Poker Open Raise Chart
Posted : admin On 4/10/2022Raise 1, Call 2. Raise First In, Call 1: Raised Pot. RR 1 Option, Call All. RR or Fold against 1 Player, Call 3. In late position, you should raise with JJ against one caller or first in, and call against two callers or more. You have the option of rerasing a lone raiser; otherwise, always call a raise. If you just want a straight visual chart to memorize, upswing poker has free preflop charts that are a decent starting point. Obviously you don't want super static preflop ranges but as a baseline (and considering the price), it'll work for you. As for open sizings it depends on a lot of things. The raise size is listed, when appropriate. The sizing is based on the number of big blinds or the current raise size. For open raising, if you see 3x that means 3 times the big blind. So, if the big blind is.50, you would raise to $1.50.
Table Of Contents
Are you struggling to figure out what starting hands to play and how poker positions change the way you play preflop? You are not alone.
This article isn't a poker strategy crash course. Instead of focusing on generic winning poker tips and bankroll management advice like many other training poker sites do, it gives you something different.
It's a collection of advanced poker charts that improves your poker game by showing you how to play preflop. It gives you a clear overview of the starting hands range you should consider through some handy poker hands chart images, PDFs, and Excel files.
Continue reading to learn:
- And lots more
In other words, if you are looking for an in-depth game strategy guide to learn what is the best way to play poker preflop, you'll love this collection of poker range charts.
Why a Page about Poker Ranges?
All poker players have been there. Short-stacked. Bleeding chips with every orbit while staring at junk hand after junk hand. Feeling their chances of winning the tournament dwindle ever further while their stack continues to shrink.
Finally, they get a halfway decent hand. Nobody has entered the pot.
Is it time to shove?
There's an easy way to find out. Enter poker range charts. These handy tools allow players to see which poker hand ranges to play in preflop scenarios where the pot is unopened and a player plans to shove or fold.
Playing the proper ranges according to preflop charts make it so your play can't be exploited, so memorizing these is the key to short-stacked play.
Read on to learn more and find the accompanied printable poker hand ranges chart as a tool you can study to improve your performance when short-stacked.
What are poker ranges?
For those unfamiliar a poker hand range is simply a set of poker hands that may be held by a player. We try to estimate our opponents' ranges because guessing exact hole cards is a fruitless, nearly impossible exercise in most cases.
For example, if the tightest player you've ever seen reraises you preflop in hold'em, you may estimate their range to be aces and kings only.
On the other hand, if a player who hasn't folded one hand in an hour calls your raise, you may estimate their range to include any two cards in the deck. Of course, most hand ranges will be somewhere in between.
How Do You Calculate Poker Ranges?
Analyzing ranges can be a tricky proposition, and only by learning game theory and playing thousands of hands can a poker player get better at it.
Including some proper proper preflop strategy in your poker training will help you understand what poker hand ranges they'll play.
The more time you spend playing and watching opponents' hands at showdown, the more clues you'll get about their strategy. That will enable you to get more precise estimates of their ranges when playing future hands.
This video from poker pro Jonathan Little explores the concept in a little more depth and tries to answer the question 'how do I think in terms of hand ranges?'
How to Use Preflop Range Charts
Every position at the poker table has a certain range of starting hands that can be profitably shoved at a given stack depth.
Generally, these stack depths are at 20 big blinds or less.
Preflop range charts outline the hands that constitute a winning shoving range.
A player who knows these charts can shove with a positive expected value (+EV) no matter what cards are held by the opponents remaining to act.
Here on PokerNews you find free preflop poker charts for five different stack depths at both six-max tables and nine-handed tables.
Here's how to use them:
- Figure out how many big blinds you have in your stack.
- Go to the corresponding chart. If you have a stack that doesn't match one exactly, pick the closest one.
- Go to the column that corresponds to your seat.
- Scroll down until you get to the row that corresponds to your hole cards — the chart starts with pairs at the top, then ace-high hands, then king-high and so on.
- You can shove all of the hands listed there, as well as any hands to the left that were shoved in an earlier seat.
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Poker Ranges Charts
Here are 10 essential poker charts to help your preflop poker game.
They're broken into two categories: full-ring ranges and six-max ranges. Each category features shoving hands for five different stack sizes, raised in increments of three big blinds.
