How do you adjust your handranges against looser/tigher opponents?

[duderino89]

This question came up recently in my community and i like to share it with you guys, because i like to learn from as much input as possible:

Playing with GTO ranges for every position and stacksize always ensures +EV for that playstyle. But all those ranges take in account opponents ranges as well. But what happens if the ranges of your opponents differ in an extreme way?

How do you adjust your handrange against a super-loose opponent how do you adjust against a super-tight opponent?

There are plenty of examples you can think of like playing OOP against loose passive - playing IP against loose aggressive. But they all share the same concept - so try to keep it as simple as possible.

Going from GTO to exploitative ranges always leaves room for discussion. So feel free to tell me your way of exploiting - does your range get looser vs loose players and take a higher variance spot or do you get tighter? What do you do against tight players?

I can't wait to read from your experiences and i'll answer my question in a later post as well!

 

[duderino89]

Playing against loose players:

Playing in microstakes you often face the 5 way limped pot and it can be hard to play post-flop against multiple hands with extreme wide ranges. For me this is where all my ranges loosen up very wide.
If i have a semi premium hand and there is a lot of dead money in the pot and i am <30BB in stack i prefer jamming it all-in - sometimes it is just nice to grab the 6-7BB that are dead in the pot. My handranges also loosen up extremely. Since i do mostly play PKO tourneys i even start jamming hands like QTs and other combinations with good card removal that will do just fine if i get called by the random Ax call or the small pocket pair that may have limped.
Even hands like AK will be jammed - i only make exceptions with AA KK and QQ - the great thing about playing exploitativ strategys is, most people won't even notice. So i can then raise up to like 6-7 BB and play postflop.
Also my overlimping range gets looser as well. but allways trying to take hands that tend to flop a lot of equity or have nut advantages. So mostly suited hands pretty much any suited K or Q and a lot of connectors.
In all situations i like to play postflop very passive against loose players. In my experience a lot of loose players see a check as a sign of weakness and start betting very wide. So when flopping huge hands against them i like to check - and i really don't like to bluff them cause sometimes it can be very hard to get them off any pair.


Facing a tight opponent:
Having tight opponents in the blinds i start attacking more aggressive loosening my ranges from later positions to steal their blinds.

But if i am in the blinds and face raises from tighter opponents i tighten my ranges as well.
I tend to don't defend hands where i am afraid that i might be dominated my their oppening range plenty of times, e.g. KJo KTo and focus more on suited hands.

If i have a multiway raised pot with a tight player in it - i like to isolate him - making my range looser again. My 3betting range will mostly consist out of suited Ax hands as well as suited connectors / 1 gappers like T8s 87s. Hands that may be dominated by other players in the hand -but most of the times not by the tight player that i want to isolate.
Most of the tight players in the lower buy-ins seem to struggle getting rid of their top pair so my goal is to outplay them postflop. Not trying to bluff them off their hand. In this example i would be more aggressive preflop and tigher postflop.

 

[duderino89]

Does nobody have any input?
Really could use some help here guys!
Maybe next year
Anyway best of luck for the new year - if anyone wants to answer the question how do you adjust your handranges against looser opponents - i'd gladly appreciate it!

 

[chux119]

Hey broski,

I think that there is no possible exact answer to your question. You determine your hand range based on your BB stack, so if you have a big BB stack you can widen your range as that stack gets smaller or when just starting off, you need to "start" shortening your range.
So that is the basic "rule". When you have a large number of BB you can allow yourself to call certain flops, again, and most importantly I'm talking about reasonable calls that are based on your hand.

Again, you need to play smart in the sense that you need to carefully follow the opponent's decisions by the way they play their hand. And that sense is built up by experience. You can't just go all-in by feeling if someone is playing tighter, but, BUT, if you think that you have the strongest hand you play more aggressively.

You have asked a question that everyone is trying to answer for themself, it is a very general question, and probably because of that, you didn't receive any input. You build up from experience, there will always be tight or aggressive players but you determine your answer based on your hand/knowledge and circumstances.

