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To win sustainably at poker, the preflop is essential. Imagine building a house 🏚️ without foundations: that’s what an approximate preflop game represents.
<span class="explanation_section">👉 Our mission: To give you ready-to-use preflop ranges to transform the preflop into a strategic weapon.</span>
❌ Avoid costly traps: A bad preflop decision (e.g., a too-wide call in the SB) forces you to play complicated and losing spots postflop.
📈 Maximize the invisible EV: Optimized ranges generate profit even without going to showdown (e.g., making opponents fold with a well-timed 3-bet all-in in the right situations).
😡 Avoid tilting due to uncertainty: Knowing that your decisions are mathematically solid reduces the frustration of bad beats.
🤔 Let’s now see how these famous preflop range charts work.
Each table gives you the ideal preflop game strategy for each pair of cards that you can receive.
For example, let's look at the range table of The Big Blind (BB) versus an All-in Small Blind (SB) between 18 and 25bb Heads-up (2 players at the table).
This corresponds to the following situation:
And here it is the corresponding preflop range chart (from Poker Sciences Spin Charts):
With this table, for example, you can see that when you are between 18 and 25bb and you’re in the BB facing a shove from the SB, you should call with only a minority of hands. (in this case only very good hands). All other hands should folded.
“o” and “s” after the hand name, like AKO Or 64S for example, means that the box relates to:
To make things even clearer, let's take two examples:
Poker Sciences Spin Charts feature 293 preflop charts which may seem daunting 😨.
But thanks to our explanations, you really understand wherefore every decision is optimal. No other site offers this.
Instead of simply remembering these charts by heart (which is impossible) you have access to a general analysis of each spot, the typical behavior of your opponents, their mistakes, how to exploit them and much more.
Result: you memorize much faster and you really understand your actions rather than doing them robotically 🤖.
🤩 Ok, great! But who is this product for?
The Spin & Go formats, such as Expresso and Spin & Gold, are dynamic and fast-paced, played in 3-max and then heads-up (HU), meaning with three and then two players at the table.
With small stacks, typically between 6bb and 25bb, players are forced to make quick and precise decisions. This format, therefore, requires effective preflop strategies to maximize profits.
<span class="explanation_section">📈 It’s estimated, thanks to solvers, that between 70% and 80% of profits in Spin come from preflop play. This shows just how crucial preflop play is in this format.</span>
Moreover, Spin is Poker Sciences' specialty, which is why the Poker Sciences Spin Charts and Push or Call Ranges are specifically designed for Spin players (Expresso, Spin & Gold, Spin & Go, etc.).
For MTT and Cash-Game players, Poker Sciences will likely offer products for these formats in the future, but that’s not the case just yet.
The text above 👆 explains 95% of what you need to know about preflop range charts. But if you’d like to dive a bit deeper, here’s more information that might interest you.
GTO (Game Theory Optimal) is a strategy based on game theory that aims to make your play unexploitable by balancing your decisions between bluffs and strong hands, regardless of your opponent.
Instead of trying to guess your opponent’s play, GTO allows you to adopt a mathematically optimal (almost "robotic") approach that prevents you from being exploited and ensures long-term profits.
<span class="explanation_section">🤖 The vast majority of preflop range charts available online are based on a GTO approach.</span>
There’s sometimes a debate about the truly "perfect" nature of GTO (Game Theory Optimal). We’ve intentionally placed the word "perfect" in quotation marks, because in reality, there’s a more effective strategy than GTO for exploiting opponents' mistakes: Exploitative play.
<span class="explanation_section">⚖️ GTO is a "perfect" game in the mathematical sense: It’s a perfectly balanced game that prevents you from being exploited. But often, deviating from this "perfection" to more directly exploit your opponents’ mistakes leads to more profits.</span>
Indeed, when you play exploitatively, you intentionally deviate from the purely GTO model in order to take advantage of your opponents' weaknesses (especially recreational players).
<span class="explanation_section">➡️ In practice, it’s advised to play a more "GTO" strategy against very good players (the top 5% of players you’ll encounter at your tables) and to adopt an exploitative style against "fish" who make many mistakes (about 95% of your opponents in Spin).</span>
For each preflop range chart in Poker Sciences Spin Charts, you have two versions:
1. Vs Reg (GTO): For facing competent players, close to GTO (5% of your opponents in Spin).
2. Vs Fish (Exploitant): To maximize your EV against players who make many mistakes (95% of your opponents in Spin).
By combining these two approaches, you’ll always be able to adapt to any opponent and achieve the highest possible profit at the table.
<span class="explanation_section">👉 For beginner or intermediate players, we recommend focusing initially on the "vs Fish" charts, as they are more than sufficient to be profitable in Spin.</span>
In Poker Sciences Spin Charts, the GTO play is symbolized by a robot, and the exploitative play by a purple devil.
And finally, for the most courageous who want to dive even deeper, here’s how we created our preflop range charts, particularly the exploitative charts 👇
Note that it's absolutely not necessary to understand everything written below to fully benefit from the Poker Sciences Spin Charts.