Learning to Think About Your Own Range of Hands, Part 1

In poker we only get to play one hand at a time. As a result, we typically find ourselves asking "How should I play this hand, on this street?"

When we do so we're going to encounter some spots where we simply have no idea what to do — because we don't understand our own range of possible hands.

I played a hand in the World Poker Tour National Killarney event last weekend that shows how thinking about your whole range of hands can guide decisions throughout postflop with any particular hand.

It was before the money, With a stack of 19 big blinds, I min-raised the button with -offsuit, and the big blind — a big stack — defended with a call. The flop came and my opponent checked.

When considering…