# Thinking In Ranges  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Thinking In Ranges - Show: The Official Red Chip Poker Podcast - Owner / Host: Red Chip Poker - Episode publish date: 2016-08-02 - Episode AI description: Discover the power of thinking in ranges rather than just individual hands. Learn how mastering this concept can enhance your decision-making and reduce betting tells. Doug Hull shares insights on bluffing and value betting strategies against smarter opponents. Plus, get introduced to a helpful video playlist that dives deeper into poker ranges and offers community engagement opportunities for serious players. - Mentioned books: [The Handreading Workbook for Live Players](https://share.snipd.com/book/10d7f92d-a176-4548-b361-36ff6daf5744) by [James Sweeney](https://share.snipd.com/person/dfa3972e-1eb7-4cab-830e-2c10bad05bca), [Poker's 1%](https://share.snipd.com/book/22a689b7-143a-4555-b9f5-42c8b4b06c28) by [Ed Miller](https://share.snipd.com/person/09955ba4-6b3a-4bba-9b1b-5f66879abbb1), [Applications of no-limit hold 'em](https://share.snipd.com/book/f7288a76-6188-4c54-98e8-ce07f7f31946) by [Matthew Janda](https://share.snipd.com/person/5c7b4f5c-d263-44db-b6f6-4991eb5b339b) - Duration: 19:42 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/52d577dd-56eb-4fa2-b9f5-b17b752309f3) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/c298446b-a61e-464b-8c32-0fa6bd6189cc) - Export date: 2026-02-11T20:06:35 ## Snips ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f28da4e9-90e3-4302-947d-9ff70c34beea) 🎧 00:00 - 01:29 (01:29) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d7542970-00ac-4098-999f-1c69a8ea5e0d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript Welcome to the official Red Chip Poker podcast. This is a show for players who dream about shipping the main event, but are just as content running a big bluff at the local card room. Whether it's your first hand at the table or you're a longstanding grinder, welcome to the show where we discuss tips, strategy, and concepts that you need to thrive in today's games. Today's episode is number 44. Follow along wherever you are by visiting redchippoker.com/44. And with that said, let's get into today's conversation. Good morning and welcome back to another episode of the Red Chip Poker Podcast. I'm your host, James Splitsuit Swinney. But today I'm going to be taking a backseat and letting Doug Hall lead today's conversation. And today's conversation is extremely important because once you get beyond just thinking about your own hand in poker, you have to start thinking about your range and how your exact hand fits within that entire range as a whole. This is extremely important when you're playing against better players who can hand read and when you're trying to think about your game more holistically. So without further ado, I'm just going to jump out of the way and let Doug Hall lead today's conversation. Do you ever fear that you are being the dreaded fitter fold player when you do not continuation bet on the flop? Have you fallen into bluffing too much because it is the only way that you can win the pot? Do you lament it when you raise with aces --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/baa9c11f-9018-4321-992b-b12d63901277) 🎧 01:18 - 02:38 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b7792891-3922-4fc4-819a-2d9ab243fced" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript bet on the flop? Have you fallen into bluffing too much because it is the only way that you can win the pot? Do you lament it when you raise with aces and everyone folds? All these issues can be reframed into something much more productive when you really embrace thinking about your hand not as your hand, but just one part of a range that you actually happen to hold this time. So what does thinking in terms of your range mean? Well, in any given spot, there should be a variety of hands that you would have taken the prior actions with. For instance, there is a limper, and you raise on the button. You might do this with aces, ace 10 suited, 9-9, and a whole host of other hands. When you get to the flop, let's say for today that it is Queen-7 rainbow. You might bet some, but not all of your hands. Hands like Aces are likely going to be bet, but hands like Ace-10 suited probably not. Your range gets smaller on every street. It is linear and logical, as James Sweeney would and often does say. If this is the basics of thinking in a range, how does --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8137ffa5-fa05-499c-ae47-4723762e659b) 🎧 01:51 - 03:11 (01:19) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/62308420-7086-4cd5-8892-60a658d2afb4" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript any given spot, there should be a variety of hands that you would have taken the prior actions with. For instance, there is a limper, and you raise on the button. You might do this with aces, ace 10 suited, 9-9, and a whole host of other hands. When you get to the flop, let's say for today that it is Queen-7 rainbow. You might bet some, but not all of your hands. Hands like Aces are likely going to be bet, but hands like Ace-10 suited probably not. Your range gets smaller on every street. It is linear and logical, as James Sweeney would and often does say. If this is the basics of thinking in a range, how does that help you? One thing is it's going to help you to avoid bet sizing tells. In this example, there was a limper and you raised pre-flop and they called. You got to the flop and it's a dry disconnected flop of queen seven four rainbow. You think to yourself, based on the deep stacks and the dry nature of this flop, I will tend to bet just over half pot. I do this because the villain will be price insensitive when considering a fold, and I expect a ton of folds. And I tend to be bluffing --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/754f8bee-0c63-47d2-9b8b-bf423bcfad07) 🎧 02:40 - 04:00 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/cfe8a9fa-a6aa-4dda-975b-6361bdb1a81b" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript thing is it's going to help you to avoid bet sizing tells. In this example, there was a limper and you raised pre-flop and they called. You got to the