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Outplay Your Opponents Using PokerStove
DoanDiggy

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Part 5: Discount combinations for some hands.

Here's the situation: we have a tricky fish who limps into the SB. He raises our BB about 10% of the time and limps in about 50% of the time. We are pretty sure that he is always raising TT and some big unpaired hands. We think that he almost always limps AA. He probably limps KK about 2/3 of the time, QQ about half the time, and JJ about 1/3 of the time (depending on his mood). How do we create a realistic range for him in PokerStove?

First we'll take care of the big pairs. Select AA and in the lower right, deselect 5 of the boxes so that only 1/6 of all AA is in his raising range:

Now select KK and deselect 4 of the boxes so that 1/3 of all KK is in his raising range. Try to mix up which suits are selected so that the numbers aren't slanted to certain suits (this will be more relevant in hands that see a flop):

Do the same with QQ (deselecting 3) and JJ (deselecting 2). After doing this, we see that big pairs account for 0.8% of his SB raising range. We can continue adding hands until we reach 10% by adding TT-88,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,ATo+,KQo. Let's say Villain is crazy and will always shove when we reraise. What range should we reraise?

Clearly TT is +EV. 99 has 51.1% equity. 88 only has 47.5, so a flat is better. AJs is 51.1%, with ATs being only 45.6%. AJo is only 48.4% but AQo is 55.6%. KQs is only 44.7%. Thus, against this Villain, we can reraise and then call all-in with 99+,AJs+,AQo+.

If we had not properly discounted the big pairs in Villain's range, we would have his range as something like 88+,A9s+,KJs+,QJs,ATo+,KQo. Against this range, 99 is only 47.5%. AJs is not good enough either. Thus our raise/call range tightens to TT+,AQs,AQo, over 10% tighter.

To review, discount big pairs in a Villain's range by removing an appropriate number of hands from the suits selector area.