reasonable frequencies, sometimes with gutshots and sometimes with complete air. Queens are near the top of my range, so folding would allow too many bluffs. I would still call the flop raise. However, on the turn, the situation changes. If a good player checks the turn, betting becomes dangerous. I would fold out bluffs and lose to monsters. Against a strong opponent, checking back the turn is often the correct play. Key Takeaways You should not try to guess exact cards Always think in ranges, not single hands Ranges change on every street Weak players narrow their ranges quickly Strong players keep their ranges wide and balanced Poker is about assumption, not certainty Trying to guess exact cards is not poker — it is guessing. Poker is about gathering information, narrowing ranges, and making the best possible decision with incomplete data. The cards decide the rest.