flop and it's a dry disconnected flop of queen seven four rainbow. You think to yourself, based on the deep stacks and the dry nature of this flop, I will tend to bet just over half pot. I do this because the villain will be price insensitive when considering a fold, and I expect a ton of folds. And I tend to be bluffing quite often in position with the initiative on dry boards. I want these folds as cheap as possible. Notice that this thought process, we used only public information. We did not think about what our actual hand is. This method of thinking will help you to eliminate bet sizing tells. We would make that same bet with a protection bet like when we hold pocket 9s, when we have a true value hand like a set of 7s, when we've got a really good hand like ace or when we've got just two random overs, ace-king. So we are making the same bet size and not leaking out information that the villains should not have. This will make --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7ac7772b-bdca-4cda-ac06-6926e9cc1d99) 🎧 03:29 - 04:49 (01:19) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/cd8026da-3e1b-454a-8446-4a04ece6f0e0" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript help you to eliminate bet sizing tells. We would make that same bet with a protection bet like when we hold pocket 9s, when we have a true value hand like a set of 7s, when we've got a really good hand like ace or when we've got just two random overs, ace-king. So we are making the same bet size and not leaking out information that the villains should not have. This will make it very difficult for them to play against you. I will often put out a situation like this to students and ask them how much would they bet with top pair top kicker on this board. They might say that they want to bet pot because they want to get value from having a better kicker. If I were to ask them what they would do with 8-8 they might say they want to bet half pot so they can quote find out where they're at. Notice that these two bet sizes will be different based on the private and valuable information that only you hold. And you don't want them to know that. That why you're thinking about your entire range when choosing a bet size, not just the actual hand that you have. Another good reason to be --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/94391f14-c0ce-4faf-aaca-c80c97ef5772) 🎧 06:44 - 08:04 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/118b493d-a416-4a68-a228-b9d71ab92c9d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript that would fit that same description and logic? You might find that you are betting every hand in your range because it is the only way that you can win. You are suddenly losing control of your bluffing range. There is no logic. There is no real justification. This is dangerous and will lead to bluffing too much and bluffing without any real equity. Now, of course, sometimes this will work. Every bluff of a reasonable size will work sometimes, and you will get this positive feedback, oh, I can be bluffing here because, look, it just worked. Well, sometimes it's going to work, but getting into a too frequent bluffing situation with no real equity is going to be a danger. What are some good justifications for bluffing? Well, it might be something more along the lines of, I choose this hand because it will often pick up a barreling card, and on the turn, I can beat anything that is likely to have called me on the flop. Whenever I'm picking bluffing hands, I like to pick hands that have outs to beat the most likely hands that will call me. Here's another situation. I should have bet smaller --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/03102c52-6397-4681-b1ae-727a996c3f7e) 🎧 07:35 - 08:55 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/eeb4bbbb-9613-4b30-bbee-1047df8b3a3b" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript are some good justifications for bluffing? Well, it might be something more along the lines of, I choose this hand because it will often pick up a barreling card, and on the turn, I can beat anything that is likely to have called me on the flop. Whenever I'm picking bluffing hands, I like to pick hands that have outs to beat the most likely hands that will call me. Here's another situation. I should have bet smaller to get action. Let's say there are four Limpers and you are in the big blind. You raise with aces and everyone folds. You are sad and think, I should have bet smaller to get action. Maybe this is true. Maybe it's not. But you gotta ask yourself, would you bet smaller with your bluffs also? So when this kind of thing happens, ask yourself, what other hands would I have made that squeeze with? You might have answers like 9-9, Ace-King, Ace-5 suited. How would you feel about getting the pot uncontested with those hands? Pretty good, right? Think of all the hands you would have made that move with. I bet overall you were pretty happy with the folds. Thinking of your range as a whole helps you be more okay with it when --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/228ac991-1f65-4cd9-a53b-157cd4e55aaa) 🎧 09:02 - 10:22 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/01c54ce6-c89d-45df-a11f-54c042445ee0" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript you would have been bluffing or semi-bluffing, and you were quite happy to just get the folds immediately. So I had a great compliment at the World Series of Poker yesterday. You were up a good amount and I've never seen your hand. Now of course I handed him my business card and told him that he can see all of my hands if he signs up for a free trial for video training at redchippoker.com and goes to redchippoker.com/trial, where he can watch some of my Live at the Bike videos. But leaving your opponents in this situation where they don't know what you're doing this with and you're profiting is very good. And so having these balanced ranges and not getting to showdown and they just don't know is going to make them curious and quite often play badly against you because they feel like they're being taken advantage of, but they don't know why or how. Okay, so you want to start thinking about your hand not as a hand, but as a range. What can you do to make that