I hope that my answer helps,

Let me know what you think!

Cheers!

 

[duderino89]

Hey broski,

I think that there is no possible exact answer to your question. You determine your hand range based on your BB stack, so if you have a big BB stack you can widen your range as that stack gets smaller or when just starting off, you need to "start" shortening your range.
So that is the basic "rule". When you have a large number of BB you can allow yourself to call certain flops, again, and most importantly I'm talking about reasonable calls that are based on your hand.

Again, you need to play smart in the sense that you need to carefully follow the opponent's decisions by the way they play their hand. And that sense is built up by experience. You can't just go all-in by feeling if someone is playing tighter, but, BUT, if you think that you have the strongest hand you play more aggressively.

You have asked a question that everyone is trying to answer for themself, it is a very general question, and probably because of that, you didn't receive any input. You build up from experience, there will always be tight or aggressive players but you determine your answer based on your hand/knowledge and circumstances.

I hope that my answer helps,

Let me know what you think!

Cheers!

First of all: Thank you for taking the time and effort to help me out - really appreciated!
2nd of all: Best of luck in the new year - considering some timezones are allready in 2022!
3rd. Well yes you are absolutly right there are lots of circumstances that play into your decision on handranges! But i am wondering how do we as pokerplayers adjust if one of these cirumstances is changed. And that not beeing our effective stacksize - ICM situation , but the handrange of our opponent.

I just try to figure out how that should effect my handselections.
Do i get looser Preflop vs a looser range or tighter?
Do i play more aggressive or passive preflop?
Do i try to bluff more or less postflop?
I think these 3 questions kinda explain a lot what i mean.
I am fully aware of the other circumstances that play into account in these spots.
But heres my point - for all the circumstances that you named - there is a specific handrange that GTO players would play. For every single spot. But if you want to go over from GTO perspective and go into exploitative ranges - how do they change? And why?

And btw i am very intrigued by one statement of yours - that you loosen your range when you are bigstack and tighten it when you are short - for me it is completely opposite. Preflop as well as postflop - beeing deepstack gives you way more room to make mistakes - so i don't want to play mediocre hand that may let me run into a setup like flush over flush. Though when playing short i really can be more aggressive because big stack players don't really want to double you up and you need to get into a spot where you are not just playing push or fold and have a chance to outplay postflop again

 

[chux119]

I will start with the last paragraph you wrote. It is interesting to see your point of view, and it does make sense. Although the fact that you can tolerate mistakes is exactly why I would go ahead and pay to see a cheap flop, with cards like K3 off suite, when deep-stacked.
I had an interesting hand today, I was the BB and the cutoff went all in, we were pretty deep in the game, i called with AcQh he had 2dAs the flop was Ah and 6d4dKd5d haha. Based on his hand, I did make a good call preflop, but the luck was on his side. There is nothing you can do in these situations, sometimes you win you lose. My chances of winning that hand were around 71%.

Again, there is no exact answer to your question. At least from my point of view, I don't think there is because it is drawn from experience and knowing your opponents. The only way you can know the hand range or style of play of an opponent is by playing against them(A LOT) and/or studying their play(A LOT), and still, you won't be able to predict and be 100% sure what they will do. I think that exactly that makes this game soo interesting and amusing. It's really complicated, a lot of factors need to be taken into consideration it depends a lot on how high the stakes are and/or at what point in the tournament you are.

Happy new year and all the best brother!!

Keep it going let me know what you think again, I went in-depth after your reply, in a way that I don't think I would have done on my own.

Cheers

 

[duderino89]

I will start with the last paragraph you wrote. It is interesting to see your point of view, and it does make sense. Although the fact that you can tolerate mistakes is exactly why I would go ahead and pay to see a cheap flop, with cards like K3 off suite, when deep-stacked.
I had an interesting hand today, I was the BB and the cutoff went all in, we were pretty deep in the game, i called with AcQh he had 2dAs the flop was Ah and 6d4dKd5d haha. Based on his hand, I did make a good call preflop, but the luck was on his side. There is nothing you can do in these situations, sometimes you win you lose. My chances of winning that hand were around 71%.

