What Is a Preflop Range? A Deep Dive into Poker’s Most Important Concept

In the world of poker, every profitable action, every well-timed bluff, and every masterful value bet can be traced back to a single, critical foundation: your preflop range. This isn’t just about glancing at your two cards and getting a “gut feeling.” A preflop range is a meticulously constructed set of hands you’ve committed to playing from a specific position at the table before the flop is ever dealt.

Many players spend countless hours studying complex postflop scenarios, but the truth is, most of their biggest mistakes were already made. A flawed preflop decision creates a domino effect, leading to difficult, marginal, and often money-losing spots on the flop, turn, and river. Mastering your preflop ranges is the first and most crucial step in transitioning from simply playing your cards to strategically dismantling your opponents.

“As the preflop ranges get more specific, there are going to be textures that are just way better or way worse for them. So you certainly want to think about those preflop ranges. It’s nice to be able to pull them up side by side and see some of the differences in that preflop construction, and then the way that gets executed in terms of strategy.” – Doug Polk

This guide will take a deep dive into this essential topic. We will explore how your position and stack depth fundamentally alter the hands you should play, how modern solvers construct theoretically unbeatable ranges, and most importantly, how to use this knowledge to exploit your opponents and maximize your winnings.

More Than Just Your Hand: Position is King

The most common and costly leak for developing players is playing a hand based solely on its own merit, ignoring their seat at the table. A hand like King-Jack suited feels strong, but opening it from first position is a strategic error, while folding it on the button would be just as bad. Your position relative to the dealer button is the single most important factor in your hand selection.

• Early Position (UTG, UTG+1): The Power of Patience When you’re first or second to act, you are at your most vulnerable. With eight or seven other players yet to act, the probability of at least one of them waking up with a premium hand (like QQ+, AK) is significant. Any hand you choose to play must be able to withstand this pressure.This is why early position ranges are described as linear or “condensed value.” You are playing the absolute top percentage of starting hands. We’re talking about hands like 99+, AQs+, AKo, and perhaps some of the strongest suited broadways like KQs. These hands are robust because they either start with a significant equity advantage (big pairs) or have the potential to make the nutted hand postflop (strong suited aces). Opening a hand like A8s or 77 here is asking for trouble. When you get called or 3-bet, you will often be out of position with a dominated hand or facing an overpair, a situation poker players call “reverse implied odds.”
• Middle Position (MP, Hijack): Carefully Expanding Your Horizons As the action moves around the table, a few players have folded. This small change has a big impact. With fewer opponents left to act, the chance of running into a monster hand decreases. You can now begin to add more hands to your opening range.From middle position and the hijack, you can start to open hands like 77-88, all of your suited aces (A2s+), and a wider array of suited connectors (98s, T9s) and gappers (J9s). Your primary goal is still to play strong hands, but you now have a secondary goal: to steal the blinds. If the more aggressive players in the cutoff and button fold, an open with T9s can often win the pot uncontested, which is a massive victory. You are still playing a mostly linear range, but you are widening it to apply more pressure.
• Late Position (Cutoff, Button): The Seat of Power This is where you make your money in poker. The cutoff and especially the button are the most profitable seats at the table for one simple reason: position. When you act last postflop, you have the invaluable gift of information. You get to see what everyone else does before you decide to check, bet, or raise.This informational advantage allows you to play a dramatically wider range of hands profitably. From the button, a standard opening range can include 40-50% of all starting hands. This includes any pocket pair, almost any suited ace, a vast number of suited connectors and gappers, and even strong offsuit broadways and connectors. You are no longer just trying to have the best hand; you are using the power of position to out-maneuver your opponents after the flop. You can make more profitable bluffs, get thinner value from your made hands, and control the size of the pot. Your range is no longer strictly linear; it’s a merged collection of strong hands, speculative hands, and pure bluffs.

The Critical Impact of Stack Depth

Just as position dictates what you can play, your stack depth dictates how you can play it. A strategy that is brilliant with 150 big blinds would be suicidal with 30.

