Poker charts

the chart

If you learn one, learn this one.

You are in a middle seat at a nine handed table with 100 big blinds. Everyone before you has folded. Orange means raise. Green means the hand is worth continuing with for one raise if somebody in front of you has already made it, but not worth opening yourself. Everything grey goes in the muck, and that is most of the grid.

Middle position, nine handed, 100 big blinds

Raise these hands when nobody has raised yet. Call the green ones for a single raise, fold the rest.

Middle position, nine handed, 100 big blinds. Raise these hands when nobody has raised yet. Call the green ones for a single raise, fold the rest. Suited hands sit above the diagonal, pairs on it, offsuit hands below it. R is raise, C is call, F is fold.
Higher card	A	K	Q	J	T	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2
A	AA R	AKs R	AQs R	AJs R	ATs R	A9s R	A8s C	A7s C	A6s C	A5s C	A4s C	A3s C	A2s C
K	AKo R	KK R	KQs R	KJs R	KTs R	K9s C	K8s F	K7s F	K6s F	K5s F	K4s F	K3s F	K2s F
Q	AQo R	KQo R	QQ R	QJs R	QTs R	Q9s C	Q8s F	Q7s F	Q6s F	Q5s F	Q4s F	Q3s F	Q2s F
J	AJo R	KJo C	QJo C	JJ R	JTs R	J9s C	J8s F	J7s F	J6s F	J5s F	J4s F	J3s F	J2s F
T	ATo C	KTo F	QTo F	JTo F	TT R	T9s C	T8s F	T7s F	T6s F	T5s F	T4s F	T3s F	T2s F
9	A9o F	K9o F	Q9o F	J9o F	T9o F	99 R	98s C	97s F	96s F	95s F	94s F	93s F	92s F
8	A8o F	K8o F	Q8o F	J8o F	T8o F	98o F	88 R	87s F	86s F	85s F	84s F	83s F	82s F
7	A7o F	K7o F	Q7o F	J7o F	T7o F	97o F	87o F	77 R	76s F	75s F	74s F	73s F	72s F
6	A6o F	K6o F	Q6o F	J6o F	T6o F	96o F	86o F	76o F	66 R	65s F	64s F	63s F	62s F
5	A5o F	K5o F	Q5o F	J5o F	T5o F	95o F	85o F	75o F	65o F	55 C	54s F	53s F	52s F
4	A4o F	K4o F	Q4o F	J4o F	T4o F	94o F	84o F	74o F	64o F	54o F	44 C	43s F	42s F
3	A3o F	K3o F	Q3o F	J3o F	T3o F	93o F	83o F	73o F	63o F	53o F	43o F	33 C	32s F
2	A2o F	K2o F	Q2o F	J2o F	T2o F	92o F	82o F	72o F	62o F	52o F	42o F	32o F	22 C

R Raise
C Call one raise
F Fold

Counted out of the 1,326 exact combinations in the deck, the orange block is 11.0% of all hands and the green block another 8.1%. Together that is 19.2%, so roughly four out of five hands you are dealt in this seat are folds. That number surprises people more than any individual cell does.

Reading a cell: your higher card picks the row, your lower card picks the column, and the suits decide which side of the diagonal you land on. is AKs, above the diagonal. is AKo, below it. Both are a raise here, but they are not the same hand and the chart keeps them apart on purpose.

where these ranges come from

Rules of thumb, and we will say which parts are soft.

These are conventional opening ranges: the ones standard poker literature and the widely circulated charts have agreed on for years, rounded to whole hands so a grid stays readable. They are not solver output, and this page will not dress them up as such. A solver answers a narrower question than a chart does, its answer moves with stack depth and bet size, and it mixes actions on the same hand instead of picking one.

What is exact here is the arithmetic. Every percentage on this page is counted from the grid itself: six combinations per pair, four per suited hand, twelve per offsuit hand, 1,326 in total. Nothing is copied from somewhere else and no number appears that the chart cannot produce.

The soft parts are the edges. Small pairs, weak suited aces and hands like T9s sit right on the line between open and fold, and sources genuinely disagree about them. Move one of those cells either way and you change your opening frequency by well under a percentage point. The cells in the corner of the grid are not in dispute at all.

what a chart assumes you know

Every cell above assumes two things. The first is that you know which hand beats which, because a chart that says raise is useless if you cannot tell at showdown whether you won. That order is on the page with all ten poker hands from best to worst, including how often each one shows up.

The second is that you know when the decision happens. Charts cover the betting round before the flop, which is the first of four. If the words preflop, turn and river are not yet automatic, read how a hand of Texas Hold'em is dealt and bet first, or start one level up with the rules that hold in every poker variant.

After that, the chart above splits three ways. A preflop chart for each seat at the table replaces the single grid with five, because the seat you are in changes the answer more than any other factor. The starting hands chart goes the other way and ranks all 169 hands by strength, with the arrival frequency of each one. And the range charts cover the situation this page skipped: what to do when the raise has already happened and you are the one deciding whether to call it.

pick a chart

Preflop chart

One chart per seat at the table

The same question asked five times, once for every position. Under the gun you open a fraction of your hands; on the button you open close to half of them.

Starting hands chart

All 169 hands, sorted by what they are worth

Which of the hands you can be dealt are worth playing at all, how often each one arrives, and why suited matters less than most beginners think.

Range charts

What to do when someone has already raised

Charts stop being a list of hands and start being a range: a set of holdings with a percentage attached, which is how the rest of poker strategy is written.

Poker odds

The numbers a chart leaves out

How often you are dealt a pair, what the flop does to the hand you started with, and how often a flush draw actually gets there, each figure counted from the deck instead of quoted.

Keep the grid open in one tab and play hands in another. The moment you have to find your own cell under a little time pressure, the shape of the thing sticks, and after twenty hands you will stop looking.

Deal a hand at the practice table

chart questions

What is a poker chart?

A grid of all 169 starting hands in Texas Hold'em with an action attached to each one. The grid is 13 by 13: pairs run down the diagonal, suited hands sit above it, offsuit hands below it. Colour and letter tell you whether the recommended action is raise, call or fold in one specific situation.

How do you read a 13 by 13 poker chart?

Find the higher of your two cards in the left column and the lower one along the top row. If your cards share a suit, read the cell above the diagonal; if they do not, read the cell below it. Pairs are on the diagonal itself. The cell tells you the action for that hand in the situation named above the chart.

Why are there 169 hands and not 1,326?

There are 1,326 exact two card combinations in a 52 card deck, but many of them play identically. Ace of hearts with king of hearts is the same hand as ace of spades with king of spades, so all four suited ace king combinations collapse into one cell. That leaves 169 hand types: 13 pairs, 78 suited and 78 offsuit.

Do poker charts actually work?

They work for the decision they cover, which is the first one: what to do with your two cards before the flop. That decision repeats every hand and is the easiest place to stop losing money by accident. They do not tell you what to do on the flop, they do not adjust to the player who keeps three betting you, and following one blindly is a pattern that a decent opponent will notice.

Are these charts based on a solver?

No. They are the common rules of thumb: ranges close to what standard poker literature and widely published charts have recommended for years, rounded to whole hands so they are readable. Solver output disagrees with them at the edges, changes with stack depth and bet size, and is not one fixed grid. Where a hand is genuinely borderline, this site says so instead of picking a side.

Poker charts.