“Why do I always lose with AJo?” “I’ve been bad-beaten all night.”

On a losing night, luck is the easiest thing to blame. But lay out a stretch of sessions and the reason beginners lose is usually very consistent, and it has nothing to do with luck: they play too many hands, and they play roughly the same hands wherever they are sitting.

The previous two posts covered how the seats are ordered and why speaking later is better. This one connects position to the most practical question there is: should I play this hand?

1. The Most Expensive Beginner Habit: Wanting to See Every Hand

You get A7o and want to play it, because it has an ace; you get JTs and want to play it, because suited connectors “have potential”; you get 68o and still want to play it, because “it might make two pair”.

Each hand on its own has a reason. Every extra hand you play that is not good enough is one more time you hold the second-best hand after the flop and pay the player who holds the best one. 68o really can make two pair, but it does so far less often than you imagine, and before it does you will already have paid your opponents with it several times. You may think the hand you do win will make it all back — but if you actually tally it up, the total usually comes out as a loss.

There is one number that shows how many hands you really play, and that is VPIP: how often you voluntarily put money in the pot before the flop. At six-max the healthy band is roughly 18% to 25%; 35% and above is the “I want to see every hand” type (see what VPIP is).

2. A Bad Seat Calls for a Stronger Hand

The previous two posts were about the advantage position gives you. Turn that around: sitting in a bad seat and playing a weaker hand stacks two disadvantages on top of each other.

Take a very common hand. You are under the gun with A6o, you figure an ace should be good enough, and you raise to 2.5bb. Everyone folds except the button, who calls with A9o.

The flop is A♠ J♦ 4♣, the turn 8♥, the river 2♠. No flush, no straight, and you have a pair of aces. It looks strong, so you bet every street, and your opponent calls every time.

At showdown you both have a pair of aces, but his kicker is a 9 and yours is a 6 — you lose, and the pot is not small — you built it yourself. The more serious mistake in this hand was choosing the wrong hand to enter with before the flop. What A6o fears most is running into a bigger ace, and hands like this are most expensive exactly when they hit top pair, because that is when they are hardest to let go.

Look at it from the other side: if the only offsuit aces you play under the gun are AJo and better, this kind of spot — outkicked by a bigger ace — comes up far less often, because your ace is already the bigger one. That is why ranges exist: decide in advance which hands you play from this seat, and a lot of losing spots are avoided before the flop.

There is an even more common ending: you raise A6o to 2.5bb under the gun, and someone behind re-raises to 7.5bb. A6o cannot stand up to that raise, so you fold and simply give up the chips you put in at the start.

Both endings come from the same thing: the earlier you speak, the more players behind you have yet to act. Under the gun there are five of them, and the chance that one holds a bigger ace, or a hand worth re-raising with, is far higher than when you are on the button. So in the worse seats, you enter the pot with stronger hands.

3. Ranges: A “Which Hands Can I Play” Chart for Every Seat

“Play stronger hands from worse seats” sounds sensible, but at the table, how strong is stronger? Does A6o count? What about K9s?

There is a term for exactly this — a range: the set of hands you decide to play from a given seat.

Grouped together, the two-card starting hands in Hold’em come to 169 kinds, which can be laid out as a 13x13 grid. A range is a block you mark out on that grid: inside the block you play, outside it you fold. And a range is not one chart that everyone uses, it is one chart per seat.

These are the default opening ranges in RushCraft’s preflop trainer — when everyone in front has folded and you are the first to enter the pot, the share of all starting hands worth raising with:

Position Default opening range Players still to act behind
UTG 11.2% 5
MP 18.9% 4
CO 29.1% 3
BTN 46.9% 2
SB 46.9% 1

From 11.2% to 46.9% is a factor of four. The A6o from earlier is outside the under-the-gun range and inside the button range, and so is K9s. The cards did not change; what is different is how many players are left behind you and who speaks first after the flop. The hands you fold under the gun are not bad hands. They are hands that seat cannot afford.

The small blind’s 46.9% is a special case: it is wide because there is only the big blind left to get past, not because the seat is good — after the flop the small blind is out of position against anyone. The big blind is a different angle again: it already has money on the table, so its defending range against an open is very wide. Each of those seats has a post of its own: the Small Blind (SB) and the Big Blind (BB).

4. What a Range Is For: A Decent Answer to Start From

A range chart is not the perfect answer. Its purpose is to give you an answer that is decent and that you can practise against.

The most common thing beginners do at the table is invent a reason for each hand on the spot: “it has an ace, so it should be playable”, “it’s suited, it might hit”. With a range, that question becomes a lookup: is this hand inside the range for this seat? If it is, raise; if not, fold. Once the standard is fixed, you can practise systematically, and you can see where you went wrong.

Every cell of the opening ranges for the five positions is drawn in the free Texas Hold’em preflop range charts. If it is your first time looking at a 13x13 grid, start with that post’s how to read the chart.

The chart only knows where you are sitting and what you were dealt. It cannot see who is sitting behind you, whether your opponents pay off, or how many chips you have left. Adjusting your range to your opponents, and playing wider when the spot is right, is the advanced lesson that comes after this one. Get the chart’s answers solid first; then think about when to depart from them.

5. How to Start Practising

Understanding position and ranges is not hard. Doing it at the table in two seconds is. Two ways to get there:

First, drill opening until it is a reflex. The preflop range trainer is free online practice: each question gives you a position and a hand, everyone in front has folded, and you only have to answer open or fold. The same hand gets a different answer from a different seat, and a few rounds of drills give you more feel than several readings.

Second, look back at hands you have actually played. Split your hand history by position and see how different the number of hands you play under the gun and on the button really is. If they are about the same, that is the leak this post is about. That is exactly what RushCraft does: it splits your hands by position, starting hand and line of action, and lets the numbers speak for themselves.

If you remember only one thing, remember this: what your hand is worth depends on the position you are dealt it in.

Next you can get to know the six seats one at a time, starting with Under the Gun (UTG), the first seat to speak before the flop. For a fuller map of preflop play (facing a raise, getting 3-bet, bet sizing), see the complete guide to preflop play.