Head Games: Understanding and Using Hand Polarization to Your Best Advantage Preflop and Beyond With Reid Young, Jeff Gross, and Simon Jonas

Craig Tapscott: When a player’s hand range is polarized, it means they are acting in such a way that their probable hand range is divided between two options – either very strong or very weak. Can you share how you polarize an opponent’s hand range preflop in terms of your decision to call, three-bet, and so forth?

Reid Young: Preflop, ranges are not so easily defined as polar or linear. Because there are unrevealed board cards, the complexity of poker typically impedes use of static terms like “polarized” and “linear” to make set categories for hands preflop. However, particularly in deeper-stacked confrontations, situations where players want to negate a positional disadvantage, players want to exploit an equity advantage with a powerful hand (and bluff accordingly), and players want to prevent implied odds afforded to other players, preflop ranges should be defined as polar.

With deeper stacks, reraising out of position can be tricky and might define one’s range. Without a careful peppering of bluffs mixed with the few value hands strong enough to warrant an out of position reraise for value, a calling player can have the advantage against what is obviously a strong range of hands. Despite being behind preflop, calling with speculative hands can be extremely valuable against a defined range, and mostly easy to play. By calling with hands that avoid domination when facing hands like A-K, A-A, and K-K, and by hoping to hit a flop in which the money goes into the middle with the average equity advantage for the caller, the calling player can take down huge pots.

Multi-way deep-stacked play is another common instance that dictates the reraiser utilize a narrow value reraising range, lest he encounter a hand willing to fight back too often. With better pot odds for speculation and with more players who may call reraises, multi-way reraises can certainly get the reraiser into trouble. From the reraiser’s perspective, a common misconception is created by the feeling of winning small and medium pots mostly by inducing folds. Unfortunately, for an unbalanced re-raising player in these spots, that feeling leads to reinforcing of a cognitive dissonance, namely the many smaller wins do not make up for the much larger losses when a player who calls with a speculative hand makes a near-nut hand or strong enough draw to effectively semibluff raise to win a medium or large pot.

Jeff Gross: Having the ability to range a player’s holdings is one of the true skills in poker. Knowing if they hold a mid pair or A-Q/A-K can help you navigate a hand with much more success than simply guessing. This is easier said than done and, playing at a high level against a tough opponent, you will have a much tougher time deciphering this information than against the lower limits or weaker competition. 

An example would be if I have A-7 offsuit in the small blind in a $1-$2 game and one player raises to $10 in early position, three or four players call, and the button raises to $25 and he has been fairly active. I will assume he does not have that strong of a holding and is just looking to build a pot with a hand like J-10 suited or a suited ace and this would be a good spot for me to cold four-bet out of the small to $90-$110 and take the dead money down. My hand not only looks very strong, but I will get the better hand such as the original raiser’s A-J suited or A-Q and many of his mid pairs, even J-J possibly to fold. And once it gets back to the button, he will be the only one left in the hand and likely fold. If he calls, I can proceed accordingly on flops, but he will miss most of the time and a continuation bet will often do the trick. 

Simon Jonas: We need to get one fact straight preflop, most hand ranges aren’t polarized. If somebody opens under the gun or three-bets against your button raise, then their hand ranges will be strong, that’s true. But they won’t be truly polarized. Have you ever seen anybody raise only A-A, K-K, and 7-2 offsuit from under the gun? Preflop hand ranges are depolarized by nature. And that’s why three-betting is such a valid tool in preflop no-limit hold’em. Because you put all the hands into a tough spot that don’t want to fold or reraise.

True polarization starts with the three-bet, and gets really serious if anybody puts in the fourth bet. Let’s assume that you’re sitting in a $5-$10 cash game with $1,500 stacks, and you were dealt pocket kings in the cutoff. Facing a middle position raise, you reraise, and everybody else folds. Now the middle position player goes into the tank and puts out the fourth bet. I won’t say now that the fourth bet is always aces. However, the fourth bet is awfully strong in this spot, especially with 150 big blind stacks. Your opponent’s range is truly polarized. Which brings us back to the beginning, deciding whether a range is polarized or depolarized gives you the right tools for the job.
In this spot, just calling with pocket kings to keep in your opponent’s bluffs could be the best play. In fact, against such a polarized range, only going all in with pocket aces and bluffs like A-5 suited would be the correct approach.

Craig Tapscott: Please share how you use the concept of polarization in terms of post-flop situations to determine your actions.

Reid Young: Most post-flop situations involving polarized ranges are truly as easy as poker gets, especially with deeper stack sizes. The reraising player’s hands are easy to define and rank by average equity and hand strength on most board textures just by asking yourself, “Do I have a value hand, like A-A, or one of a few potential bluff hands, like A-10 suited, on a 9 4 2 board?” Polarized ranges also create easy decisions for calling players.