As you'll often have stacks in between these sizes, it may take a small amount of guesswork and intuition to expand or tighten the ranges a bit and get the appropriate strategy.
1. Full Ring Ranges Poker Charts
2. Six-Max Ranges Poker Charts
Use the Printable Poker Charts on Excel!
Want to bring all the poker charts with you? Make a copy of this shared Excel file and download the full collection of our advanced poker charts.
To create your own copy of all the poker charts on this article:
- Click on 'File'
- Then click on 'Create a Copy'
- Done! You can now use all these poker ranges charts to improve your win rate!
These are optimal poker ranges for winning chips if your opponents are calling correctly. Each poker chart should be adjusted depending on reads you can gather when you play cash games or tournament poker.
- If your opponents are calling too wide, shove a little tighter so you're more likely to have the best of it.
- If your opponents aren't calling wide enough, widen your range of hands and shove a few extra hands because you are likely to be able to steal their blinds.
Considerations should also be made for the state of the poker tournament, i.e. proximity to the money bubble, a pay jump, or a final table.
These can heavily influence calling ranges and proper shoving strategy, changing the way you should play if you are using these poker charts to play winning poker.
Some bits of the poker ranges charts may look a bit weird, specifically in regard to suited ace-high hands.
This is because some of the small suited aces perform slightly better against calling ranges than middle aces. At certain stack depths and positions, it's better to shove ace-five suited than ace-seven suited, for example.
How to memorize poker ranges
Given that there are 169 different hands in Texas hold'em poker, differently sized tables, and slightly different shoving ranges for every stack depth, it's unreasonable to think you'll be able to perfectly memorize an exactly correct shoving strategy.
Furthermore, doing so would probably be counter-productive, as you're better off dedicating your brainpower and efforts elsewhere.
Getting a rough idea of correct preflop poker ranges to shove will allow you to play well with a short stack while still improving your game in other aspects with your remaining study time.
There's no handy acronym like 'Roy G. Biv' (rainbow colors) or 'PEMDAS' (order of mathematical operations) to help you remember the shoving strategy offered in all the preflop range charts on this page.
And despite what other poker guides and poker training sites say, the purpose of poker charts like these ones is not to have you memorise everything. That's not how you will improve your win rate.
The best way to learn is to make your shoves and then continually check afterward whether it was correct. Eventually, the raising ranges will start to take shape in your memory.
Here are a few poker tips to keep in mind:
- Pairs are great to jam with. If you're under 10 big blinds, you can almost jam with any pair from any position. With such a small stack, waiting for top pairs is not a good idea.
- If your cards are unpaired, it's obviously preferable to have high suited cards.
- Small suited hands lose a lot of value in preflop shoving situations compared to their deep-stacked playability. Many hands wind up unimproved by the river, so the higher cards will win in these spots.
- Still, hands with a high card and low card (something like king-five offsuit) might be favored against something like ten-nine suited in a head-to-head clash, but the latter performs better against opponents' calling hands, so it's preferable to shove with.
The biggest jumps in shoving range will come the closer you get to the big blind — i.e., the difference between shoving in the first two seats is far less than the difference in shoving between the button and small blind.
This is because one extra fold represents a much bigger portion of the remaining opponents, meaning the likelihood of running into a big hand has decreased more significantly. So, get comfortable shoving very wide in the small blind and still quite wide from the button and cutoff.
Most Common Preflop Ranges
All percentile ranges you see below are taken from pokerhandrange.com
Top 7%
If you run into a very tight opponent, expect here or she to be opening something like the top 7% of hands from early or even middle position. Only the tightest ranges will play this way.
What does that look like? About as strong as you'd expect:
- 88
- ATs , AQo
- KJs
Top 15%
Opening the top 15% of hands is still quite tight, but allows a bit more play down to the strong offsuit Broadways, most of the suited aces, and all of the suited Broadways.
It's probably close to a 'typical' opening range for a standard live player:
- 66
- A5s , ATo
- K9s , KJo
- Q9s , JTs
Top 35%
If you run into a player who is aggressively trying to steal seemingly every time it's folded to them in late position, their range might be in the top 35% or so of hands, or potentially even wider.
That's going to include a great many suited combos with even just one Broadway, as well as some fairly weak offsuit holdings down to jack-nine:
- 33
- A2s , A5o
- K2s , K8o
- Q4s , Q9o
- J7s , J9o
- T7s
- 97s
- 87s
Top 60%
Only the absolute loosest, most aggressive opposition will play a range this wide, but it certainly does happen.
