Preflop ranges by position: what to open from every seat

Every preflop range chart you have ever seen is a compressed answer to one question: given where I am sitting and how many players are still to act, which hands make money if I raise? The chart is a lookup table. This piece is the reasoning behind it, because a threshold you understand survives a table you have never played at, and a list you memorised does not.

Why position moves the line at all

Two separate effects push in the same direction, which is why the effect is so large.

Players left to act. When you open under the gun at a nine-handed table, eight players can still wake up with a hand. On the button, two can. Every player behind you is another chance to be raised, another chance to be called by something that has you dominated. The probability that nobody has a real hand behind you rises steeply as seats come off the table, and that probability is most of the reason a steal works at all.

Position after the flop. If you open the button and the big blind calls, you act last on every remaining street. Acting last is worth a great deal: you see what they do before you commit, you realise more of your hand's equity, and you can take free cards and bluff cheaply. Hands that are mediocre but playable — suited connectors, suited gappers, small pairs — are worth far more when you are the one closing the action.

Under the gun you get neither. You are opening into eight players and, if you get called by a blind, you play the hand out of position. So the UTG range is tight not because the hands are bad in the abstract, but because their realised equity in that specific situation is poor.

Naming the seats

Standard order, in the direction the action moves: the small blind and big blind post, then action begins to the left of the big blind.

• UTG — under the gun, first to act preflop.
• UTG+1, MP — the middle seats at a full-ring table.
• LJ — the lojack, two seats before the button. At 6-max this is the first seat to act.
• HJ — the hijack, one before the cutoff.
• CO — the cutoff, directly to the right of the button.
• BTN — the button. Last to act on every postflop street.
• SB — the small blind. Acts first postflop; only the big blind is left to act preflop.
• BB — the big blind. Closes the preflop action, and therefore does not have an "opening range" at all — it has a defending range.

One number defines the range — but which number?

An opening range is usually quoted as a percentage: "open 22% from the hijack". There is a trap in that sentence, and almost every chart falls into it.

The numbers in the tables below are percentages of deals, not of the grid. The interactive chart on the front page shows both at once, live, so you can watch the gap open as you drag.

6-max opening ranges (100bb, no ante)

Six-handed cash is the most common online format, and it is the cleanest place to see the shape. Raise-first-in means nobody has entered the pot before you.

These are round numbers, not solver output to the decimal. Treat them as the shape a solution has, and let the app generate the exact grid for the table size and percentage you actually want.

9-handed opening ranges

Add three players and everything in front of the cutoff tightens hard. These are the defaults Poker Range Calculator ships for a nine-handed table, expressed as the threshold on its hand ranking:

Note what does not change much: the cutoff and button ranges at nine-handed are close to their six-handed versions. That is the point about players left to act — from the button there are two seats behind you whether the table is six-handed or nine-handed. The extra players only cost you when they are in front of you.

The order hands enter a range

If you learn one thing here, learn this. As you move from UTG toward the button, hands join your opening range in a consistent order, and the order is not "by raw strength".

1. Big pairs and big suited broadways open from everywhere. Nothing interesting happens here.
2. Small and medium pocket pairs. They flop a set about one time in eight, and a set is a hand that wins a big pot. They need enough players behind to pay them off — or enough fold equity to win uncontested — so they enter early at 6-max and later at full ring.
3. Suited aces. A5s is opened from seats that fold A9o, which looks wrong until you see why: the suited ace makes the nut flush, makes wheel straights, and holds an ace blocker that makes it less likely anyone behind has one. It has a way to win a big pot. A9o does not, and it is dominated by every offsuit ace that calls it.
4. Suited connectors and one-gappers. Playability. They flop draws, they make disguised hands, and they realise their equity well when you have position. This is why they widen so fast in the cutoff and on the button.
5. Offsuit broadways. KJo, QTo, JTo. Fine hands that are miserable when they get action from an early position, because the hands continuing against them are exactly the hands they lose to.
6. Weak offsuit aces and offsuit kings. Last in, and they are only in at all because from the button you are attacking two blinds who will fold most of the time. Their value is fold equity, almost nothing else.

The rule of thumb that falls out of this: domination is the enemy of offsuit hands, and playability is the friend of suited ones. Suited hands go up in value faster than their raw equity suggests as the range widens, and offsuit hands go up much more slowly.

The small blind is a different problem

Every other seat asks "will the blinds fold?". The small blind asks something harder: you are getting a discount on the pot, only one player is left to act, and if they call you play the entire hand out of position with no chance of ever seeing their action first.

There are two defensible approaches. A raise-or-fold strategy opens somewhere around 35–40% and folds everything else; it is simple and it is what most charts show. Solvers, given a rake model and the option, also limp a wide chunk of hands from the small blind, which builds a different and much more complicated strategy — one where the limping range and the raising range are both defined, and both matter.

Poker Range Calculator's shipped small-blind chart is deliberately the tight, value-only end of that spectrum rather than a steal range, and it says so in the app. A 5% small blind chart is not "the small blind opening range" — it is the set of hands you are happy to raise for value out of position when you have no plan for the rest of the hand. If you are studying the small blind seriously, that is a spot to go to the solver output for, not a chart.

And the big blind does not have an opening range

The big blind never opens: by the time it is your turn, someone has either raised or the pot is being played for one bet. What the big blind has is a defending range, and it is enormous, because you are already in for one blind and the pot is laying you odds. Facing a 2.5x button open you might continue with something like half the deck — most suited hands, most pairs, a lot of offsuit broadways — split between calling and three-betting.

It is the most common leak in a new player's game to defend the big blind like it is an opening range. Different question, different chart.

What legitimately changes these numbers

• Rake. High rake makes marginal hands unprofitable and tightens every range, especially the ones that win small pots. A solve with no rake model will always look looser than a real game justifies.
• Antes. Money in the middle before the cards are dealt makes stealing better. Ante games are wider from late position — noticeably so.
• Stack depth. At 20bb the implied odds that justify suited connectors and small pairs evaporate, and high-card strength matters more. Short stacks want A9o; deep stacks want 76s.
• Who is behind you. A big blind who folds 70% of the time makes every steal better. Two aggressive three-bettors on your left make the bottom of your button range unplayable. This is the deviation the chart cannot make for you.

How to actually learn this

Do not try to memorise five grids. Learn the boundary of each range — the handful of hands that are the last ones in — because everything above the boundary is obvious and everything below it is a fold. There are maybe six hands per seat that you actually have to think about.

Then drill them the way you will meet them: hand first, seat second. "KTo, hijack." "65s, under the gun." Set the app to a seat, look at the edge of the range, and check the hands you are least sure of. Ten minutes of that beats an hour of staring at a chart you are not being tested on.