Master Range Construction: Your Blueprint to Poker Success

6 min read

When you think about what separates amateur poker players from professionals, one concept stands above the rest: range construction. A poker range is a collection of poker hands that a player can have in a given situation based on the actions they have taken. Instead of trying to guess the exact two cards your opponent holds, thinking in ranges transforms your game from guesswork into strategic precision.

Understanding the Foundation of Range Construction

Range construction isn't just about memorizing charts—it's about understanding why certain hands belong in your range and others don't. A range is a collection of all the possible hands a player can have right this moment. Ranges exist both preflop and postflop, and can vary widely since tight players will have fewer hands in their range, and looser players will have many starting hands in their range.

Let's get practical. A tight opponent raising from an early position has about 10% of all starting hand combinations. This might include hands like 77+, A9s+, KTs+, QTs+, and AQo+. Understanding this percentage system helps you visualize what you're up against at every decision point.

The Three Pillars of Range Construction

1. Balanced Ranges: Your Defensive Shield

Balanced ranges involve constructing a range that mixes strong hands with bluffs to make your actions harder to exploit. For example, when c-betting, you should include both strong hands and semi-bluffs to ensure your opponents cannot easily counter your strategy. This balance prevents savvy opponents from exploiting predictable patterns in your play.

2. Polarized Ranges: Maximum Pressure

A polarized range consists of strong-value hands and bluffs, omitting medium-strength hands entirely. This is particularly useful in scenarios like river betting, where you want to bet either a hand that beats much of your opponent's range or a bluff that folds out better hands. Think of this as your high-stakes weapon—you're either holding the nuts or nothing, keeping opponents guessing.

3. Linear (Merged) Ranges: Steady Value Extraction

Linear ranges include your strongest hands along with medium-strength holdings. Merged ranges focus on small, steady wins through thin value bets rather than dramatic bluffs. When you merge, you're saying, 'I'm ahead often enough to get called by worse.' The goal is to bet confidently with medium-to-strong hands that can extract chips without overextending.

Poker Odds: The Mathematics Behind Range Construction

You can't build effective ranges without understanding the odds that support your decisions. Here's where the rubber meets the road.

With four outs, you have about 10.8-to-1 odds or 8.51% chance of hitting straight on the turn and about 10.5-to-1 odds or 8.70% chance on the river, or combined 5.1-to-1 (16.47%) Turn+River odds. This mathematical foundation informs which hands you include in your continuing range when facing bets.

A quick rule of thumb: multiply your outs by 4 on the flop to estimate your percentage chance of improving by the river, or by 2 if you're calculating for just the next street. This simple calculation helps you determine whether hands with drawing potential belong in your betting or calling ranges.

Tournament Strategy: Adapting Your Ranges

Cash games and tournaments require dramatically different range construction approaches. While tournament and cash-game poker follow the same rules, there are some key differences that mean cash-game charts cannot be directly applied to multi-table tournament (MTT) play. Most notably, stack depth in tournaments tends to decrease as the blinds increase, so that the 100bb default of cash games no longer applies. Similarly, a tournament hand is not raked, but the preflop pot is usually increased by the addition of antes.

Short Stack Adjustments

The stack depth of 20bb sets up perfectly for preflop 3-bet jams. Indeed, a general heuristic used by tournament players is that up to 10x the open when in position and 12x the open out of position makes an efficient 3-bet jam. When you're working with 10-15 big blinds, your range construction simplifies to push-or-fold decisions, with hands like 44+, A2s+, and K9s+ becoming jamming candidates from certain positions.

Position-Based Range Construction

Your position relative to the dealer button influences the strength of your range. In later positions, you can play a wider range of hands, while in early positions, a more conservative approach is usually advisable. From the button in tournaments, you might open 50%+ of hands with a deep stack, but that same approach from under the gun would be disastrous.

A solid tournament framework at 100bb might look like this: UTG opens 10-12% of hands, middle position expands to 15-18%, cutoff opens 25-30%, and the button plays 45-55%. These ranges tighten significantly as stacks shrink and bubble pressure increases.

Hand Analysis: Putting Range Construction Into Practice

Let's walk through a real scenario. You're playing a $1/$2 online tournament at 60bb effective. A tight opponent (VPIP 18%, PFR 14%) raises from early position to 2.5bb. You're on the button with A♠Q♠.

If you know your opponent open-raises preflop 15% of the time, you can start by building the top-15% of hands to estimate their range. This opponent likely holds hands like TT+, AJs+, AQo+, and KQs. Your A♠Q♠ performs well against this range, sitting around 40% equity against their continuing range if you 3-bet.

Now let's say you 3-bet to 8bb and they call. The flop comes K♥9♣4♦. We technically need to build two ranges here: first the range that would lead the flop and secondly the range that would continue calling our flop raise. Your opponent's range heavily favors this king-high board—they likely have more KK, 99, 44, AK combinations than you do. This range disadvantage should inform your continuation betting frequency and sizing.

Building Your Personal Range Strategy

Start with these actionable steps:

Common Range Construction Mistakes

Even experienced players fall into these traps. Avoid opening too many weak offsuit hands from early position—hands like K9o and Q8o look tempting but create difficult postflop scenarios out of position. Suited hands only give a slight equity advantage (2-3%) and start treating offsuit hands similarly. Finally, they understand that while the equity difference is small, suited hands offer more flexibility postflop. Suited hands allow you to flop draws more often, enabling you to barrel and win pots without having to go to showdown.

Another critical error: failing to narrow opponent ranges as the hand progresses. In order to properly put your opponent on a range, you will have to take every action into account and try to construct a range of hands they could reasonably play the way they did. This allows you to narrow down their potential holdings to just a few hands by the river and, based on your deductions, make more educated decisions.

Taking Your Range Construction Further

The ability to identify and read poker ranges is one of the most important skills a player can have. With logical deduction and strong technical knowledge, we can build our opponent's range and use that information to make even more profitable plays. The difference between knowing ranges exist and actively constructing them in real-time separates winning players from the rest.

For deeper study, check out fundamental poker strategy concepts to understand the theoretical foundation. Additionally, reviewing poker odds calculators helps reinforce the mathematical principles underlying sound range construction.

Range construction isn't just another poker concept to learn—it's the lens through which all strategic decisions should be viewed. Whether you're grinding cash games, battling in tournaments, or studying hands away from the table, thinking in ranges elevates every aspect of your game. Start building your ranges today, and watch your results transform from guesswork to calculated precision.