Poker Charts To Memorize

You can memorize something basic like Raise First In but once there are a bazillion charts no one can memorize them all. Developing your understanding of the game and how ranges are constructed will allow you to construct the best responses and ranges in real time for the situation you're in. There are a lot of books and poker strategy websites where such charts can be found. I've noticed that those charts encourage you to play your hand if it's strong (medium to big pocket pairs, AK, AQ, KQ, even AJ). There are 2 main problems with this: you get hands that fit that criteria rarely. Maybe 1 in 30 hands.

Have you ever found yourself mid-game staring at your HUD while facing an open from a player with an RFI stat of 21% and thought to yourself, “What hands are in his range?” Or while playing live, have you estimated that your opponent calls an open 40% of the time but didn’t know what hands comprise that range?

Well, I’ll show you the easy way to learn poker ranges for quick reference in the future.

First, here’s a Poker Range Chromatic I created for my own use:

I wanted to learn where each hand falls within a range and the above is what I came up with. I used Flopzilla to figure out which hands fall within each percentage grouping. I just started with a 5% range, then went by 5’s up to 40%, then followed that with 10’s up through 60% then 75%. I used color coding to help visualize the ranges.

I then took the following steps to learn the ranges:

1. Printed the chromatic I made, laminated and posted it on the side of my computer monitor for quick in-game reference.
2. Created 11 flash cards for use each night as part of my warm-up, and I put the following on them:
3. For one week during my study session I would do a hand history review from the previous night’s session and each time I faced an open I looked at their RFI Stat in that position and determined what range it fell under. I would say aloud, “20% in the CO… that’s 22+, A7s+, ATo+, K9s+, KTo+, Q9s, QTo+, JTo and 98s+.” That’s all there was to it. After that first week I got them all down. This is especially helpful when playing live as I can’t glance to the side of my screen to get an estimate on an opp’s range. Now, it’s easier to remember the bottom of the ranges as you’re trying to learn these. So, when thinking about 20%, the bottoms are 33, A7s, ATo, Q9s, JTo and 98s. If you just remember those 6 hands for 20%, you know it includes everything better than those. So if the question arises for a hand like K8s, you know that K9s is the bottom at 25% and K7s is the bottom of 30%, so it’s within the 30% range and just under the 25% range.

Please let me know if you would make tweaks to these ranges as I always love feedback.

Study hard and make your next session the best one yet!

• Smart Poker Study Audiobook Excerpts - March 4, 2021
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W.C. Fields, after winning several hands:
'Beginner's luck, gentlemen... although I have devoted some time to the game.'

Texas Hold'em may, at first glance, seem like a simple game. In fact, the rules are easy to master but the strategy runs deep. One of the key decisions comes early; should you play your first two starting cards or should you fold them.

There are 169 possible two-card starting hands. It's difficult enough to commit to memory the correct action for each of the 169 possibilities. You could, with some time and patience, memorize a chart similar to the second one on our Mistakes page. The problem with this is that the correct play changes depending on:

1) Your seating position
2) How many players have entered the pot
3) Whether the pot has been raised
4) Whether the pot has been reraised
5) Whether you are making the small blind bet
6) Whether you are making the big blind bet

Poker Charts To Memorize People

The difficulty is further compounded by the fact that each decision is not simply play/fold. You need a strategy for raising and even reraising. Even a moderately advanced system would require far more memorization than the 169 cell chart.

Poker Charts To Memorize Words

Poker Charts To Memorize Notes

We have developed the Hold'em Shortcut system to eliminate 99% of the memorization required for strong play of those first two starting cards. Here is how we did it: