Fewer than three hands in ten reach the river, and fewer than half reach the flop. Preflop, though, you play every single one.
That is the first reason preflop is worth learning first. The second is more practical: preflop is the only part of a hand that repeats. After the flop there are tens of thousands of board textures and every hand is a fresh problem. Preflop there are 169 starting hands, six seats and a handful of spots in front of you — the same problem will come up a few hundred times this month. Only repeating things can be systematised, and only systematised things can be drilled.
This post is the overview for the whole preflop topic on this site: one pass from start to finish, with each section pointing to the post that goes deep on it. Read it in order, or jump straight to whatever you are stuck on.
If the blinds and the betting rounds are still not solid, read what Texas Hold’em is and hand rankings in full first, then come back.
Six stops: three questions | position | ranges | six spots | sizing | seven numbers
There Are Only Three Buttons, but Three Questions Come First
When the action reaches you there are only ever three buttons: fold, call, raise.
Most players look at exactly one thing before pressing: what am I holding. That is the source of every preflop problem, because it is the least important of the three questions.
These are the three to answer, and the order matters:
| Order | Question | Why it sits here |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Where am I sitting? | It will not change for the rest of the hand, and it sets how strict the answers to the other two have to be |
| 2 | What has happened in front of me, and how many players are left behind? | What is in front decides which spot you are in; who is behind decides how much risk you are taking on |
| 3 | What am I holding? | This one only means anything once the first two are answered |
Take K9s. On the button with everyone folding in front, it is a raise. In the under-the-gun seat, it is a fold. The hand did not change and the answer reversed — because the answer to question one did.
Reverse the order (look at the hand, then find a reason) and you have the most common preflop illness there is: you will find a reason to play every hand you are dealt, and then find a number at the end of the month that you would rather not own.
Position: What Prices a Hand Before the Flop
Position means two things at once. Absolute position is the seat you are in (UTG, MP, CO, BTN, SB, BB); relative position is whether you act before or after your opponent this hand (OOP or IP). Both are taken apart in the complete guide to position; here is only what position does before the flop.
Preflop, position does one job: it puts a price on every hand.
Some real numbers. These are the default opening ranges in RushCraft’s preflop trainer — the share of all starting hands worth raising with when nobody has entered the pot in front of you:
| Position | Default opening range | Players left to act |
|---|---|---|
| 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. That factor is not because the late seats get better cards — the deal is random and every one of the six seats is dealt K9s equally often. The difference is how many players are left who can overrule you, and who speaks first after the flop.
So the operating rule for position preflop is one sentence: the earlier you act, the higher the bar. The K9s you folded from UTG is not a bad hand. It is a hand that seat cannot afford.
(The small blind’s 46.9% is the exception, and it is wide for the opposite reason. The small blind speaks first on every street after the flop — it is the worst seat at the table. It is wide only because there is one player to get past. The correct conclusion in that seat is raise or fold; the calling button in the middle is the expensive one.)
Ranges: From "This Hand" to "This Square"
The decision you are actually making preflop is not “is this hand worth playing”. It is “which whole set of hands am I willing to play from this seat, in this spot”. That whole set is your range.
There are 169 distinct starting hands. Draw them as a 13x13 grid and a range is a region you shade in. What this way of thinking buys you is consistency: open K9s from UTG today and you have declared that you open everything stronger than K9s too — including the combinations you did not actually want to play from that seat.
Range charts are not for memorising. They are for checking against. You finish a session, you wonder whether that K5s in the cutoff was really an open, you look at the chart. That is the whole use.
All 15 grids are drawn out square by square in one post: free Texas Hold’em preflop range charts — opening ranges for five positions, plus the big blind’s calling ranges and 3-betting ranges against each of them. Free, no signup, bookmark or screenshot it as you like. If a 13x13 grid is new to you, start with how to read the chart in that post — thirty seconds is enough.
One thing has to be clear before the rest of this post, because every section below depends on it:
A chart says which hands are eligible to be considered. It does not say this hand has to be played that way.
The chart knows two things: where you are sitting and what you were dealt. It cannot see who is behind you, whether your opponent pays off after the flop, or how many chips you have left. Get any one of those three wrong and a hand on the chart becomes a hand to fold. Playing the charts in full puts you above your target numbers — which is not the chart being wrong. It is the chart doing exactly the part of the job it can do.
