Preflop charts

How do you read a range chart?

Find your two cards on the grid and read the colour. The diagonal running from the top left is pocket pairs, everything above it is suited, and everything below it is offsuit. So AKs sits one cell right of AA, and AKo sits one cell below it.

A cell split between two colours is a mixed decision: the range takes one action part of the time and the other the rest. That is not indecision, it is what stops an observant opponent reading your hand off your action. If you always raised exactly the same hands, anyone paying attention would know your holding within one street.

The percentage under each chart is the share of all 1,326 starting hand combinations the range plays, weighted properly: a pocket pair is six combinations, a suited hand four, an offsuit hand twelve. That weighting matters, because counting cells instead would badly overstate how often you actually hold the suited hands.

How do you play a mixed frequency at the table?

You pick one action and take it. A cell that raises half the time does not mean you raise half a hand. It means that across every time you hold that hand, raising it half of them and folding it the other half is what a strong opponent cannot exploit. On any single occasion you do one or the other.

To choose without leaking a pattern, tie the decision to something you cannot control and your opponent cannot see. The second hand of your watch is the classic trick: top half of the minute, take the first action; bottom half, take the second. The suit of your higher card works too. The point is only that the split is roughly right over time and unreadable in the moment.

And if that feels like too much mid-hand, round to the nearest pure action and move on. A hand that mixes 70% raise is close enough to always raising that taking it every time costs almost nothing. The frequencies are worth the most on the hands split near the middle, and worth rounding away on the ones near the edges. This is exactly the judgement the PlusEV trainer builds: it scores your answer against the solution and shows you which mixes are worth respecting and which to simplify.

Which chart do you need?

Start with the seat you are in, then the action facing you. Opening ranges, the 117 charts above, cover the case where everyone folds to you, which is the most common situation at the table and the one worth learning first. The rest of the library covers what happens once someone has already put money in.

• Raise first in Opening ranges, folded to you 5 spots
• Facing a raise Someone opened before you 15 spots
• vs 3-bet You opened, they 3-bet 15 spots
• vs 4-bet 5-bet, call or fold 15 spots
• vs 4-bet all-in Call or fold for stacks 12 spots
• vs 5-bet all-in The last decision 15 spots
• Cold 4-bet Over an open and a 3-bet 20 spots
• Squeezes Over an open and a caller 20 spots

Do these charts change with stack depth or table size?

Yes, and these are 6-max at 100 big blinds. Shorter stacks push ranges toward raise or fold because there is less room to manoeuvre after the flop, and at 20 big blinds the correct strategy collapses toward shoving or folding outright. A full 9-handed table tightens every seat, because more players act behind you and someone is more likely to have a real hand.

The shape holds throughout. Later seats always open wider, the button is always the widest, and the small blind is always the awkward one. If you learn the 100bb 6-max set and then move games, you are adjusting a range you already understand rather than starting over.

For a full ring or 9-handed game, the adjustment is smaller than most players assume. The three extra seats are all early ones, so the button, cutoff and blinds barely move: the same players still act behind you from those seats. What changes is the front of the table. Under the gun at nine handed has five more opponents left to act than the hijack does here, and the range tightens toward pairs, strong broadways and suited aces. If you play both games, learn the 6-max set and treat the two extra early seats as tighter versions of the under the gun chart rather than as new charts.

How do you use a preflop chart at the table?

Look at it before the hand, not during it. A chart consulted mid-hand costs you tempo and tells observant opponents exactly what you are doing, and online it is against the rules in most rooms while a hand is live.

The workable method is narrow. Pick one seat, keep its chart open for a session, and check yourself after each hand rather than before each decision. You are training recognition, and recognition comes from being corrected often rather than from reading carefully once. Most players try to learn all five openers at once, get nowhere for a fortnight, and conclude charts do not work.

Two habits separate players who get value from charts and players who collect them. The first is deviating on purpose: a chart is the baseline you leave deliberately when the table gives you a reason, never by drift. The second is checking the hands you folded, not only the ones you played. Folds are where the silent leaks live, because nothing in the hand history ever tells you the fold was wrong.

Why do these charts differ from other ones you have seen?

Mostly because of what they solve for. Charts differ on table size, stack depth, opening size and whether antes are in play, and a chart built for 9-handed 40bb tournament play will look nothing like one for 6-max 100bb cash. None of them is wrong; they answer different questions.

These come out of the PlusEV range library, the same data the trainer drills, exported directly rather than redrawn. Where a range has been adjusted by hand away from raw solver output, the adjustment is in the data you are reading, not applied afterwards to the picture.

Quick answers

How wide should you open from UTG?

17.5% of hands, 232 of the 1,326 combinations.

How wide should you open from HJ?

21.6% of hands, 286 of the 1,326 combinations.

How wide should you open from CO?

28.5% of hands, 378 of the 1,326 combinations.

How wide should you open from BTN?

40.5% of hands, 538 of the 1,326 combinations.

How wide should you open from SB?

55.8% of hands, 740 of the 1,326 combinations.