Again, there is no exact answer to your question. At least from my point of view, I don't think there is because it is drawn from experience and knowing your opponents. The only way you can know the hand range or style of play of an opponent is by playing against them(A LOT) and/or studying their play(A LOT), and still, you won't be able to predict and be 100% sure what they will do. I think that exactly that makes this game soo interesting and amusing. It's really complicated, a lot of factors need to be taken into consideration it depends a lot on how high the stakes are and/or at what point in the tournament you are.

Happy new year and all the best brother!!

Keep it going let me know what you think again, I went in-depth after your reply, in a way that I don't think I would have done on my own.

Cheers

Well here's my take then for you on your first paragraph. In poker you really shouldn't focus on the outcome of a hand. You got it ahead and that's all that counts.

And i know my question is not the easiest to answer. In poker when we talk strategy we ALLWAYS are in a theoretical world - we allways have to play on our assumption. But you can get a decent feel for your opponents even after 100 hands - wich for mtt is a reasonable but still small samplesize. As soon as you see that in one hand he had A2o in his range you can assume he's gonna have all the Ax as well.

So when i try to learn i will allways assume something - like in this example where we have to play under the assumption that our opponentz is super loose.

Anyway hope you had a great start in the new year - i just resettet my sharkscope graph for the first time in 3 years and immediatly got onto a FT of a 1k runner tourney - so i had a good start

 

[caracaski220]

caracaski220

Actually ranges have more to do with position than with the player. Of course you take the oponents stile of play in to account, when acting against him. But under the gun , late position, or blind ranges are what you are trying to work with. AkQ is in early raisers range, as opposed to blinds range.

 

[duderino89]

Actually ranges have more to do with position than with the player. Of course you take the oponents stile of play in to account, when acting against him. But under the gun , late position, or blind ranges are what you are trying to work with. AkQ is in early raisers range, as opposed to blinds range.

I don't think you fully understand the question i asked. If you look from GTO perspective you have Ranges for each and every one situation that you can think of - in all positions - stacksizes and opponent stacksizes.
The only thing that you can't find in GTO (and that's the reason i am trying to ask for exploitative sights) is how your range would change in all of these situations if your opponent is looser.
Your last sentence unfortunatly i can't even understand. So no i am no trying to work with GTO ranges i am trying to understand how i have to adjust my ranges in all thinkable scenarious - with the EXTRA information of having a loose opponent - that's the only variable we count for - everything else doesn't play any role for this question cause no matter what scenario you come up with - if you look in certain tools and sides you will find a range from a GTO perspective that tells you what to do - now i just want to know how that GIVEN range would change if you can tell with 100% certainty that your opponent is playing super loose ranges.

Does that mean that your range should be looser or tighter? =D

 

[ChubbySin]

Does nobody have any input?
Really could use some help here guys!
Maybe next year
Anyway best of luck for the new year - if anyone wants to answer the question how do you adjust your handranges against looser opponents - i'd gladly appreciate it!

I´m migrating to exploitable Poker to GTO, I rather take the best of all to my gameplay, however, I follow the same baseline to adjust the range!

Could you suggest me a good book of GTO Poker? I want to know better this way of poker playing.

Regards

 

[caracaski220]

caracaski220

What I meant in the last sentence is that id A ,K Or Q comes on the flop, it isthe range of early position raisers, not the in the range of small or big blind.

 

[BetterThanAvgButNotByMuch]

I think it depends on your knowledge and level of development in the game. Its good that you can recognize these folks but if you're a beginner then I would focus on learning the starting hands and what seat you can play hands and not worry about the type of player you're going against yet.

I think there are sites, books or even youtube vids that give you a chart of what hands to play, when to play them and from what seat. So I would focus on that first and develop the discipline and strategy of starting hands THEN move on to expanding or taking away some hands depending on your opponent.