Six Spots, Six Answers
Preflop looks endlessly variable and is really six spots. The whole table first, then one at a time:
| Spot | Buttons available | Default answer |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Everyone folds, you are first in | raise / fold | Raise or fold. There is no third option |
| 2. Someone opens, you are behind them | 3-bet / call / fold | Fold or 3-bet; calling needs conditions to hold |
| 3. You opened and got 3-bet | 4-bet / call / fold | Usually fold — but folding too often means you opened too wide |
| 4. You are in the big blind facing an open | 3-bet / call / fold | Your price is the best at the table, so defend far wider than elsewhere |
| 5. Someone limped in front of you | raise / call / fold | Raise to isolate. Do not limp along |
| 6. Several players are already in | raise / call / fold | Tighten up, and play the hands that can make big hands |
Spot 1: everyone folds, you are first in
The simplest spot, and the answer is blunt: raise, or fold.
Limping — calling one big blind to enter — has no place here. It gives up two kinds of income at once: you cannot make anybody fold by limping, and you hand the cheap price to everyone behind you. Spot 5 covers why that is expensive from the other side of the table.
In the late seats this spot has its own name: stealing. Everyone has folded, the only two players behind you are the ones forced to put money in, there is 1.5bb sitting in the middle, and nobody has shown any evidence of a hand. You raise, both fold, you take it without seeing a card.
How often you do that is your ATS:
| Position | Target ATS |
|---|---|
| BTN | 43% – 48% |
| SB | 40% – 48% |
| CO | 27% – 30% |
The full arithmetic, what too low and too high each cost you, and how to respond to an opponent’s steal frequency are in what ATS is.
Spot 2: someone opens, you are behind them
This is the most expensive preflop spot, because it is the one where all three buttons are live and it comes up more than any other of those.
The order to think in: first ask whether this is worth a 3-bet, then ask whether it is a fold, and only then consider calling.
Calling comes last for a reason. Calling an open with no money of your own in yet is a cold call, and it carries three costs that apply only while the call is cold: your range is capped from the outset (the good hands went into 3-bets), you invite the players behind you in at a cheap price, and you pay 50% more than the big blind does for the same flop.
That is why it is the only number on the site with a ceiling and no floor: 5% or below, with anything past 6% flagged as a serious leak. The five conditions that make a cold call something other than laziness are in what a cold call is.
On the other side, a 3-bet is the only preflop action that takes the initiative back. The target band is 8% to 12%, and that single figure averages six different spots — from the big blind the value hands worth re-raising against an UTG open are only the top 1.7%, against a button open they are 5.3%. The detail is in what a 3-bet is.
Spot 3: you opened and got 3-bet
The action is back on you, holding a hand you thought was worth raising thirty seconds ago. It has not changed at all. What changed is that somebody disagreed.
The continuing range comes in two pieces. The 4-betting piece does not vary by seat:
4-bet: QQ+, AKs, AKo, A5s (2.9% of all starting hands)
Of those 38 combinations, three of the four hands are the ones that make your pulse jump. A5s is not, and it is in there on purpose. Holding an ace cuts his aces from 6 combinations to 3 and his AK from 16 to 12 — you are not guessing whether he has it, you are reducing how often he can have it — and bluffing with it costs you nothing, because it was sitting in the fold pile anyway. (AJs was not. That hand is already in the calling range, so 4-betting it takes the bluff out of your own assets.)
Take those 4 combinations out and your 4-bet is face up: he knows you hold QQ+ or AK, so the JJ and AQ that should have been hard decisions get folded in a second, and the money only goes in when you are behind. Why the range is shaped this way, and why A5s rather than 87s or AJs, is in what a 4-bet is.
The calling piece narrows the earlier you opened from — because an early-position opening range was already strong, so a smaller share of it can continue.
How often you fold here is fold to 3-bet, target 65% or below, with past 70% flagged as a serious leak. The counter-intuitive part: when it runs high, it is rarely because you are timid. Play the default ranges and a button open folds around 88% of the time — the problem is not the moment you faced the 3-bet, it is the open. The fix is to go back and tighten the opening range, not to start calling. The full derivation, and the call-3-bet side of the spot, are in what fold to 3-bet is.
