Preflop Poker Charts: When to Play Each Hand

Most players who study preflop charts memorise the grid and stop there. That produces someone who opens the right hands and then has no idea what to do when a chart's assumptions stop holding — which is most hands, at most tables.

This guide is about the layer underneath the grid: what a chart is actually claiming, how to read the parts that look ambiguous, and the specific situations where following it exactly is the losing play.

What a chart is actually telling you

A preflop chart is not a list of good hands. It is the answer to one narrowly specified question:

When the action folds to me in this seat, at this stack depth, against opponents who respond correctly, what should I do with each of the 169 starting hands?

Every part of that sentence matters. Change the seat and the answer changes. Change the stack depth and it changes again. Most importantly, change "the action folds to me" to "someone has already raised" and the chart no longer applies at all — that is a different chart entirely.

This is why so many players feel that charts fail them. They are usually applying an opening chart to a situation that is not an opening.

The grid, and how to read it

Every chart uses the same 13x13 layout. Pocket pairs run down the diagonal from AA to 22. Suited hands sit above the diagonal, offsuit hands below it. Strength radiates outward from the top-left corner.

Two features of the grid confuse people more than the rest.

Mixed cells. A cell that is half one colour and half another means the solver takes each action some fraction of the time — raise 60%, fold 40%. This is not indecision. Playing a hand two ways prevents your opponents from reading your range perfectly, and the solver only ever mixes when the two actions are close to equal in value.

The practical consequence is reassuring: if two actions are nearly equal in EV, picking one costs you almost nothing. Round to the more frequent action. What you must not do is round every mixed hand toward playing — that quietly turns a 24% opening range into a 32% one.

The shape of the boundary. Chart edges are jagged, not smooth. A-5 suited is often in when A-8 suited is out, because A-5 makes wheel straights and nut flushes while A-8 makes second-best hands. Suited connectors appear before offsuit broadways of nominally higher card rank. If a boundary looks arbitrary, there is usually a specific postflop reason behind it.

The general principle behind every jagged edge is the same: a chart ranks hands by how much money they make, not by how strong they look when dealt. Two properties drive that, and neither is card rank.

Nut potential. A hand that can make the best possible hand is worth far more than one that makes a good hand. A-5 suited makes the nut flush; A-8 suited makes a flush that pays off a better one. Their raw strength is similar and their earnings are not.

Playability. How often a hand flops something you can continue with, and how clearly it tells you where you stand. Suited connectors flop draws and made hands that are easy to play. Offsuit broadways flop top pair with a mediocre kicker, which is the hardest hand in poker to play well, because it is strong enough to bet and weak enough to be beaten by everything that calls.

Once you read the grid in those terms, the boundaries stop looking arbitrary and start looking obvious.

Position, restated as a rule

The complete grids for every seat are covered in the starting hand chart by position. The compressed version of the reasoning:

Your opening range widens as you approach the button, for two independent reasons. Fewer players remain behind you, so fewer hands can be dealt that beat yours. And you are more likely to have position after the flop, which raises the value of every marginal hand you hold.

Both effects point the same way, which is why the gradient is so steep — around 15% under the gun to around 45% on the button at 6-max.

The rule to internalise is not the percentages. It is this: if you would not be comfortable playing this hand out of position against the strongest range still to act, do not open it from this seat.

When the action does not fold to you

This is the half of preflop that charts are usually missing, and it is where most preflop money changes hands.

Facing a raise

Your continuing range against an open is much tighter than your own opening range from the same seat, and it is split into three parts rather than two:

• Three-bet for value — hands strong enough to want a bigger pot: QQ+, A-K, and progressively wider the later the opener's seat.
• Three-bet as a bluff — hands just below your calling range that block the opponent's strong hands. Suited aces are the classic choice, because holding an ace makes it less likely they hold A-A or A-K.
• Call — hands that play well in position against the opener's range and lose value by bloating the pot: medium pairs, suited broadways, suited connectors when you are in position.

Notice what is missing: the offsuit broadway hands. K-Q offsuit is a perfectly good cutoff open and a poor call of an early-position raise, because the range that raised from early position dominates it almost every time it makes top pair.

Defending the big blind

The widest range in poker, and the one people play worst. You have already posted your blind, so you are getting a price nobody else at the table gets. Against a 2.5x button open into a pot with your blind already in it, you only need to win a little over a quarter of the time for a call to break even.

That is why correct big blind defence looks reckless if you have never seen it: hands like J-6 suited and K-4 offsuit are genuine calls against a button open. They are not good hands. They are hands getting a price that makes folding worse.

The exact defending ranges by opener position are on the big blind defence ranges page — and they narrow sharply against early-position opens, because the price is the same but the range you are facing is far stronger.

If the arithmetic behind that is unfamiliar, a pot odds calculator will show you the break-even percentage for any bet size in a couple of seconds. Preflop defence is nothing more than that comparison applied to a range instead of a hand.

Facing a three-bet

The most under-studied spot at low stakes, and a reliable source of profit for anyone who studies it. Two failure modes dominate: folding far too much, and calling with hands that cannot continue on most flops.

The rough shape: four-bet your strongest hands and a small number of blockers, call with hands that flop well and have position, and fold everything else without agonising. If you opened from early position, your calling range against a three-bet is genuinely small — that is the cost of opening early, not a mistake in the chart.

When to deviate — and how much

Charts are computed against opponents who play back correctly. Almost nobody at low and mid stakes does. Deviating well is worth more than any amount of extra memorisation, provided you deviate for a stated reason.

They fold too often to steals. Widen the cutoff and button massively. If the blinds fold 70% of the time, a raise is immediately profitable with close to any two cards, regardless of what happens after the flop.

They never fold postflop. Drop the hands whose value is fold equity — offsuit broadways, weak suited kings — and add hands that make strong hands. Suited connectors and small pairs gain a lot of value; bluff-heavy holdings lose most of theirs.

They three-bet constantly. Tighten your early-position opens and stop opening the bottom of your late-position range. Against an opponent who three-bets 15%, your button opening range should shrink noticeably, not stay at 45%.

Stacks are short. Below about 40 big blinds, implied-odds hands stop paying. Small pairs and suited connectors lose value; high-card strength gains it. Below about 20, preflop becomes a raise-or-fold game and the chart is replaced by push-fold arithmetic.

Stacks are deep. Above 200 big blinds, the reverse applies. Suited hands and pairs go up in value, and thin top-pair hands become liabilities because the money left behind is enough to cost you a stack.

The four mistakes worth fixing first

In rough order of how much they cost:

1. Playing the same range from every seat. If your under-the-gun and button frequencies are similar, this is your biggest leak and nothing else comes close.
2. Calling raises with offsuit broadways. They are dominated by exactly the hands that raised, and they make second-best hands that are hard to fold.
3. Over-folding the big blind. Every fold there is giving up equity you have already paid for.
4. Rounding every mixed hand toward playing. It looks like a small liberty on each hand and it inflates your entire range.

Each of those appears in the wider list of the mistakes that cost beginners most, because preflop leaks are the most expensive category of error in the game.

Using the charts

Preflop is the one part of poker that can be genuinely solved and then simply looked up. The grids for all six seats — raise, call and fold for every one of the 169 hands — are on the solver-generated preflop charts page.

Use them as the default. Learn the reasoning underneath so that when the table stops matching the solver's assumptions, you can tell which direction to move, and by how much. That combination — a correct baseline plus a stated reason to leave it — is what separates a player who has memorised a chart from one who understands preflop.