• Deep Stacks (100bb+): The Art of Implied Odds When stacks are deep, you can afford to invest a small amount preflop for the chance to win a massive pot later. This is the concept of implied odds. A hand like 6s5s or a pocket pair like 44 is an underdog against a hand like AKo. However, if you call a preflop raise and hit a straight, a flush, or a set on the flop, your hand is disguised, and you have the potential to win your opponent’s entire stack. With deep stacks, these speculative hands skyrocket in value. Conversely, hands with poor implied odds, like A7o or K9o, become more dangerous as they tend to make second-best hands that can lose big pots.
• Medium Stacks (40-60bb): The Awkward Hybrid This is a tricky stack depth where you’re not deep enough to have great implied odds, but you’re not short enough for simple push/fold decisions. Your strategy becomes a hybrid. You need to tighten up on the speculative hands (33, 76s) because you don’t have the implied odds to justify calling a large 3-bet. Your focus shifts towards hands with good high-card strength and blocker effects. 3-betting becomes a more powerful tool, not just for value but to deny your opponents the ability to realize their equity.
• Short Stacks (40bb or less): The Primacy of Raw Equity As your stack dwindles, postflop maneuverability becomes a luxury you can’t afford. Your decisions become much more binary: all-in or fold. Here, the concept of raw equity is king. You want hands that perform well in an all-in confrontation. Suited connectors and small pairs lose value, while high-card hands like A9o, KTo, and QJs become premium holdings. The blocker effect of holding an Ace or a King is also immense, as it reduces the probability that your opponent holds a premium hand they can call you with. Your preflop ranges become very mathematical, based on your position and the number of big blinds in your stack.

The Modern Approach: How Solvers Construct Optimal Ranges

“There’s very little variation in how the best players play preflop in no-limit hold’em at this point.” – Ike Haxton

In the past, poker players relied on experience and intuition to build their ranges. Today’s elite players use powerful software known as solvers to study GTO play. A solver is essentially a supercomputer that plays a poker scenario against itself trillions of times to find a perfectly balanced, unexploitable strategy.

Solvers have taught us that optimal preflop ranges are far more nuanced than a simple chart of “play” and “fold” hands. They are defined by two key concepts: range composition and mixed frequencies.

• Range Composition: A solver doesn’t just choose the “best” hands; it chooses a portfolio of hands that work well together.
  • A polarized range consists of the strongest value hands and a selection of bluffs, with the medium-strength hands removed. For example, when 3-betting an early position opener, a GTO strategy might re-raise with QQ+ and AK for value, but also with hands like A5s-A2s. These suited aces act as bluffs that have great blocker effects (making it less likely the opponent has AA or AK) and can make the nut flush. The hands you don’t 3-bet are the medium-strength hands like 88-JJ or AQo, which you might just call with instead.
  • A merged range, as we discussed for the button, contains a continuous blend of strong, medium, and speculative hands.
• Mixed Frequencies: This is perhaps the most crucial GTO concept. A solver will almost never say “always” do something. Instead, it assigns frequencies. It might tell you to open KJs from the hijack 80% of the time and fold it 20% of the time. Why? Because if you are predictable, you are exploitable. By mixing your actions, you keep your opponents guessing. They can never be sure if your raise is for value or a bluff, making it impossible for them to formulate a perfect counter-strategy. While you don’t need to be a robot who can perfectly execute a 20% frequency, understanding the principle—that you should not be robotic and predictable—is what matters.

Beyond GTO: Exploiting Your Opponents

GTO poker provides an unexploitable baseline, but you make the most money by deviating from it to attack your specific opponents’ mistakes. This is exploitative poker.

First, you must identify your opponent’s tendencies. Are they a “Nit” who plays far too tight? Are they a “Calling Station” who never folds? Are they a “Maniac” who bluffs relentlessly? Once you have a profile, you can make targeted adjustments:

• vs. The Nit: Widen your opening ranges from late position to steal their blinds with impunity. When they do play a hand and show aggression, you can comfortably fold your marginal hands because their range is incredibly strong and narrow.
• vs. The Calling Station: Abandon complex bluffs. Your strategy should revolve around value betting. Widen your value range preflop and postflop, and bet for a size they are willing to call. Your 3-bets should be almost exclusively for value with hands you are happy to get all-in.
• vs. The Maniac: Tighten up your opening ranges significantly. Let them do the betting and bloating of the pot for you. Your strategy should shift to bluff-catching. Be prepared to call down with hands like top pair, no kicker, because their range is so wide and full of bluffs.

Advanced players use solvers to craft these exploits through a process called node-locking. They input a GTO simulation but then “lock” a specific action to match an opponent’s leak (e.g., “this player folds to 3-bets 70% of the time”). The solver then recalculates the perfect counter-strategy to that specific flaw, giving you a mathematically proven roadmap to maximum profit.

Conclusion: Your Journey Starts Preflop

Mastering preflop ranges is not a one-time task; it’s an ongoing process of study, application, and refinement. It requires discipline when you’re in early position and aggression when you’re in late position. It demands an understanding of how strategies must shift with stack sizes and a willingness to adapt to the opponents you are facing.

Stop playing your cards and start playing your ranges. The work you do on your preflop game is the single highest return-on-investment you can make in your poker journey. It is the solid foundation upon which every winning session is built.