Bulletproof Open Raising: A Poker Beginner’s Guide

Have you struggled figuring out what hands to play?

Deciding whether or not to play your hand is the most common decision in poker. In NLHE it’s arguably the most important. Elite players shape their entire strategy from the flop to the river based on the percentage of hands they decide to play preflop. As a beginner or player without a defined preflop plan, getting a handle on all this is an overwhelming and confusing proposition.

However, when you know which hands to play preflop, it creates a powerful foundation for you to build your entire poker game. Knowing how aggressively each position should be opened also helps you see when your opponents are making mistakes. Mistakes you can profit from.

That’s exactly why we created “Bulletproof Open Raising”.

What are these ranges for?

The goal of these ranges is to give you open-raising ranges that you can rely on to create a consistent advantage in any small-stakes game. For these ranges, we took into account keeping you out of trouble, maximizing profit, and closeness to game theory optimal ranges. You can follow these ranges exactly in any small-stakes game and as a baseline for any NHLE game that is about 100bb deep, from full ring to 6-max.

These ranges have been built with mathematically-optimal strategy in mind; with correct postflop play, even the best players in the world wouldn’t be able to win much against these ranges. The simplifications we’ve made only give up the very minimum, meaning this strategy will beat any small-stakes game conditions you encounter.

Should you use a range chart?

Even winning poker players can benefit from comparing their strategy to range charts. It’s valuable to understand what your baseline strategy is before you start deviating from it. Many winning players have never created a baseline open-raising strategy because they assume their strategy will be superior to their weaker opponents.

This can work okay until you encounter game conditions that are either unfamiliar or uncomfortable. Have you ever had the experience of getting into a crazy game, an opponent drastically changing their play, or having an aggressive player sit to your left? All of a sudden your standard opens aren’t playing out the way you’re used to.

This is exactly what these ranges are built for: giving you balanced, tight but aggressive opening ranges that your opponents can’t exploit. Remember even great players won’t always know exactly how their opponents are playing, which is why knowing mathematically-balanced ranges is essential. Having these bulletproof ranges literally in your back pocket (on your phone) is something most players can benefit from.

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