Your opponent raises UTG at a nine-handed table, and you call with 3 ♦4 ♦ in the big blind. A common trap people fall into is to suddenly assume a player can have a specific hand in their range on the turn when they had already removed it on a previous street. It’s vital that we keep our opponent’s range consistent as we go through the hand. We do this by estimating the ranges our opponents start with and comparing them to their betting patterns to see what hands from our range our opponent is representing.įor example, if our opponent 3bet preflop, bet the flop, turn and river on an A♦9 ♣6♠4♠2♦ board, they represent hands like AA, AK, AQ, and AJ for value and could have hands like KQ, QJ, and 87s as bluffs” Hand reading is the ability to figure out what hands our opponent likely has based on the betting action. Now that we know what a poker range is, how do we use it in-game? The way we use poker ranges is by using them to hand-read.

Unsuited Hands: There are twelve combinations of unsuited hands: A ♥K ♣, A ♥K ♦, A ♥K♠, A ♣K ♦, A ♣K♠, A ♦K♠, A ♣K ♥, A ♦K ♥, A♠K ♥, A ♦K ♣, A♠K ♣, A♠K ♦.

Suited Hands: There are four combinations of suited hands, one for each suit: A ♥K ♥, A ♣K ♣, A ♦K ♦, A♠K♠.

Paired Hands: There are six possible combinations of paired hands: A ♥A ♣, A ♥A ♦, A ♥A♠, A ♣A ♦, A ♣A♠, A ♣A♠.

Let’s take AA and AK as an example and break it down. There are actually six combos of paired hands and 16 combos of unpaired hands, with the unpaired hands comprising of 4 suited hands and 12 unsuited hands. While the poker hand matrix above may make it seem like there’s an equal number of each hand, this is not the case. When looking at poker ranges, you can highlight each hand you think your opponent will have in their range to visualize it better. There are 169 hand combinations in Texas Hold’em, and they can fit nicely on a 13×13 board, with suited hands in the top right, offsuit hands in the bottom left, and pocket pairs running through the top left to bottom right diagonal. A poker range chart is a visual representation of these ranges.

Texas holdem poker starting hands chart