Spot 4: you are in the big blind facing an open
The big blind is the one seat of the six where your money is already on the table, so its arithmetic is not like anywhere else.
An opponent raises to 2.5bb; you top up 1.5bb to see a pot that already holds 4bb — close to 2.7 to 1. You do not need much of a hand for that to be playable. This is why big blind defence is wider than in any other seat, wide enough to feel wrong next to the instincts you built elsewhere. (How the arithmetic itself works: how to work out pot odds.)
The cost is that you speak first on every street after the flop. So big blind defence is not “it is cheap, so call” — it brackets by the opener’s seat: much tighter against an UTG open, much wider against a button steal. Ten specific ranges are drawn out in the chart post, under big blind calling and big blind 3-betting.
How much you give up here is fold BB to steal (target 55% or below). It has no post of its own yet; the fifth section of the ATS post covers a stretch of it from the opponent-reading side.
Spot 5: someone limped in front of you
Somebody has called one big blind to come in. This is one of the easiest spots at the table to profit from, and most players react by limping along behind them.
A limper usually has two properties: a wide range, and a passive one. Against that, the right action is raise to isolate — push the players behind out and turn it into a heads-up pot where you have position, the initiative, and a range that beats his. Size it up a little from your usual open (next section).
Limping along hands all of that back: the pot did not grow, nobody got knocked out, you have no initiative, and you play a small pot after the flop against three or four opponents.
(The interesting case is a genuinely big hand. Holding aces at a table full of callers, the instinct is to limp and trap — that is how the most profitable hand in poker becomes one of the least, and the reasons are in how to play pocket aces.)
Spot 6: several players are already in
Multiway pots run on different rules from heads-up pots, and they shift in two directions at once.
Tighten these: big offsuit hands, the AJo and KQo type. The more players there are, the faster the value of “I made top pair” falls away — you cannot tell whether you are ahead or outkicked, and there is no second way to win.
These get relatively better: small pairs and suited connectors, the hands that are huge when they hit and easy to release when they miss. More players means a bigger pot, so the implied odds improve, and when they hit there is no guessing.
One opportunity worth remembering: an opener, a cold caller, and players still to act is the best squeeze spot at the table. The opener is wide, the caller is capped, and neither can stand a big re-raise.
Sizing: Three Numbers Cover It
Preflop sizing does not need computing. Three defaults handle nine spots in ten:
| Action | Default size |
|---|---|
| Open | 2.5bb, plus 1bb for each limper in front of you |
| 3-bet | about 3x the open in position, about 4x out of position |
| 4-bet | about 2.2 to 2.5x the 3-bet |
Why is an out-of-position 3-bet larger? Because size buys fold equity. Speaking first on every street after the flop is a disadvantage you have to be compensated for, and the compensation is how often the other player folds right now — the bigger the raise, the more often he does. In position you can go smaller, because playing the flop is not where you lose.
There is only one rule here that genuinely has to be kept, and it matters more than the sizes themselves:
In a given spot, your sizing does not change with your hand strength.
Raising a little more with aces and a little less with 76s is the easiest preflop leak to spot and one of the most expensive — you are turning your hand face up for everyone paying attention. One spot, one size, every hand.
Seven Numbers: The Preflop Health Check
The five sections above are about deciding each hand. This one runs the other way: a few thousand hands later, how do you find out where your preflop actually leaks.