happen? Well, there is a great book out there, Applications of No Limit Hold'em by Matthew Jonda. This is an excellent book. This is also a very thick and dense --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e7df633f-50a6-478d-8114-a84876f5bd57) 🎧 09:32 - 10:52 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/d2262f1a-00e5-4fc8-a21c-df03cd7bdaa9" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript where he can watch some of my Live at the Bike videos. But leaving your opponents in this situation where they don't know what you're doing this with and you're profiting is very good. And so having these balanced ranges and not getting to showdown and they just don't know is going to make them curious and quite often play badly against you because they feel like they're being taken advantage of, but they don't know why or how. Okay, so you want to start thinking about your hand not as a hand, but as a range. What can you do to make that happen? Well, there is a great book out there, Applications of No Limit Hold'em by Matthew Jonda. This is an excellent book. This is also a very thick and dense book. If you were going for a PhD in pokerology, this would probably be one of your textbooks. It is going to be intimidating and a difficult read that is well worth doing. My background is in engineering, and I find this a slightly intimidating book. So, what else could you do? Well, you could go to Poker's 1% by Ed Miller. He basically took --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/50022d93-bed1-44a1-8f48-1a598d040619) 🎧 09:41 - 11:01 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/33612d86-3aad-4430-8693-023e5f06ec5c" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript and you're profiting is very good. And so having these balanced ranges and not getting to showdown and they just don't know is going to make them curious and quite often play badly against you because they feel like they're being taken advantage of, but they don't know why or how. Okay, so you want to start thinking about your hand not as a hand, but as a range. What can you do to make that happen? Well, there is a great book out there, Applications of No Limit Hold'em by Matthew Jonda. This is an excellent book. This is also a very thick and dense book. If you were going for a PhD in pokerology, this would probably be one of your textbooks. It is going to be intimidating and a difficult read that is well worth doing. My background is in engineering, and I find this a slightly intimidating book. So, what else could you do? Well, you could go to Poker's 1% by Ed Miller. He basically took the lessons from applications and tried to distill it down into something that was much more usable by other people. --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/addc5554-0f5e-4b10-a258-de3a40084198) 🎧 09:59 - 11:19 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ec4b13af-c3b9-42ea-b60a-5b16244f0016" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript but they don't know why or how. Okay, so you want to start thinking about your hand not as a hand, but as a range. What can you do to make that happen? Well, there is a great book out there, Applications of No Limit Hold'em by Matthew Jonda. This is an excellent book. This is also a very thick and dense book. If you were going for a PhD in pokerology, this would probably be one of your textbooks. It is going to be intimidating and a difficult read that is well worth doing. My background is in engineering, and I find this a slightly intimidating book. So, what else could you do? Well, you could go to Poker's 1% by Ed Miller. He basically took the lessons from applications and tried to distill it down into something that was much more usable by other people. And so the basic thesis, if I had to give it for Poker's 1%, is that if you bet one street, you should usually bet the next. And he sets up that there should be a certain ratio of bluff --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5f1b6d2f-859f-4a3f-bf9b-2107cb7e5567) 🎧 10:22 - 11:42 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/01867cce-a6ff-45b9-ab9a-b2d664e1fb70" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript If you were going for a PhD in pokerology, this would probably be one of your textbooks. It is going to be intimidating and a difficult read that is well worth doing. My background is in engineering, and I find this a slightly intimidating book. So, what else could you do? Well, you could go to Poker's 1% by Ed Miller. He basically took the lessons from applications and tried to distill it down into something that was much more usable by other people. And so the basic thesis, if I had to give it for Poker's 1%, is that if you bet one street, you should usually bet the next. And he sets up that there should be a certain ratio of bluff to value that differs based on each street. So on the flop, you should probably have two bluffs for every one value. On the turn, you should have one bluff for every one value. And then on the river, you should probably have two value for every one bluff. He goes through and explains why this is a good idea, but --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/39861ac8-29da-4962-9451-525a980c91db) 🎧 10:50 - 12:10 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/e8797500-ab60-4034-9bce-a07379f9f18d" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript basically took the lessons from applications and tried to distill it down into something that was much more usable by other people. And so the basic thesis, if I had to give it for Poker's 1%, is that if you bet one street, you should usually bet the next. And he sets up that there should be a certain ratio of bluff to value that differs based on each street. So on the flop, you should probably have two bluffs for every one value. On the turn, you should have one bluff for every one value. And then on the river, you should probably have two value for every one bluff. He goes through and explains why this is a good idea, but that's the basic framework. There are, of course, a ton more details in this. If you want to know, well, how do I actually do that? Well, you can go to my videos on redchippoker.com and you can watch something called Constructing