How to write ranges

A range is text that describes a set of hands. You type it in the Range field on the spot screen and in the Filter field above the strategy table. The syntax is the same for every game: Hold'em, Short Deck and Omaha with 4, 5 and 6 cards, hi-lo included. It comes from ProPokerTools, so if you have used it, almost everything will look familiar. Upper and lower case are the same, and spaces between parts of a range do not matter.

Contents

• Cards
• Suited and offsuit
• Rank variables
• Rank spans: + and -
• Choices for one card: [ ]
• Or, and, except
• Percent
• No pairs: { }
• Macros
• Weights: @
• If you are used to another syntax

Cards

Ranks: A K Q J T 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2, a ten is T. Suits: s spades, h hearts, d diamonds, c clubs. A suit goes right after its rank. If you write fewer cards than a hand has, the other cards can be anything. A star * means any rank. The examples are for Hold'em unless they say otherwise.

Short Deck has no ranks from 2 to 5, and a range with them gives an error.

Suited and offsuit

The letters x y z w are suit variables. The same letter means the same suit, different letters mean different suits. A variable never takes a suit that is written out in the same hand.

$ss, $ds and $ts mean one, two or three suits with exactly two cards each, and no suit with three or more cards. So there is no $ss with 6 cards, and $ts needs 6 cards.

In PLO5, AsKsQhJhTd is $ds. Spades and hearts have exactly two cards each, and the diamond is alone in its suit. AsKsQsJhTh is not $ss and not $ds. Hearts have exactly two cards, but spades have three, and a suit with three or more cards is never allowed.

:xxyy is wider: in PLO5 it also matches a hand whose fifth card is a third card of one of the suits. For exact double-suited, write $ds.

Rank variables

The letters R O N M P V are rank variables, and so is every other letter the syntax does not use: B E F G I L U. They work like suit variables: the same letter means the same rank, different letters mean different ranks. A variable never takes a rank that is written out in the hand.

Rank spans: + and -

A minus between two hands lists every hand from one to the other. A plus or a minus at the end continues the hand up to the ace or down to the deuce. Every card with a written rank moves together, one rank per step.

The order of the cards does not matter: TsJs-KsQs means TsJs, JsQs, QsKs.

The two ends may differ only in ranks, and every card that changes must move by the same number of steps. Otherwise it is an error. For example, in KT-Q8 the king moves one step and the ten moves two.

A macro is a text replacement. K9$s-K6$s becomes K9:xx-K6:xx, and the two ends no longer match. Suited K9, K8, K7, K6 is written as (K9-K6)$s or Kx9x-Kx6x.

Choices for one card: [ ]

Square brackets list the choices for one card, with commas or as a span.

Or, and, except

A comma means or, a colon means and, an exclamation mark means except. The colon and the exclamation mark bind tighter than the comma and apply from left to right. Round brackets change the order.

Percent

A percent takes the top part of the hands by strength. Each game and number of players has its own order of hands. How it is built is explained in the article on hand order. With no suffix, the order for 6 players is used.

Every game has an order for 2 and 6 players. An order for 10 players exists only in Hold'em, Short Deck and PLO4.

No pairs: { }

The cards inside curly brackets all have different ranks. Cards outside the brackets are not affected.

Macros

A macro starts with $. Before the range is read, the macro is simply replaced by its text, so it works anywhere that text would work. Macros that start with : or ! go after a hand: *$np, not $np.

Macro names ignore case: $SS is the same as $ss.

Weights: @

A number after @ sets a weight, from 1 to 255. Without it the weight is 100. The weight applies to everything before it up to the nearest comma. Only the ratio of weights matters: AA@50, KK@100 is the same as AA@1, KK@2.

If you are used to another syntax

How to write here what other programs write their own way.

Differences from ProPokerTools: with no suffix, percents use the order for 6 players, not a full table.