1️⃣ Position is a big advantage for the BTN, so stay cautious with your calls.
2️⃣ Avoid bluff 3-bets. Recreational players call too often for them to be profitable.
3️⃣ Prefer value 3-bet shoves. They punish loose calls and maximize your EV.
4️⃣ Pay attention to open sizings. The bigger the raise, the stronger the hand likely is — tighten your range accordingly.
5️⃣ Don’t overcomplicate things. Keep it simple: call a good chunk of hands, shove the best ones, and fold the rest.
Even against recreational players, the BB vs BTN open spot is structurally tough. You’re forced to invest 1 bb every hand and play out of position against a generally solid range.
Theoretical winrates (GTO vs GTO) — i.e., when both players play perfectly — look like this:
➡️ Even when playing perfectly, you still lose money.
We’ve already analyzed BTN open ranges in the following strategic guides: SB vs BTN open and BB vs BTN open + call, but here’s a quick refresher.
Recreational players tend to open slightly less than GTO, but with a similar structure:
Ranges are fairly similar, though the core of the recreational range tends to be slightly stronger.
Even against a recreational player, being out of position is a huge disadvantage.
Calling hands like Q2o, K3o, or T6o puts you in awkward, often losing spots postflop.
Use your tracker to check your BB/100 winrate for “borderline” hands — the ones you often hesitate to call or fold (e.g. K4o, J7o, J6o...).
→ Rule of thumb: for any hand with EV lower than -100bb/100, folding is better than calling.
That means you’re losing more money trying to play the hand than you would just folding it every time.
Our ranges are designed to counter a standard 2 bb open from BTN.
However, recs often use non-standard sizings.
→ In most cases, their open sizing correlates with hand strength — the bigger the raise (2.5x, 3x, 4x+), the stronger their hand usually is.
Here are the average recreational open ranges by sizing (2x, 2–3x, 3x+):
You don’t need to study every range in detail — just note the general trend:The bigger the sizing, the stronger the range.
Note: That doesn’t mean you should fold everything vs a 3x open. There are still plenty of medium-strong hands in their range.
But when you're unsure about whether to call or fold a marginal combo, remember:
There’s no clear line.
Between a clear call (like A8s) and an obvious fold (like 72o), there’s a wide neutral EV zone.
EV graph of calling from BB vs BTN open (25 bb deep)
Recreational players tend to call too much after they’ve invested preflop.
So your bluffs will not get through as often as they should.
A 3-bet shove directly exploits overly loose calls from recs.
It’s simple, efficient, and prevents tricky postflop spots out of position.
With your strong hands (AT+, 55+, KQo...), you’ll maximize EV by shoving rather than slowplaying or doing a non-all-in 3-bet.
Call rate of recreational players vs BB 3-bet shove:
As you can see, they call way more than they should versus your shoves from the BB.
