Texas Hold’em 1 Type of Game The game of Texas Hold’em is a poker game where the patrons play against each other for “the pot” of money on the table. The game does not utilize a player-dealer position. The gambling establishment does not participate in the actual play of the game and has no interest in the outcome of the play. Poker Cheat Sheets 'Cheat sheets' in poker are charts or graphs for new players to glance at while playing or study away from the tables. While poker is a game of incomplete information, the information that is available can be overwhelming at first. The first three cards in Texas Hold'em are called the Flop. These cards are “community cards” meaning everyone will use them in combination with their own hole cards to make the best hand. From the flop on, betting begins with the player to the dealer’s left, who can check or bet. A fourth card is dealt face up onto the board.

The two players to the left of the dealer must post these compulsory “blinds” – so called because they are placed before anyone even sees their cards. The player on the dealer’s immediate left posts the “small blind” and the player one further seat round the table posts the “big blind”, which is usually twice the size of the small.

In the illustration, the dealer is in seat five with the button in front of him. The two seats to his left are “in the blinds”.

Mixed Texas Hold'em: The game switches between rounds of Limit Texas Hold'em and No Limit Texas Hold'em. You can play No Limit Texas Hold'em on PokerStars for free (play money) or for real money. And don’t forget that our free Poker School is always available to help you practice and improve your game. Texas Holdem Poker Hands Cheat Sheet (printable PDF version) Learning poker rules and hand rankings is the first thing you should do, and that can be much easier with the right poker cheat sheet at your disposal. Here you can see the poker hands cheat sheet and the list of best holdings to save it for later use if needed.

After every hand is complete, the dealer button moves clockwise one position around the table, which means that players take turns to be the dealer, the small blind and the big blind.

After the blinds have been posted, all players are dealt two cards face down. These are known as “hole” cards, and can only be seen and used by one player. By the end of the hand, five more “community” cards may have been dealt, face up in the middle of the table, which are available for all players to use.

The first three of the community cards are exposed together (known as the “flop”), then a fourth card (known as the “turn”) is dealt individually, and then a fifth (known as the “river”) is exposed. A betting round separates each deal.

The aim of poker is to make the best five-card hand out of the seven available – two in an individual’s hand and the five community cards.

The Four Betting Rounds

If a hand of poker is played all the way to its conclusion, there will be four betting rounds – or four periods during which players can commit their chips to the pot. A player can also “fold” their cards and leave the action at any time (see below).

A betting round must be concluded satisfactorily before the remaining players see more cards and another betting round begins.

Pre-Flop – The First Round of Betting

The first betting round takes place before the first three community cards (the “flop”) are dealt. This action is described as “pre-flop” and at this stage players are wagering based solely on the strength of their two concealed “hole” cards.

The player sitting to the left of the big blind acts first – a position known as “under the gun”. Players then act in turn, moving clockwise around the table.

You have the following options when it is your turn to act:

• Fold: This means that you no longer want to play the hand, and are throwing your cards away. You no longer have any claim to the money in the pot, even if you paid one of the blinds.
• Call: This means that you want to play the hand by matching the size of the current bet. Pre-flop, this will be at least the size of the big blind, and may be greater if any other player has raised.
• Raise: This means that you want to raise the size of the current bet. If nobody before you has made a raise, you can make a raise yourself.
• If you are sitting in the big blind and no else has raised before you, you have the option to check. This means that you do not wish to commit any more chips to the pot. You can only check pre-flop if you are in the big blind and no one else raised.

Table Of Contents

Are you struggling to figure out what starting hands to play and how poker positions change the way you play preflop? You are not alone.

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This article isn't a poker strategy crash course. Instead of focusing on generic winning poker tips and bankroll management advice like many other training poker sites do, it gives you something different.

It's a collection of advanced poker charts that improves your poker game by showing you how to play preflop. It gives you a clear overview of the starting hands range you should consider through some handy poker hands chart images, PDFs, and Excel files.

Continue reading to learn:

• And lots more

In other words, if you are looking for an in-depth game strategy guide to learn what is the best way to play poker preflop, you'll love this collection of poker range charts.

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Why a Page about Poker Ranges?

All poker players have been there. Short-stacked. Bleeding chips with every orbit while staring at junk hand after junk hand. Feeling their chances of winning the tournament dwindle ever further while their stack continues to shrink.

Finally, they get a halfway decent hand. Nobody has entered the pot.

Is it time to shove?

