Hands, ranges and combos

Players use a short notation for starting hands. The ranks are A, K, Q, J, T, then 9 down to 2. T stands for ten, so every hand fits in two characters. Add s for suited, both cards of one suit, or o for offsuit.

• AKs: ace-king suited, such as A♥K♥ace of hearts, king of hearts.
• KQo: king-queen offsuit, such as K♠Q♦king of spades, queen of diamonds.
• 77: a pair of sevens. Pairs need no s or o.

For groups of hands, a plus means “and better”, keeping the top card the same, and a dash gives a span.

• 22+: every pair, from twos to aces.
• 88+: 88, 99, TT, JJ, QQ, KK and AA.
• ATs+: ATs, AJs, AQs and AKs. The kicker rises to just below the ace.
• KTo+: KTo, KJo and KQo.
• A5s-A2s: A5s, A4s, A3s and A2s.

With 52 cards there are 52 × 51 ÷ 2 = 1,326 different two-card hands. They fall into 169 kinds: 13 pairs, 78 suited hands and 78 offsuit hands. The kinds aren’t equally likely, because each can be dealt a different number of ways, called combos.

• A pair: 6 combos, because four aces can be paired up 6 ways.
• A suited hand: 4 combos, one for each suit.
• An offsuit hand: 12 combos. There are 4 × 4 = 16 ways to pair an ace with a king, and 4 of them are suited.

So ace-king, suited and offsuit together, is 16 combos, while aces are only 6. A player who could have either is more than twice as likely to hold ace-king.

Every card you can see, in your hand or on the board, takes combos out of your opponent’s range. This is card removal, and the cards that do it are called blockers.

Blockers explain why a hand like A5s makes a good 3-bet bluff: with an ace in your hand, villain holds fewer of the aces they would fight back with.

You almost never know an opponent’s two cards. Saying “he has ace-king” is a guess that will usually be wrong. A range is every hand they could have, given what they have done, and it is a far better guess.

A range starts wide and narrows with each action. A player who raises first from the cutoff might have around 28% of hands. If you 3-bet and they 4-bet, most of the speculative hands are gone. If instead they check the flop and bet big on the river, it narrows another way. At each step, ask which hands would do this, and which would not.

Ranges change how you see your own hand, too. A pair of queens isn’t good or bad in itself: it is good against a range full of smaller pairs and missed draws, and bad against one made of aces, kings and sets.

• Linear: the best hands down to a point, like most opening ranges.
• Polarised: very strong hands and bluffs, with little in between. Big bets usually come from these.
• Capped: missing its strongest hands, because the player would have raised them earlier. A player who just called before the flop rarely has aces.

Player labels describe ranges too. A nit’s raise is narrow and strong; a maniac’s is wide and full of bluffs. VPIP, the share of hands a player puts money in with, and PFR, the share they raise, are the quickest ways to measure it.

The Ranges page shows every range PokerIQ uses as a 13 × 13 grid: pairs down the diagonal, suited hands above it, offsuit hands below. Raises are red, calls green and folds dark, and each range is given as a share of hands and a number of combos. The Balanced button open, for example, is 43.9% of hands, 582 combos.

In the Analyser, choose “A player type’s range” under “Villain holds”, then what they did before the flop. PokerIQ works out your equity against every combo in that range, with the cards you can see taken out, and marks the result vs assumed range, because the range is a read, not a fact.

Hand notationSuited and offsuitPocket pairCombosBlockersRangeLinear rangePolarised rangeCapped rangeNitManiacVPIPPFR3-bet4-betPlayer typeVs assumed rangeLine