Potentially dirty outs and implied odds are easier to define in those same reraised pots. Players with more speculative hand ranges are able to capitalize on the knowledge of their opponent’s value range with high confidence. The calling players know what cards improve their hands on the turn and river against A-A or K-K without having to worry about their opponent outdrawing them or blocking their outs nearly as often.

If you call such a reraise with 8 7, and the board falls J 8 2, you are able to continue profitably against a reasonably-sized bet in hopes that the turn card is the 8, 7, or any spade. Marginal connection with a board texture is much more common than flopping the nuts, so studying that outcome is a great way to begin to understand general strategies. Making the nuts is simply one happy and rare occurrence of many possible occurrences that is part of a much more comprehensive distribution of events.

Jeff Gross: This is the biggest thing I have been trying to explain more clearly to my Dad, who loves poker and plays frequently at casinos in Michigan. I really focus on having him assigning ranges to players’ hands, not just what his cards are, then being able to replay hands for me. He is incredibly smart, but has trouble remembering flop and board textures as well as what the other player ended up having at showdown. 

Let’s take the A-7 offsuit example from my first answer. Say in the $1-$2 game a player under the gun (UTG) opens for $10, UTG+1 calls $10, middle position calls $10, the cutoff calls $10, and the button raises to $25. I am in the small blind and have $500 in front of me and the other stacks all have $200-$400. Calling with a hand like A-7 offsuit in this position is hopeless.

Now, instead of calling and inviting the big blind along and being six-way for $25 each ($150 in the pot) and having almost no chance to win the pot, let’s say you squeeze it up. You raise to $110. The UTG player would have to have a very strong holding to continue and basically have to decide to play for all of their chips. When they fold, the UTG+1 player, the middle position player, and the cutoff will almost always fold as well.

Now the button has a decision. He could have a hand as good as J 10, but it may be 10-9 offsuit, Q-J, or K-Q. If he folds, you collect the $67 uncontested, and if he calls, the pot is $262 and you get first crack at it once the flop comes out. He may even have a mid-pair and will almost always fold after the flop which doesn’t connect with his pair to improve. If the flop comes low rags, you will continuation-bet and almost always win. If the flop comes ace-high, this would be a good time to check and give him a shot to bluff at it. If he is holding a K-Q, 10-9, Q-J-type hand, he may attempt to steal it knowing this is his only chance. If he does have A-J or A-Q, you aren’t folding anyway, so might as well let him bluff all of his air. This is just one example of why you must always be thinking about your opponent’s range and, like in the game of chess, think of how to proceed accordingly.

Simon Jonas: Polarized ranges make money. They allow you to get tons of value with your good hands, while bluffing with a high frequency. That said, the big enemy of polarized ranges is a board-changing card.

Let’s assume that you opened on the button, got called by the player in the big blind and are looking at a 9 8 6 board. You polarize your range as extremely as you can, just betting 10-7 suited and 7-5 suited for a straight, 9-9, 8-8, and 6-6 for a flopped set, and really weak bluffs like A-10, Q-J and K-7 suited, that just picked up a weak straight draw. This ratio between value bets and bluffs works out alright, and you’ll achieve the main goals of a polarized range: Force your opponent to click-call pretty often, and lump in many of those bluffs that don’t want to check.

Now the turn is a J, and boy are you in trouble; a flush came in, which you usually don’t have, and a higher straight came in, which you never have. You went from being polarized between nuts and air to being, well, not really all that polarized anymore, no matter which hands you decide to bet on the turn. Now, imagine you were out of position as well…

So, when can you polarize your range the most? You need to find situations in which the board won’t change often at all, like an A 7 2 board. Or you make sure that there’s only one bad card left that life can deal you, polarizing your hand range on the turn is an excellent strategy. You can also bet more polarized when you’re in position.

On draw-heavy boards, like in our first board example, you need to de-polarize your range to accommodate different board-changing cards, like the J.

Make no mistake: Polarized ranges are amazing. But sometimes, they just aren’t the right tool for the job. ♠

Reid Young is the lead instructor at PokerSprout.com- “A better way to learn poker strategy.” He is a very successful high stakes cash professional as well as the author of “The Blue Book – An advanced strategy guide.”

Jeff Gross is a high-stakes cash game professional. He also has more than $2 million in tournament career cashes. He is a team member of Playground Poker, Fantasy Draft, and 3bet. Gross can be reached on Twitter @Jgross5.

Simon Jonas, 28 years old, plays on PokerStars up to the $10/$20 level both in NLH and PLO. He has taken some of his students from small stakes to high stakes, and further shared his knowledge in poker training videos and guest appearances on Twitch. Presently, Jonas is involved in a project called PokerSprout.com.