Seven numbers, one table:
| Number | What it measures | Target | Deep dive |
|---|---|---|---|
| VPIP | How often you voluntarily put money in preflop — how wide your range is | 18% – 25% | what VPIP is |
| PFR | How much of that came in as a raise — how aggressive it is | Within 12 of VPIP | same post |
| ATS | How often you open from a late seat with nobody in the pot | BTN 43-48% / SB 40-48% / CO 27-30% | what ATS is |
| 3-bet | How often you re-raise facing exactly one raise | 8% – 12% | what a 3-bet is |
| Fold to 3-bet | How often you fold after opening and facing a re-raise | 65% or below | what fold to 3-bet is |
| Cold call | How often you call an open with no money in yet | 5% or below (no floor) | what a cold call is |
| 4-bet | How often you re-raise facing exactly two raises | No target band | what a 4-bet is |
The last row is not an omission. 4-bet is the one number on the site with no target band, and that is deliberate: the spot arrives 3 to 4 times per 100 hands, the base rate is low, and ten thousand hands in, what you are looking at still spans 6% to 12% — the two ends of that span are two different players. What matters more is that it does not measure the thing that is actually wrong: drop A5s and a pure-value 4-betting range still holds 89% of the skeleton’s combinations, which moves the percentage by about a point. Somebody who only ever 4-bets AA, KK, QQ and AK posts the same number as somebody playing it well. So the use of it is not comparing it to a band. It is opening the 13x13 grid and seeing whether the A5s square has anything in it.
The order you read them in matters: start with the gap between VPIP and PFR, then go to the four spot-specific ones that have bands.
The first two are the overview and the other four are the breakdown. VPIP minus PFR is how often you enter a pot by calling — if that gap is more than 12, do not bother with the rest yet, go and look at your cold call. That is usually where the answer is.
And one thing that matters more than any target band: these numbers need enough hands before they count.
The same sample that lets you bracket will not let you tune. A few hundred opportunities can confirm whether you are doing a thing at all (a cold call reading 15% is a conclusion already, no more data needed); one or two thousand before you call it high or low; tens of thousands before a percentage point or two is worth adjusting. Every post above has a section on how large a sample its own number needs — when something sits outside its band, read that section before you change how you play.
The Five Most Expensive Preflop Mistakes
The six sections above, turned around:
One: limping. It gives up the fold equity and hands the cheap price to everyone behind you. First in means raise or fold, with nothing in between.
Two: ignoring your seat. Playing a hand the same way wherever you are sitting. K9s raises from the button and folds from UTG — what you play is not a hand, it is a seat plus a hand.
Three: treating calling as the default button. What the middle button saves is the thinking, not the cost. You paid, and you still have not decided anything.
Four: sizing that reveals your hand. One spot, one size. No exceptions to this one.
Five: surrendering to 3-bets. A high fold-to-3-bet is not fixed by calling more, it is fixed by tightening the open. The problem is always one step earlier than it looks.
Turning It Into a Reflex
None of this is hard to understand. What is hard is producing it inside two seconds. Two things speed that up:
One: practice mode. RushCraft’s preflop trainer on desktop deals you random spots — your seat, what happened in front of you, what you hold — you press a button and it tells you the answer immediately. The range charts above are its defaults. Opening, big blind defence and cold calling each have their own drill.
Two: going back over hands you actually played. This is more useful than drilling, because it catches the habits you have rather than the ones you think you have. Export your hand history from PokerCraft first (six steps and six screenshots: downloading your Natural8 hand history); import it into RushCraft and all seven numbers above are already computed, with the six that have bands also telling you how far outside you are and which hands got you there.
When a diagnostic card flags something it gives you two buttons: one pulls up the hands responsible, the other opens the matching drill. Press the first one — ten hands is usually enough to see the pattern, and that beats staring at a percentage.
Preflop comes down to one sentence: it is the street where you have the least information and make the most decisions.
- Order: seat first, spot second, hand last. Reversed, it becomes a machine for justifying bad hands
- Position: 11.2% from UTG to 46.9% on the button, a factor of four. Same hand, different seat, opposite answer
- Ranges: a chart says what is eligible, not what is mandatory. Played in full it puts you above your targets
- The six spots: first in, raise or fold; facing an open, ask 3-bet then fold; folding too much to 3-bets means fixing the open; the big blind is cheapest so it defends widest; isolate limpers; multiway, tighten the offsuit hands and loosen the ones that make big hands
- Sizing: 2.5bb / 3x or 4x / 2.2x. Never varying with hand strength
- The seven numbers: the VPIP-PFR gap first, then the four spot-specific ones that have bands. The seventh, 4-bet, has none — it asks you to look at a range, not to hit a percentage. And bracket before you tune
Postflop skill takes a long time to build. Preflop does not. It is the one part of the game you can fix tonight and have working tomorrow.