Poker Starting Hands by Position in 6-Max

Position decides which starting hands are profitable more than the cards do. In 6-max you should open roughly 15-17% of hands under the gun and roughly 40-45% on the button — nearly three times as many, with nothing about the deck changing in between. Here is what to open from each seat, and why K♠J♦ is a fold in one chair and a routine raise two seats later.

Why the same hand changes value by seat

Position is not a tiebreaker you apply after picking a hand. It is the first input.

Fewer players can still beat you. Opening under the gun in 6-max leaves five opponents to act, and each one is another chance for somebody to look down at a better hand. Open the button and only the blinds remain. The same K♠J♦ that has to run a gauntlet of five ranges now has to get past two.

You act last for the rest of the hand. Open the button, get called by the big blind, and you see their decision on every street before you commit another chip. That lets you bluff cheaply, value bet thinly, and check back a marginal hand for free. Out of position you get none of it, so the hands need to be stronger to make up the difference.

The players behind you are forced to defend badly. The big blind already has money in and gets a price, so their continuing range is wide and weak by construction. Raising into two forced bets with position for the rest of the hand is the most reliably profitable routine action in poker.

Your opening range is set by how many players are left to act behind you, not by how strong the hand looks on its own.

The 6-max opening ranges at a glance

These are unopened pots — nobody has raised in front of you. The frequencies shift a little with rake and stack depth, but the shape holds at every stake.

Seat	Open frequency	Shape of the range
UTG	15-17%	Pairs to about 66, suited aces, suited broadways, AJo+ and KQo
HJ	~20%	Adds the smallest pairs, more suited kings, ATo and KJo
CO	26-30%	Every pair, every suited ace, suited connectors to about 65s, QJo
BTN	40-45%	Every pair and suited ace, most suited queens, offsuit broadways, suited gappers
SB	40-50% raise-first-in	Wide, but out of position for the whole hand
BB	n/a	You never open here — you defend against someone else's raise

Each seat is roughly half again as wide as the one before it. That is not a rounding error. It is the difference between folding K9s and raising it for value with no card having changed.

Ranking hands independently of seat is still worth doing once, and the full starting hand chart does exactly that. Everything below is the layer you add on top of it.

Under the gun: hands that survive strong ranges

Anyone who continues against your under the gun raise does so knowing you opened from the tightest seat. Their calling and three-betting ranges tighten in response, which means every marginal hand you add gets punished twice.

At $1/$2 you open A9o to $5 from under the gun. Four players can still three-bet, and the ones who do are holding AJ+ or a pair. You pick up $3 in blinds when everyone folds and you lose a $60 pot whenever the money goes in properly. That asymmetry is the whole argument against the hand from that seat.

The filter that works is domination. Ask whether the hand is comfortable when it connects with the board and someone plays back at you. A9o makes top pair and hates it. A9s makes the same top pair but also makes nut flushes, so it survives the cut. KQo is fine because it dominates the offsuit broadways that call. KJo is not, because the hands that call it have it beaten.

The exact combos, including the ones that mix between raise and fold, are laid out in UTG opening ranges.

The hijack and cutoff: the seats that decide your win rate

One seat later, one fewer opponent. The hijack adds the smallest pairs, KTs and QTs, ATo and KJo — around 20% in total. In a 9-max game these two seats get folded together and simply called middle position, and the middle position range is the same idea expressed for that table size.

The cutoff is where most players leave money on the table. Only the button and the blinds are behind you, and if the button folds you have position for the whole hand. That is worth opening 26-30% — every pair, every suited ace, suited connectors down to about 65s, QJo and KTo.

Take 87s at $1/$2. Under the gun it is a fold, because you will flop a draw out of position against a range full of overpairs. In the cutoff it is a clear open: you are raising $6 to win $3 immediately a fair share of the time, and when you get called you are usually the one acting last with a hand that flops straights and flushes the opponent cannot see coming.

The button: open wide and mean it

The button opens 40-45% of hands, and the list looks absurd if you have only ever played tight. Every pair including 22. Every suited ace including A2s. All suited kings, most suited queens, K9o and Q9o, and suited gappers like J8s and T7s.

Two things justify it. Both remaining opponents are out of position for the rest of the hand, and one of them has to defend a wide, weak range or get run over. Q7s is a fold from every other seat and an ordinary open here, because it steals the blinds often enough on its own and flops well enough to continue when it does not.

The mistake to avoid is opening wide and then playing scared. If you raise 45% of hands and fold every flop you miss, you have simply invented a more expensive way to fold. The wide range only pays if you continuation bet, barrel and bluff-catch appropriately afterwards, which is what button strategy covers in detail.

The blinds are a different game entirely

The small blind is the one seat where wide and out of position collide. Only the big blind is left to act, which argues for raising 40-50% of hands, but you are last to act for none of the streets that follow. Raise first in rather than limping, keep the sizing larger than your other opens, and drop the weakest offsuit hands that a big blind can attack.

The big blind never opens. It defends. Facing a 2.5x button raise you are calling 1.5bb into a pot of 5.5bb, so you need about 27% equity — and very few hands are that poor against a 40-45% range.

That same 27% price against a 16% under the gun range justifies far fewer calls, because the range you are up against is nothing but strong hands. Same price, entirely different decision.

Hands that change identity by seat

The premiums never move. AA, KK, AKs and QQ are opens from every seat, and 72o is a fold from every seat. All the study is in the boundary.

Hand	UTG	HJ	CO	BTN
AQo	Open	Open	Open	Open
KJo	Fold	Mixed	Open	Open
A9o	Fold	Fold	Mixed	Open
87s	Fold	Mixed	Open	Open
Q9s	Fold	Fold	Open	Open
K5s	Fold	Fold	Mixed	Open

Two patterns run through it. Offsuit hands move because domination is a positional problem — the tighter the ranges behind you, the more often your kicker is beaten. Suited hands move because they need to see flops cheaply and in position to cash in their equity.

That makes the job smaller than it looks. Perhaps thirty hands sit on the boundary. Learn those and the rest of the range takes care of itself.

Making it automatic

1. Learn the four opening ranges as shapes, not lists. Suited aces, pairs, suited broadways, then the offsuit broadways, then the connectors and gappers — each seat adds the next block.
2. Drill the boundary hands only. You already know what to do with AA and 93o. Spend the reps on KJo, A9o, K5s and 87s.
3. Name the seat before you look at the cards. The single most common preflop error is playing a hijack range on the button.
4. Review your folds, not your losses. Folding a hand you should have opened costs you money silently, which is why it never gets reviewed.

The interactive preflop charts give you every seat's range to check yourself against, and the solver-graded drills put you in the same spots until the seat registers before the cards do. Guess first, then check — that is what builds the reflex.

Get this one thing right and a large share of your preflop mistakes disappear before the flop is even dealt.