There's an easy way to find out. Enter poker range charts. These handy tools allow players to see which poker hand ranges to play in preflop scenarios where the pot is unopened and a player plans to shove or fold.

Playing the proper ranges according to preflop charts make it so your play can't be exploited, so memorizing these is the key to short-stacked play.

Read on to learn more and find the accompanied printable poker hand ranges chart as a tool you can study to improve your performance when short-stacked.

What are poker ranges?

For those unfamiliar a poker hand range is simply a set of poker hands that may be held by a player. We try to estimate our opponents' ranges because guessing exact hole cards is a fruitless, nearly impossible exercise in most cases.

For example, if the tightest player you've ever seen reraises you preflop in hold'em, you may estimate their range to be aces and kings only.

On the other hand, if a player who hasn't folded one hand in an hour calls your raise, you may estimate their range to include any two cards in the deck. Of course, most hand ranges will be somewhere in between.

How Do You Calculate Poker Ranges?

Analyzing ranges can be a tricky proposition, and only by learning game theory and playing thousands of hands can a poker player get better at it.

Including some proper proper preflop strategy in your poker training will help you understand what poker hand ranges they'll play.

The more time you spend playing and watching opponents' hands at showdown, the more clues you'll get about their strategy. That will enable you to get more precise estimates of their ranges when playing future hands.

This video from poker pro Jonathan Little explores the concept in a little more depth and tries to answer the question 'how do I think in terms of hand ranges?'

How to Use Preflop Range Charts

Every position at the poker table has a certain range of starting hands that can be profitably shoved at a given stack depth.

Generally, these stack depths are at 20 big blinds or less.

Preflop range charts outline the hands that constitute a winning shoving range.

A player who knows these charts can shove with a positive expected value (+EV) no matter what cards are held by the opponents remaining to act.

Here on PokerNews you find free preflop poker charts for five different stack depths at both six-max tables and nine-handed tables.

Here's how to use them:

1. Figure out how many big blinds you have in your stack.
2. Go to the corresponding chart. If you have a stack that doesn't match one exactly, pick the closest one.
3. Go to the column that corresponds to your seat.
4. Scroll down until you get to the row that corresponds to your hole cards — the chart starts with pairs at the top, then ace-high hands, then king-high and so on.
5. You can shove all of the hands listed there, as well as any hands to the left that were shoved in an earlier seat.

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Poker Ranges Charts

Here are 10 essential poker charts to help your preflop poker game.

They're broken into two categories: full-ring ranges and six-max ranges. Each category features shoving hands for five different stack sizes, raised in increments of three big blinds.

As you'll often have stacks in between these sizes, it may take a small amount of guesswork and intuition to expand or tighten the ranges a bit and get the appropriate strategy.

1. Full Ring Ranges Poker Charts

2. Six-Max Ranges Poker Charts

Use the Printable Poker Charts on Excel!

Want to bring all the poker charts with you? Make a copy of this shared Excel file and download the full collection of our advanced poker charts.

To create your own copy of all the poker charts on this article:

• Click on 'File'
• Then click on 'Create a Copy'
• Done! You can now use all these poker ranges charts to improve your win rate!

These are optimal poker ranges for winning chips if your opponents are calling correctly. Each poker chart should be adjusted depending on reads you can gather when you play cash games or tournament poker.

• If your opponents are calling too wide, shove a little tighter so you're more likely to have the best of it.
• If your opponents aren't calling wide enough, widen your range of hands and shove a few extra hands because you are likely to be able to steal their blinds.

Considerations should also be made for the state of the poker tournament, i.e. proximity to the money bubble, a pay jump, or a final table.

These can heavily influence calling ranges and proper shoving strategy, changing the way you should play if you are using these poker charts to play winning poker.

Some bits of the poker ranges charts may look a bit weird, specifically in regard to suited ace-high hands.

This is because some of the small suited aces perform slightly better against calling ranges than middle aces. At certain stack depths and positions, it's better to shove ace-five suited than ace-seven suited, for example.

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How to memorize poker ranges

Given that there are 169 different hands in Texas hold'em poker, differently sized tables, and slightly different shoving ranges for every stack depth, it's unreasonable to think you'll be able to perfectly memorize an exactly correct shoving strategy.

Furthermore, doing so would probably be counter-productive, as you're better off dedicating your brainpower and efforts elsewhere.

Getting a rough idea of correct preflop poker ranges to shove will allow you to play well with a short stack while still improving your game in other aspects with your remaining study time.

