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Learn GTO

Unit 6

Opening ranges

Paint the whole chart from memory, seat by seat.

2 ideas, then 8 lessons that drill them until the answers stop needing thought. Everything below appears inside the lessons themselves; this page is here so you can read it without playing, or come back to it after.

The grid is every starting hand, once

The rule

Pairs run down the diagonal, suited hands sit above it, offsuit hands below. One hundred and sixty nine boxes, no repeats.

Every hand you can be dealt appears exactly once. Ace king suited is one box, ace king offsuit is another, and the grid is read from the top left, where the strongest hands are, outwards.

The boxes are not equally likely, which matters more than it looks. A pair is six combinations, a suited hand four, an offsuit hand twelve. So the offsuit half of the grid is most of the hands you are actually dealt, even though it takes up the same space as the suited half.

Read more: range, opening range, combos

Ranges have a shape

The rule

Ranges grow outward from the top left corner. If a hand is in the range, the hand above and to the left of it almost always is too.

This is what makes charts learnable instead of memorisable. You are not storing one hundred and sixty nine answers per seat, you are storing a boundary, and boundaries move in one direction as the seat gets later.

The exceptions are real and few. Suited connectors get in ahead of hands technically stronger than them because they make straights and flushes rather than one pair, and one pair is what loses stacks. Small pairs come in for the same reason from the other direction.

Read more: opening range, range

The 8 lessons in this unit

  1. 1Reading the grid7 questions
  2. 2The button opens wide3 questions
  3. 3The cutoff tightens3 questions
  4. 4Early position3 questions
  5. 5The blinds3 questions
  6. 6The hijack3 questions
  7. 7Every seat from memory4 questions
  8. 8Unit review6 questions · review

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