1️⃣ Recreational players' limp range is stronger and less polarized than GTO
→ They fold too many weak hands and open-raise the strongest ones → Their limp range is “flat,” centered around medium-strength hands
2️⃣ ISO shove is often the best exploitative response
→ It avoids postflop spots OOP and punishes overly loose calls (A2o, KTo, etc.)
→ Use your best hands: Ax, pocket pairs, Kx (from 10bb), Qx (from ~8bb)
3️⃣ Non-all-in ISO is reserved for strong hands that play well postflop
→ Offsuit broadways, premium hands
→ Never bluff: recreational players call too much and don’t punish your imbalances
4️⃣ Below 10bb, two exploitative strategies depending on your profile:
When the player in Small Blind (SB) limps, that means — as you know — they just complete the Big Blind without raising.
In theory (GTO), SB should enter the pot with almost their entire range — either by limping or raising.
But in practice, recreational players fold far more than they should.
Let’s take a closer look:
Fold percentage in SB – Heads-Up:
Observation: Above 12bb, recreational limp ranges are filtered — They contain fewer weak hands than they should.
While GTO recommends limping many Ax and broadways around 10–14bb, recreational players prefer to open-raise them.
➡ Result: Their limp range is less polarized than GTO’s
It has less trash (they folded it), and fewer strong hands (they often open-raised them)
When SB limps, ISO shove is often the first exploitative adjustment to make, especially against recreational players who:
If you raise non-all-in and SB calls, you’re in a big pot, out of position, with a hand that might be hard to play.
➡ A shove avoids that scenario, especially for players who aren’t comfortable postflop.
Recreational players often call ISO shoves with hands like A4o, KTo, or QJo —Even 25bb deep, meaning hands heavily dominated by our strong Ax, Kx, or pocket pairs.
Observation: recreational SB players tend to overcall ISO shoves from BB
➡ A shove directly punishes this mistake.
We want to ISO shove hands that dominate SB’s limp-call range and maintain good equity when called
Sometimes, we have a hand that's too strong to check, but not quite good enough to shove.
In those cases, the best option is often a non-all-in ISO (NA ISO) — a standard raise without going all-in.
Recreational players don’t adjust to sizing.
So you’re free to adapt your raise size — anywhere between 2bb and 3.5bb, depending on stack depth and hand strength.
For example:
It might be tempting to throw in some bluffs to “balance” your raising range.
But in practice, bluffing against recreational players is not only unnecessary — it’s often -EV.
Here’s why:
Below are GTO vs recreational SB call percentages vs ISO raises at various stack sizes:
Observation: Recreational players call a lot — your bluffs will rarely go through.
In theory, bluffing helps balance your range so your value hands get paid more often.
But against a recreational player, that balance is pointless:
Bluffing with a non-all-in ISO opens the door to:
Basically, high variance for very little EV gain.
Against certain opponents who:
…it may be worth occasionally testing a few ISO bluffs just to see how they react.
It’s a hotly debated topic.
Some advocate shoving a large part of their range, others rely on non-all-in ISO raises, and others prefer checking the majority of their hands.
There’s no single “correct” answer — there are multiple viable approaches, each with its strengths and trade-offs.
Let’s take a common spot: SB limps, BB has 7bb. Let’s compare two approaches:
Now let’s compare the EV of both strategies:
In GTO vs GTO (left image), the solver gives an average EV of 0.88bb per hand.
With the exploitative strategy vs a recreational player (right image), the average EV for BB jumps to 1.22bb per hand.
This is easy to explain: the recreational SB player makes preflop mistakes (poorly built limp range, bad ISO defense, bad call vs ISO shove), and the exploitative response takes full advantage.
This might seem to justify an extremely aggressive strategy — shoving nearly 100% of hands at 7bb.
But the reality is more nuanced…
Even in its exploitative mode, the solver still builds a balanced strategy: it shoves its strongest hands for value, but also includes marginal ones for balance.
However, against a recreational player:
For every hand, you must compare the EV of checking vs ISO shove.
Some hands will be clearly higher EV as a shove, others not.
The chart above helps visualize the EV difference between shove and check.
As you can see, not all hands are clearly +EV to shove.
Many hands (light green or white like J6o or 98s) are roughly equivalent as shove or check.
Others (like 72o) are actually better to check.
And as mentioned above, balancing your range vs recreational players is not very useful.
➡️ So in practice, there are many hands that should not be shoved.
This strategy is the most +EV long-term, but it requires good postflop skills in short stack situations.
It’s ideal if you play few tables and want to optimize every decision.
This strategy works well when multi-tabling or if you’re not confident postflop.It avoids mistakes by simplifying your game.
For those who want to follow this approach, here are the ranges for 10–12bb, 8–10bb, 6–8bb, and 4–6bb. The strategy for 12bb+ remains unchanged from our standard ranges.