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There's no handy acronym like 'Roy G. Biv' (rainbow colors) or 'PEMDAS' (order of mathematical operations) to help you remember the shoving strategy offered in all the preflop range charts on this page.

And despite what other poker guides and poker training sites say, the purpose of poker charts like these ones is not to have you memorise everything. That's not how you will improve your win rate.

The best way to learn is to make your shoves and then continually check afterward whether it was correct. Eventually, the raising ranges will start to take shape in your memory.

Here are a few poker tips to keep in mind:

• Pairs are great to jam with. If you're under 10 big blinds, you can almost jam with any pair from any position. With such a small stack, waiting for top pairs is not a good idea.
• If your cards are unpaired, it's obviously preferable to have high suited cards.
• Small suited hands lose a lot of value in preflop shoving situations compared to their deep-stacked playability. Many hands wind up unimproved by the river, so the higher cards will win in these spots.
• Still, hands with a high card and low card (something like king-five offsuit) might be favored against something like ten-nine suited in a head-to-head clash, but the latter performs better against opponents' calling hands, so it's preferable to shove with.

• The biggest jumps in shoving range will come the closer you get to the big blind — i.e., the difference between shoving in the first two seats is far less than the difference in shoving between the button and small blind.

  This is because one extra fold represents a much bigger portion of the remaining opponents, meaning the likelihood of running into a big hand has decreased more significantly. So, get comfortable shoving very wide in the small blind and still quite wide from the button and cutoff.

Most Common Preflop Ranges

_{All percentile ranges you see below are taken from pokerhandrange.com}

Top 7%

If you run into a very tight opponent, expect here or she to be opening something like the top 7% of hands from early or even middle position. Only the tightest ranges will play this way.

What does that look like? About as strong as you'd expect:

• 88
• ATs , AQo
• KJs

Top 15%

Opening the top 15% of hands is still quite tight, but allows a bit more play down to the strong offsuit Broadways, most of the suited aces, and all of the suited Broadways.

It's probably close to a 'typical' opening range for a standard live player:

• 66
• A5s , ATo
• K9s , KJo
• Q9s , JTs

Top 35%

If you run into a player who is aggressively trying to steal seemingly every time it's folded to them in late position, their range might be in the top 35% or so of hands, or potentially even wider.

That's going to include a great many suited combos with even just one Broadway, as well as some fairly weak offsuit holdings down to jack-nine:

• 33
• A2s , A5o
• K2s , K8o
• Q4s , Q9o
• J7s , J9o
• T7s
• 97s
• 87s

Top 60%

Only the absolute loosest, most aggressive opposition will play a range this wide, but it certainly does happen.

The top 60% is usually reserved for short-stacked players shoving from the button and small blind, so if you wonder what that range might look like, here it is:

• 22
• Ax
• K2s , K3o
• Q2s , Q5o
• J2s , J7o
• T2s , T7o
• 94s , 97o
• 84s
• 74s
• 64s
• 54s

Additional Readings

Now that you have our starting hands range and you have all the information you need on your Excel printable file, it's time to continue this poker lab experiment with more poker guides.

If you are really committed to playing better poker, here's a list that will help you reach your goals.

• Essential Poker Tips: a complete collection of the most effective poker tips we know. While some might be more beginner-oriented, other tidbits might help also more seasoned players.
• Poker Equity: one of the most popular poker articles ever published in our advanced poker strategy section. This is one of those must-read poker guides you need to go through at least once in your (poker) life.
• Poker Positions: having our printable poker range charts in PDF is not enough to become a winning poker player. You need a lot more — including this guide to poker positions. Learn how every position named at the table and learn how to use everything to your advantage when you fire up your poker software.
• The Best Online Poker Sites: the world-famous and award-winnings PokerNews rankings. If you ever wanted to play a hand of online poker, this is the perfect starting point for you.
• Mobile Poker Sites: some poker software a great on desktop, but how about their mobile apps? Read this one to find out what brands offer the top mobile products in the industry.
• Free Poker Sites: Not all online games cost money. All the sites on this list offer great poker games that will cost you nada.
• Poker Freerolls: want to win real money prizes but don't want to risk your own? play a freeroll! This page gives you access to all the top free poker tournaments happening right now.

_{Additional Note:}

_{The shoving ranges in this article, while available in many forms on different poker resources, were specifically taken from SnapShove. Check out SnapShove for more information about preflop shoving and calling strategy.}