 

[eberetta1]

Against loose players , I just wait for players around the table to challenge the loose player with an all in. Usually the loose player is gone within 5 rounds when playing a ring game. The loose player seems to be there for a short time and just wants to gamble.

 

[Alizona]

Its not that complicated, really - if you notice players seem to be folding more often than what you perceive as "normal", they we should be applying more pressure to them with more bets and raises... and if they play back at us, we can then comfortably fold if we have a weaker holding because these players usually have the goods.

Conversely, if you notice players are more active than what you perceive as "normal", they we should tighten up and not play as loosely or aggressively against them. Instead we should wait until we have "good hands" and not be afraid to take them to a showdown.

The question of hand ranges is a preflop issue, and again its not too complicated, just add a few more hands to our open range against the tighter players, and remove a few hands from our opening range against the looser players.

If you are trying to play GTO, then it does require a bit of detailed thought about how many combos we have in our new adjusted ranges, since GTO is all about keeping things balanced... however, this is a very advanced technique that is really only applicable at the highest levels and against the best opponents, and for most of us here I doubt such things really apply (if I may make an assumption in that regard). My opinion and advice is that we don't worry about GTO at all, just keep things relatively simple and easy, as per what I said above, and just by doing that, we have "adjusted properly" to the table conditions we are facing at that particular moment in time. Poker is all about such adjustments!! If you are able to understand the concepts here and just make these few minor tweaks as appropriate, you should be well on your way to being a "good" poker player, a better-than-average player, a winning player! Best wishes, and good luck!!

 

[duderino89]

Its not that complicated, really - if you notice players seem to be folding more often than what you perceive as "normal", they we should be applying more pressure to them with more bets and raises... and if they play back at us, we can then comfortably fold if we have a weaker holding because these players usually have the goods.

Conversely, if you notice players are more active than what you perceive as "normal", they we should tighten up and not play as loosely or aggressively against them. Instead we should wait until we have "good hands" and not be afraid to take them to a showdown.

The question of hand ranges is a preflop issue, and again its not too complicated, just add a few more hands to our open range against the tighter players, and remove a few hands from our opening range against the looser players.

If you are trying to play GTO, then it does require a bit of detailed thought about how many combos we have in our new adjusted ranges, since GTO is all about keeping things balanced... however, this is a very advanced technique that is really only applicable at the highest levels and against the best opponents, and for most of us here I doubt such things really apply (if I may make an assumption in that regard). My opinion and advice is that we don't worry about GTO at all, just keep things relatively simple and easy, as per what I said above, and just by doing that, we have "adjusted properly" to the table conditions we are facing at that particular moment in time. Poker is all about such adjustments!! If you are able to understand the concepts here and just make these few minor tweaks as appropriate, you should be well on your way to being a "good" poker player, a better-than-average player, a winning player! Best wishes, and good luck!!

Thanks for the time and effort you put into your answer!
I totally agree on the part that we should play more looser ranges against a player that we expect to fold preflop more often - pretty self-explanatory.
The part i am more interesting about is you suggesting to play a tighter range against more loose opponents and i've got a few follow up questions and would appreciate if you have the time to answer them!

1. If we expect a looser range preflop shouldn't that mean that he has to fold to a cbet more often thus increasing our EV postflop?

2. If we look into range-charts from range calculators we can see that the calling range is tighter then the opening range for most (non ICM) situations. So why should we now play play the opposite? Meaning: If the loose player opens we can assume that even a looser range then normal should still be tighter then his opening range - and opening a looser range should still be called by a looser range thus resulting in profit as well.

3. From my experience most players that have very loose preflop ranges seem to struggle to fold their weak draws like gutshot-straightdraws or bottom pairs even on the turn against big bets - thus making it harder to bluff them but easier to valuebet him. So my question is: Shouldn't we just play more hands preflop assuming that our range is still stronger then his and trying to play more postflop situations with another approach on how to play the hand postflop?