In poker, there are times when a specific hand range gives you an advantage. The percentage of poker hands to play is discussed in this article. When you first start playing poker, one of the first things you learn is that you should only play a certain number of hands. But how do you know how many people to invite?
In this article, we’ll look at what percentage of poker hands you should play.
Percentage of Ideal Poker Hands
The percentage of hands you should play in poker depends on several factors. These variables include your table position, the size of your stack, and the type of opponents you’re playing against. When you look at a hand, you should consider all of these factors before deciding whether or not to play your starting hands.
Your relative position at the table is arguably the most important factor to consider when making your decision, as it influences whether you’ll be in or out of position for the rest of the hand, as well as the ranges that your opponents will be playing back at you with.
The earlier you are in the game, the tighter your opening range should be, and as you move around the table, you should be adding hands to these initial early position ranges. You should be playing 12-14% of hands from an early position at a 9-handed table. This range will consist of pocket pairs, strong Ax hands, and strong broadway hands like KQ.
As we move closer to the button, we can add more suited connectors and suited Ax hands, and as we move away from it, we can add more offsuit hands. Because there are fewer players to act behind us who can defend against our raise as we get closer to the button, we can widen our ranges.
When playing hands, our stack size is important because certain types of hands benefit from different stack sizes. Deeper stacks benefit hands that have the potential to make very strong hands, such as pocket pairs (flop a set) and suited connectors (make straights/flushes), because we won’t make our hand very often, but when we do, we have the potential to win a large pot.
Shallower stacks benefit hands like strong Ax and broadway hands more because they frequently make good top pair hands that are good for winning smaller pots.
Percentage of Poker Hands to Play Based on Stack Sizes
The size of your stack should influence the types of hands you play, and thus the percentage of hands you play:
Poker Hand Percentage of 10-15BB
When playing post-flop, the shorter your stack, the tighter you should play because you’re more likely to be all-in. A tight play with a small stack is an important poker strategy for both beginners and experienced players. This means you should play hands that are likely to make strong hands or flop with a lot of equity.
We want to play powerful Ax hands, big pocket pairs, and broadway hands. If we have smaller pocket pairs, we should go all-in before the flop because they have good poker equity against your opponent’s range but do not flop well.
With a stack size this small, we don’t want to open more than 18% of the time.
Poker Hand Percentage 15-40BB
We have a lot more breathing room when we have 15-40bb, especially as we get closer to 40bb. This means we can begin to open a broader range of hands, knowing that we won’t always be all-in post-flop.
Instead of going all-in pre-flop, we can raise with a wider range of pocket pairs and weaker broadway/Ax hands. These broadway/Ax hands are played because they make a lot of good top pair hands, which is enough to get in the majority of your stack with post-flop at these stack depths.
Poker Hand Percentage 40-70BB
We can begin to open up more at this stack depth. We can open almost any pocket pair, any suited Ax hand, and most broadway hands. The exact range we can open will depend on our position, but we can begin to steal more aggressively knowing that we are not risking a large percentage of our stack.
Hands like suited connectors gain value from all positions as we get deeper enough that our implied odds of making our hand make it worthwhile to invest. A Texas Holdem odds calculator can help you determine the value of specific hands for these stacks.
Percentage of 70+BB poker hands
When we have 70 or more bb, we can play a wide variety of hands, especially from late position. This is because stealing the blinds/antes becomes a very cheap prospect for our stack as our stack size increases, and our implied odds from playing different parts of the deck increase as our stack size increases.
Other hands, such as weak Ax and weak Broadway, lose value as we get deeper stacked because we have more money to lose if we make a second-best hand. These hands are still playable, but you should be cautious if the pot grows large.
Positional Poker Hand Percentage
Another factor that will influence how many hands we should play is our table position.
Poker Hand Percentage in Early Position
The earlier we get to the table, the fewer hands we should play. There are two reasons for this. To begin with, we have the greatest number of players left to act behind us who can defend against our raise from an early position, which means our hand must be strong.
Second, we’re very likely to be out of position when playing post-flop, which puts us at a disadvantage and necessitates a stronger-than-average hand. Only our strongest hands, such as AA/KK/QQ/JJ/TT/AK/AQ, and a few other strong pairs/broadway hands, should be played. You don’t want to be dealt non-face cards and end up with one of the worst possible hands in this situation.
Percentage of Poker Hands in the Middle Position
We can start to open up a little more in the middle position because there aren’t as many players to act behind us. However, the possibility of having to play out of position is still relatively high, so we can’t go overboard with the number of hands we play.
We should raise all of the hands we raised earlier, plus some more, such as 66/55/44/98 suited/87 suited. As we get closer to the button, our chances of stealing increase, as does the range of hands we can play and the range of hands our opponent can defend with.
This is why playing these weaker hands from the middle position is profitable because we know our opponent will defend with a narrower range than if we raised from the early position.
Poker Hand Percentage in Late Position
When playing in late positions, we want to be raising our widest range. There are only two players left to act from the button, so our chances of winning the blinds/antes with a raise are very good. Not only that, but we’re guaranteed to be in position post-flop if we start from the button, giving us an advantage. We see a similar benefit from the cutoff and hijack, albeit not to the same extent.
To ensure that we maximize this advantage, we raise a wide range – from around 25% from the hijack to more than 50% from the button. This range will include the majority of Ax and Kx hands, as well as a large number of suitable connectors/broadway hands.
Changing the Percentage of Your Poker Hands
The percentage of hands you play should also be influenced by your opponents’ playing styles, as some are easily exploited by others. If your opponents are playing extremely tight preflop, we want to play extremely loose to win the blinds/antes the majority of the time.
This means that instead of only playing a wide range from the button/cutoff, we should be raising that wide range from a much wider range of positions in order to best capitalize on our opponent’s mistakes. However, we must ensure that these are genuine mistakes made by our opponent and not a lucky/unlucky run of cards. Seeing a mistake and exploiting it is a sound poker strategy.
It’s common for other players to assume that if a player has a string of good cards in a row, they’re playing too wide – especially if those hands don’t make it to showdown. It’s worth paying attention to your opponents to see if they’re the type of player who plays a wide range the majority of the time, or if this recent increase in VPIP is simply the result of some lucky hands.
Knowing how to detect this difference at the table will save you from making a costly error based on your “read” on how your opponent was playing.
When deciding what percentage of hands to play in poker, there are several factors to consider, and good players will go over each of these before making their decision. Profiting from poker games can be accomplished by playing the appropriate percentage of poker hands.
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