This is part 2 of my Advanced Poker Terminolgy series. In this part of the article I'm going to explain the meanings and ideas behind the basic and important concepts "range" and "bluff catcher". Let's begin.
Range – Range is what hand reading is all about. Range refers to the various hands you think your opponent would make a specific play with. Whenever your opponent makes a play there is almost always more than one hand he would play like that. So when you account for every hand you think he would play like this and you combine all those hands together you have his range.
This is a very important concept to understand. If you don't put your opponent on a range what you will probably be doing is trying to guess what hand your opponent has and trying to make the best play vs. that hand . This, of course, is not an effective way to play the game because even the most easy to read players will have more than one hand in their range the vast majority of the time. So your guesses will be just that, guesses, and you will be wrong more often than not. Sure there are times when you can put your opponent on one specific hand and be right but it doesn't come up often. Pay attention to the times when you guess right or feel really confident about what your opponent has. It will most likely be when some 85 year old guy who hasn't played a hand in 3 hours puts a lot of money in the pot . It's really not that hard to figure out what that guy has.
What you need to do is put people on a range of hands and optimize your strategy vs his range. Ask yourself questions like "how many value hands does he have here?", "How many of them do I beat?", "How many bluff hands does he have?", "How many draws and what kind of draws?". Always look for spots to eliminate hands from his range. You can do this through deductive logic, tells, feel and so on. This is the key to good hand reading; being able to use the information to get his range as accurate as you can and eliminate as many hands from his range as possible.
Bluff Catcher – A bluff catcher is a hand that can only win (by calling) if your opponent is bluffing. It's a hand that isn't good enough to beat any of his value range (value range refers to hands he would bet with the hopes of getting you to call). To figure out whether or not your hand is a bluff catcher you need to ask yourself a few questions.
You should ask yourself "what are the weakest hands my opponent can bet for value (and is my hand good enough to beat those hand(s)?" If the answer is yes then your hand is not a bluff catcher because you beat some of his value range. If the answer is no then you need to ask yourself if you can even beat bluffs. If you can't even beat bluffs you don't have a bluff catcher what you have is the equivalent of 2 napkins (nothing) . If you can beat bluffs you now have what's called a "bluff catcher".
It's important to realize when your hand is only a bluff catcher because there are many times when your hand looks really strong but when you think about his range and what he's value betting with all you have is a mere bluff catcher. Note that it's not just weak hands that are bluff catchers. Any hand can be a bluff catcher. Heres an extreme example to help illustrate my point . Say you have four of a kind but the weakest hand your opponent value bets with is a straight flush. Guess what, your hand is now a bluff catcher. You don't beat his value range your calling in the hopes that he is bluffing.
So there are a few important concepts in poker. I hope that this article, along with Part 1 "Advanced Poker Terminology: Merge, Polarized, Equity" gave you a better understanding of the more common terms used in poker strategy talk and discussion.