The top 60% is usually reserved for short-stacked players shoving from the button and small blind, so if you wonder what that range might look like, here it is:
- 22
- Ax
- K2s , K3o
- Q2s , Q5o
- J2s , J7o
- T2s , T7o
- 94s , 97o
- 84s
- 74s
- 64s
- 54s
Additional Readings
Now that you have our starting hands range and you have all the information you need on your Excel printable file, it's time to continue this poker lab experiment with more poker guides.
If you are really committed to playing better poker, here's a list that will help you reach your goals.
- Essential Poker Tips: a complete collection of the most effective poker tips we know. While some might be more beginner-oriented, other tidbits might help also more seasoned players.
- Poker Equity: one of the most popular poker articles ever published in our advanced poker strategy section. This is one of those must-read poker guides you need to go through at least once in your (poker) life.
- Poker Positions: having our printable poker range charts in PDF is not enough to become a winning poker player. You need a lot more — including this guide to poker positions. Learn how every position named at the table and learn how to use everything to your advantage when you fire up your poker software.
- The Best Online Poker Sites: the world-famous and award-winnings PokerNews rankings. If you ever wanted to play a hand of online poker, this is the perfect starting point for you.
- Mobile Poker Sites: some poker software a great on desktop, but how about their mobile apps? Read this one to find out what brands offer the top mobile products in the industry.
- Free Poker Sites: Not all online games cost money. All the sites on this list offer great poker games that will cost you nada.
- Poker Freerolls: want to win real money prizes but don't want to risk your own? play a freeroll! This page gives you access to all the top free poker tournaments happening right now.
Additional Note:
The shoving ranges in this article, while available in many forms on different poker resources, were specifically taken from SnapShove. Check out SnapShove for more information about preflop shoving and calling strategy.
So by now we all know which starting handsare good and which are bad, but there's still a ton of variables that should influence your decision to open a particular hand preflop....In this article we'll look at some important factors when deciding pre-flop opens:
i) Limitations of the Starting hand chart
ii) Position
iii) Limpers/Posters
iv) Stack-sizes
v) Open-raise size
vi) Edge/Reads
Limitations of the starting hand chart
Don't take the starting hand chart as gospel!
Many beginners are encouraged to make use of a starting hands chart (SHC)when first embarking on a poker career. While this suggestion is not without merit, it is particularly important to understand where its limitations lie.
A starting hands chart is very useful as a rough guide for an absolute beginner, but your ultimate goal should be to progress away from this as soon as possible. Poker is a dynamic game; the person who can adjust the most efficiently to the strategy of another is the one who will win the chips in the long run. Playing a static strategy in such a game is going to, at the very least, confine you to mediocrity - if not cause you to become a downright losing player.
Assuming we had a SHC representative of tight-aggressive play, let's consider some of the situations where we would typically deviate from our 'standard' open-raising strategy in a 6max game.
Position
This is partially factored into most starting-hands charts. A hand like A8o should be a standard open-raise on the button in many games. A8o from UTG however, is usually going to be trash and is a standard fold.
You should also consider your position relative to other players at the table. If there are fish in the blinds you might choose to open looser from early-position, because if these players call you will have position postflop. If there are loose or aggressive players in position on you, you should often tighten up. Perhaps you are in the CO with a loose-aggressive player on the button, and as a result you should tighten up your CO opening-range.
Limpers/Posters
If there are fish who open-limp you can choose to iso-raise a lot wider when you have position. (This is not strictly an 'open'-raise but similar principles apply.) Perhaps you find yourself with a hand you wouldn't normally open raise with from a specific situation, but playing that hand in position against a fish will likely still be +EV.
A similar principle applies if there are posters involved in a hand. You can often raise a little wider seeing as the extra dead-money means you don't need to steal the pot as often for it to be profitable. Posters will be folding a lot because their range pretty much includes any 2 cards. If you've already seen them check, their range becomes any 2 cards they didn't want to raise!
Stack Sizes
This is one factor that is completely disregarded in almost all SHCs, yet is a crucial piece of information in establishing which ranges you want to open.
If we take a very simplified view of the different starting hands we can split them into two categories. Hands which benefit from implied-odds, and hands which suffer from reverse implied-odds.
Hands which benefit from implied-odds: These typically include speculative hands like 78s. These hands don't have immediate showdown-value, yet they do have some potential to make strong nutted hands a small proportion of the time. It's important that when you do make a flush/straight/straight-flush that there is enough money in villain's stack to make it profitable in the long run. In other words, if villain has a very short stack, it can quite easily become un-profitable to play a hand like 78s.
The other type of hand, is that which suffers from reverse implied-odds: These are hands with immediate showdown value like AK, or QQ. You have no problem playing these against a shortstack because a large proportion of the time you will either be committed preflop or on the flop. They suffer from reverse implied odds because as the stacks get deeper, you are less happy with stacking off with the type of hands they make, namely big one-pair hands. If your opponent seems extremely happy to get 200BB stacks in, it's likely that your AK on the K678 is no good; whereas, if villain only has a 25BB stack, it's a snap-call with TPTK.
The hands in between:
There are some hands that fall in the middle of these two categories, such as QTs. This is both a speculative hand, and a hand that makes weak-top pairs. How you choose to play it depends on the exact circumstances. Much of the time if villain is deep, you will play it as a speculative hand, while if villain is shallow you will play it as a TPGK hand.
General rule of thumb:
As a general rule you want to tighten up your open-raises when shortstacks are still left to act. As the stacks get deeper you can start opening a lot wider with all kinds of speculative hands. (Theoretically when the stacks are super-deep, perhaps 1000bb deep, you can open 27o even if you never steal preflop, because you have sufficient implied odds. In practice you'd only ever do this if you expect to have a huge post-flop edge). You should then be careful playing TPTK/Overpair as the stacks get deeper. Playing AKo 200BB deep, it is likely you will need to employ some pot-control during the hand if you make a TPTK hand. You will also be less comfortable putting yourself in a situation where you need to stack off preflop for 200BB+, even with hands like KK where it might be standard to stack off in a 100BB pot.
Poker Open Raise Chart 2019
Open-Raise Sizing
You should often vary your open-raise size, depending on the players at the table and the position you are opening from.
Typically many follow a strategy where they open larger from UTG, and smaller from the Button. This is partially because your UTG open-raising range is typically stronger than your BU opening range. Your UTG open also needs to get through more players, and you perhaps discourage them from calling you in-position with a slightly larger open raise size.
This is just a generic sizing strategy however, and you should consider making deviations depending on the players at the table. Perhaps you are getting relentlessly 3bet by a certain opponent; you could choose to open-raise smaller so you lose less, make 3betting less attractive for villain, and also make it easier for you to flat-call if you were so inclined.
Or perhaps villain is a huge fish, that plays every hand, but always check-folds when he misses the flop. Why not open-raise large, perhaps 5x or 6x and take it down on the flop? Perhaps villain NEVER folds anything preflop, and you have AA, why not raise to 10x or even more?
Conversely perhaps you are UTG with a suited-connector, and you know that regardless of your raise sizing, you are likely getting called in several spots. So why not open-raise smaller?
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Edge/Reads
A big factor in which ranges you choose to open also depends on any reads you have and also how big your edge is.
Poker Open Raise Chart
It's often going to be wise to discard any marginal opens if the table is very tough. Certain hands like Axs which you can potentially open UTG in some games, perhaps become standard folds in games where you are going to exploited too heavily by smart opponents with position.
Certain reads may cause you to open tighter/loser, or may also cause you to open slightly different ranges. If you know villain is a postflop calling station, you might want to tighten up your open-ranges. If you know villain will play fit-or-fold on every flop, you can sometimes loosen up quite dramatically.
Perhaps you know villain is 3betting very wide, and then open a certain type of hand with the intention of 4bet-bluffing because it contains certain blockers. The further you can plan a hand before you've even open-raised, the more specific you can be about which ranges you want to open.
Summary
While SHC's may be useful tools from a theoretical perspective, and for the use of beginners, there are many aspects of a real poker game that are simply not taken into account, such as stack-sizes and relative position.
In general, the deeper the stack-sizes, the less useful a SHC becomes. A SHC certainly carries a little more relevance when applied to short-stacked play, purely because it is a little easier to say how close a play is to the mathematical optimum, but there are still deviations that could be made depending on who is at the table amongst other factors.