Table Of Contents

In smaller poker games, players tend to include far too many hands into their preflop ranges. This gives you ample opportunity to find bluff 3bets, +EV preflop calls, and to be proactive in your postflop line creation. Memorize These 5 Poker Ranges. To make your life easier, here are 5 preflop poker ranges that you need to memorize.

KJo is considered a reverse implied odds (RIO) hand because if/when it flops top pair and gets action, it’s probably because the villain has a stronger, dominating hand. We call this a “trap” or “trouble” hand. Playing trap or trouble hands is hard, and, when played out of position (OOP) it is almost always a negative EV situation. Winning Breakdown for AQo: High Card 15,865,200 One Pair 70,312,896 Two Pair 42,971,832 Three of a Kind 9,820,944 Straight. Poker is such a unique game in that good plays can lose money, and bad poker plays can end up winning money. At the end of the day, our goal is to make the most profitable plays and minimize our mistakes. But sometimes, a bad line can still result in the chips being pushed our. World Poker Tour Gardens Main Event Final Table 2018 video uploaded! I think that it would be helpful for those who are planning to play Texas Hold'em. Let 's enjoy the winning percentage.

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:

1. Figure out how many big blinds you have in your stack.
2. Go to the corresponding chart. If you have a stack that doesn't match one exactly, pick the closest one.
3. Go to the column that corresponds to your seat.
4. 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.
5. 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.}

“Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.” -- James Baldwin

Kjo Poker Games

Playing limit Texas Hold'em, you are under the gun with a marginal hand like KJo. What should you do? Some learning players would immediately consult their starting hand chart, either literally or in their memory, and then decide what action to take. Unfortunately, rigid adherence to artificial charts is the root of ruin for many people who might otherwise become quite good poker players. A lot of these players may in fact become winning players, especially in rake games where the house takes its cut from the pot rather than equally from each player, but I suggest most players relying on starting hand charts are either doomed to never be much good at poker, or will end up merely mediocre. (Starting hand charts are a limit poker concept and never intended to be used while playing No Limit or Pot Limit games.)
Strong, solid winning poker is all about situational analyses. Every situation is somewhere between slightly different and very different from other situations -- even if you hold the very same cards! KJo is just not KJo, even if the situations appear the same on the surface.
Suppose you have two very weak/loose players in the blinds, with you holding KJo first to act. Ideally, you would want to play with these two loose players with this hand. At the same time, suppose you have weak/tight players behind you, who will fold hands as good as A♠Q♡ if it is raised. The correct play here will often be to raise with the K♠J♡, and much of the time get to play against the two weak players in the blinds. Now change this, and you have two loose/aggressive players in the blinds and solid/strong players behind you who will reraise you with AQo. Well, now your KJo is a pile of muckable junk.
At the very least, it should be easy to see that these two situations are extremely different from each other. Whatever value KJ has in the first scenario with weak players behind you and in the blinds, it has less value with aggressive players in those positions. It’s not the same. A solid, sensible player should consult his or her

Ko Poker

brain when facing these very different circumstances -- not some silly chart divorced from reality.
What you do in a poker game depends on the game conditions, the players in the blind, who has acted so far, who won or lost the previous pots, and so on. A dozen or more factors should go into your thought process of why a hand should be played, and how it should be played. Another example is: Suppose two super-tight players are in the blinds and you are one behind the button. The universe of hands you should play for a raise here is simple: every single two-card combination from AA to 7♡2♠. No starting hand chart can tell you that. Observing the people does.
When I was a kid, the Moms in the neighborhood had discussions about the best way to teach a five year-old how to ride a bicycle. Some supported using training wheels. Others thought “ride and fall” was the best way. While the training wheel kids started off great, zipping around on their big bikes while the other kids were crashing into hedges, soon the freewheeling kids passed the training wheels kids, by far too.
Starting hand charts are training wheels, crutches. They keep you from doing the stuff of playing poker: critical, situational, analytical thinking.
A rank amateur can look at a starting hand chart once and get some ideas about hands, but a chart itself is meaningless for one look. All that needs to be done is novices need to be told tendencies, like you should tend to play stronger hands out of position than you need to play in position. Starting hand charts lead to people thinking totally wrong in terms of how to play poker. They send you down the wrong road. They give you a bad crutch. They are simply just about the worst possible tool for a learning player to use.

Kjo Poker Game

Simplistic, robotic strategies can lead to a player doing decently (since most players play poorly) but robots miss out on profit the thoughtful players get, and robots present no threat to a genuinely strong player.
Poker is mostly not about cards, it’s about people. Memorization of starting hand charts is inviting permanent mediocrity.
More articles focusing on Starting Hands and Texas Hold'em Hand Charts