There will be many times during an online poker game where you will probably need to change your range of hands that you play from certain positions based on certain game dynamics and metagame factors. For instance if it has been folded around to you on two successive orbits and you open raise from the button with AJ and QQ and take the blinds both times then steal raising with junk on the next orbit may not be a good play.

Your opponents certainly do not know that you had two legitimate raising hands here and what they believe that they are seeing is the beginning of a pattern where it has been folded around to you and you have widened your range for a steal. So if you raise in this instance with say J-8 and get three bet then you have to fold and your opponent will now firmly believe that you didn’t have much the first two times that you raised.

But by raising a third time then you kind of gave them the opportunity to three bet lighter than they normally would. Of course there is room for a further play here as well and if you suspect that your opponent is advanced and aggressive enough to figure it out then you can convince him that opening up their range to three bet you was wrong in this instance when you four bet them.

Table image does have a big impact even in online play and tracking software like Poker Office will create a table image for you whether you like it or not. Your opponents will know how often you put money into the pot, how aggressive you are, how often you check-raise, how often you win money at showdown and a multitude of other things on top. There are numerous other factors behind why you should adjust the types of poker hands that you play and another one is that you are a good post flop player.

If you can play well post flop and you feel that your opponents or at least some of your opponents do not play well post flop then you can widen your range in these instances and play more hands. The key here is to widen your range and not to start playing silly poker hands trying to win every single pot that you can.

If the blinds are very tight and fold too much or give up too much when they miss the flop then you can really go to town with these players. Often in full-limit Texas hold’em ring games players tend to tighten up too much because they know that the blind pressure is low enough to allow them to be able to fold more.

The problem with this is that they end up folding too often and get pushed around by the players who are alert enough to have recognised that fact. Playing set ranges is fine up to a point but there will be countless times during your poker career where changing to fit various shifting dynamics will be the optimal move.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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