Ranges, where we take those actual rules from --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/02aa8d21-ea59-4927-a5bd-42bd1d62660e) 🎧 12:07 - 13:27 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/f9383e7a-6c8b-447d-9c1c-7920b9861047" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript those actual rules from Poker's 1% that were derived in some degree from Matthew Janda's applications of No Limit Hold'em, and see how that's done. So I take Flopzilla, I put out a flop, and I try and find the 70% of hands that I would continuation bet. And then I make sure that there is about two bluffs for every one value. And so what that means is on a dry flop, I'm probably going to be betting everything from top pair with a decent kicker on up. It also means that on this dry flop, I don't have enough flush draws or straight draws to give me enough bluffs, so I'm going to end up starting to turn middle pair and pocket pairs below top pair into bluffs or protection bets, if you will. So by doing this procedure on a variety of different flops, you start to get the idea of, well, what is the bottom of my value betting range on this kind of flop? You'll often find that --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bc83794c-d5af-48cf-8785-efd29d9bf1f3) 🎧 13:27 - 14:47 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/697cab4b-58fb-4cbc-a854-22aa148e39a1" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript it is going to be top pair with a decent kicker. Now, on a totally different kind of board where it's highly connected and with flushes and so on going on, maybe something like 7-8 with two to a suit, suddenly top pair, top kicker is not even in your value betting range because there are so many stronger hands and stronger draws out there that you can't be betting that for value. And going through and doing this procedure as outlined in constructing ranges is going to help you find that. What else can you do? Well, you can go into Flopzilla and put in your opening range for a given position. Let's say there was a limper and you raised on the button. You probably have a pretty good idea of what hands you would do that with. Awesome. Now, go into Flopzilla, put in that range, and then hit Random Flop. You go through and do that, and you will find --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/35c51341-6849-4ffd-823e-f0114fcfa94c) 🎧 14:47 - 16:07 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/209db2fa-ac26-4721-984e-52ef09847afc" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript certain percentage of the hands. Great. Now, go through and add in all of the things that you would bluff with. Maybe you're bluffing with semi-bluffing with nut flush draws, or middle pair, or something like that. and note that percentage. And then give yourself a random turn, and do the same thing using only those hands that you had bet before. And as you go down to the river, you will get your triple barrel percentage as value, and triple barrel percentage as bluffs. And you should see if there is a decent balance in that. Now, instead of using just random flops, turns, and rivers, instead what you could do is go to James Sweeney's new book, The Handreading Workbook for Live Players, and he has gone through and specifically selected flops, turns, and rivers and set up the action for you. These are not randomly generated flops, turns, and rivers. They are trying to teach a lesson in your frequencies with all of these. So you would go through and calculate --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/aa087c88-0004-4ce8-bb09-6ca45d9c397a) 🎧 15:17 - 16:37 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/8fc64cfb-125a-468f-a0e3-edfbf8cf6e87" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript you go down to the river, you will get your triple barrel percentage as value, and triple barrel percentage as bluffs. And you should see if there is a decent balance in that. Now, instead of using just random flops, turns, and rivers, instead what you could do is go to James Sweeney's new book, The Handreading Workbook for Live Players, and he has gone through and specifically selected flops, turns, and rivers and set up the action for you. These are not randomly generated flops, turns, and rivers. They are trying to teach a lesson in your frequencies with all of these. So you would go through and calculate your range as he requests in a lot of different spots. And there's going to be leading questions to find out, well, would you continuation bet with a baby pocket pair here? Yes or no? And so these questions are leading you to a point where you can figure out whether your frequencies are out of whack. And this is often going to be a --- ### [2min snip](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9295be33-7243-4fa0-afa8-bf2c7db64c6c) 🎧 17:03 - 18:23 (01:20) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/1661b39e-2e38-459e-92fb-08da66c707f9" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> #### 📚 Transcript a coach. The coach can go through and do the same hand examples. Then when you get together, you can find out if you are out of line or not, and then have a good focused discussion based on that hand. All right, so overall, you should just really be thinking about your hand as an entire range and then when you take your action base it on what you would do with your entire range. Some of these would be rather easy because the part of your range that you actually hold is so far into the value betting range that you don't even need to do this exercise because you know you're going to be betting it. Sometimes it's going to be so far out of value that you know you're just going to check fold with it and that's fine. But think about these things and it's going to really improve your behavior. So that's going to wrap it up for this episode. A very special thank you to Doug for leading this, and just a quick reminder. In this episode, Doug mentions a group of videos he did all about ranges from his Constructing Ranges series. You can find some of these videos, along with many other range-centric videos, in our brand new playlist called Thinking in Ranges, which was inspired by our notorious forum --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts