Pre-Flop Calling Ranges

There are many factors in deciding preflop calling ranges in poker.

Position, bet sizing, and stack size are all things to consider. And don't forget table dynamics, your reads on players, and knowing how to expand your option in later positions.

We've put together a guide to help walk you through it: Your Guide to Pre-flop Calling Ranges

Great for beginners wanting to expand on their game, or a refresher for you seasoned players maybe needing a reset. Take a look and let us know what you think!

Nicely put together guide. It offers all the basics but it is not too long to digest.

The guide can also be confusing. It is easy to forget while reading that the guide offers advice only to a narrow question 'when to call a pre-flop raise'. A reader might start to think that this is the only reasonable way to act in this situation. Especially when you consider that a vast amount of members come from non-English speaking countries, myself included.

All in all, it's a great guide. After all, we don't want our opponents to become too smart, do we? :bike:

Spoiler alert: After you read about this guide, you will see that in the end the important thing is to share your love for others through social networks (in the case of Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin).

Of course, even an excellent preflop game does not guarantee big winnings, because poker consists primarily of playing postflop, but building a good strategy for playing preflop can reduce losses and avoid marginal situations. A call is worthwhile when you have a good draw-draw, or you are not confident in the strength of your hand and do not want to inflate the pot. But when you have a strong ready hand, you should not give the opponent cheap cards, calling is inappropriate here.

Good article!

I don't have much to say, as I agree with almost everything in the article. I want to emphasize the importance of expanding the calling ranges when be in LP with hands like low-tier broadways, some good suited connectors, like 98s, 87s.

But, always have the "GAP Concept" in mind.

Preflop calling raise is something that occures in the game. I prefer to raise when I want to play a hand. I call a preflop raise when the situation is not so strong. Or when I try to make a trap!

Oh, thank you. I'm tired of how players or even Libratus explain you should raise pre-flop or it is not profitable, less profitable. Thank you for showing there are three options.
I liked how you showed hands by bold and percentage right near the hand. But maybe to show it with sign %? First few seconds it was hard to realize what these numbers mean.

Thank you very much for this article, it has helped me to improve in my pre-flop game, very good article, maybe the only thing missing, was a table of ranks.

Another great article, this topic is something that may seem obvious to everyone, but just reading it gives you much better comprehension about how to act and what you can expect when calling raises.

Also, the visual examples are very helpful and are easy to digest.

A few years ago, I remember being at my parents for a bbq. Sitting on the patio, soaking in the sun, while my dad was dealing out eight sets of hole cards. He had a leaf to use as a dealer button.

He looked at the first hand, thought for a few seconds, said call then, moved onto the next hand. He said call for each hand. Then he would repeat after the flop and so on. After two sets of hands I shook my head, walked up to the table and said ‘would you call a raise with that hand’. Then I dealt out eight seats and made him choose one as did I. We did that until we needed candles on the table. That was when he finally began to understand preflop play.

And again a very relevant article, after changing the starting stack in tournaments. Now I will try to apply the knowledge gained in conjunction with the knowledge from the foregoing article and I hope the results will not be long in coming.

Exact! you have to consider Position, bet sizing, and stack size before making any decision, the other thing to consider is the strength of your hand and especially something very, very important, AVOID THE SLOWPLAY .. another thing to consider is the amount of players that are on hand, good article, thanks Tammy

Nafor said:

Nicely put together guide. It offers all the basics but it is not too long to digest.

The guide can also be confusing. It is easy to forget while reading that the guide offers advice only to a narrow question 'when to call a pre-flop raise'. A reader might start to think that this is the only reasonable way to act in this situation. Especially when you consider that a vast amount of members come from non-English speaking countries, myself included.

All in all, it's a great guide. After all, we don't want our opponents to become too smart, do we? :bike:

Click to expand...

That's right. In addition to the call, there are a couple more options for your reaction - fold and raise. Correctly building your range for the call is an important part of the game. YOU must understand the lower limit when you should fold your hand, and do not forget about the upper part of the range, when you should raise it higher and not piss..

Preflop calling ranges

This was an excellent and informative article. The power of position cannot be stated enough. The ranges are really spot on for TAG type players but I think they vary from level to level. In microstakes and freerolls, you will see a lot more opens from EP with very meager holdings. Sunday, I saw a player opening any suited cards from UTG on a consistent basis. So it is vital that you examine your opponents ranges. Personally, I am the dinosaur that still mainly plays one table at a time so that I can get reads on my opponents. It reduces my hourly win rate, but I do tend to make it deep into a lot of tournaments by finding out where they are making their mistakes. HUDs are not as useful for this type of information and I think it simulates live play much better because you are learning to focus.

Overall, I like your range breakdown. I usually give EP players credit for a pretty strong hand unless I have developed a confident read that tells me otherwise. Maybe next month you will discuss playing against Maniacs and very LAG players.

A very well explained until guide is easy to make a decision after reading this guide,
reminding you have to study your opponent why poker has some players and crazy

Definitely a useful read.

Excellent material, very well explained.

The fundamental concepts of poker explained in a simple and didactic way. Just one consideration: avoid relaxing when you have more chips and pay attention to the movements of each person at the table.

Decent read. Nothing too groundbreaking but a nice informative and easy to read catch up

More quality strategy content form CardsChat. Always a good read. I agree with the article. Not much to add. Calling can be the right play, but like every other situation in poker, it depends on many factors including bet size, stack sizes, number and tendencies of opponents, etc.

This is a nicely written article !

I'd only add that if someone is a beginner, and feels he/she has bad post flop skills, then should opt to re-raise pre or fold, and not play marginal hands that they won't know what to do with post flop.

Excellent article .... it is always good to be informed about how to deal with these situations of call range of bets ... this will help us make better decisions ...!

perfectly according to what is said in this article in my case I use a wide range of hand and often play very aggressively

pocket pairs, suited connectors and A10 and up

Good tips , great for beginners . I have seen this work many times . Providing you have a decent hand.
Again , I can argue that a monster hand is not always a proven winner - have lost too many times on a pair of A'S !
I agree though these are great guidelines for any one who is just learning. This should go hand in hand with the strategy for smaller cards to.
For me , if I have been folding , folding - and getting eaten by blinds, then if you raise pre-flop , the software seems to favor the one that raises , and usually the position has nothing to do with it.