Definition of hand range
The hand range is the range of hands an opponent can have. Depending on our position, our hand range will vary. Obviously, a player will not play all the hands he receives. He will make a selection. Several factors will help him make his selection. His starting position is one of them. If you are the first player to speak (the UTG position), you will play a smaller range of hands. If everyone has folded to us on the button, we will have a larger range. If a player has already made a 3bet in the hand, we will have an even smaller range of hands to play.
Why is it important to evaluate the hand range?
One of the essential skills of a poker player is to correctly assess his opponents' hand range. Why is that? Because it tells you which hands you can play. For example, if we estimate in a specific situation that a player will have only 5% of the hands in his hand range, we know that he will be very strong. And to face up to this range, we'll want to have a very strong small range too, otherwise, in the long term, we'll lose money. It's also important to make sure that our hand range isn't too easy for our opponents to guess, and to do that we need to balance it well.
