Poker Starting Hands Chart

How to read this chart

The grid is the standard 13×13 hand-class layout: pairs on the diagonal, suited hands above it, offsuit hands below. A shaded cell is in the opening range; clear cells are folds.

How these ranges are generated

This is a documented heuristic model, not a full postflop GTO solve. Each of the 169 starting-hand classes is scored with the Chen formula, David Sklansky’s published point-count system: high-card value, a bonus for pairs, a bonus for being suited, and a penalty for the gap between the two ranks — with a small bonus back for well-connected cards below queen-high. Raw showdown equity was deliberately not used, since a fixed-opponent equity number can’t see fold equity, domination, or how often a hand realises its equity postflop, and rewards hands like a bare offsuit ace over playable suited connectors. Each position’s range is the top-scoring hands, filled to a commonly-cited modern-strategy open-frequency target (13% at UTG, up to 42% on the button), not solver output.

For a page that is a real live solve rather than a heuristic model, see the Nash push/fold charts.

The opening-range lesson and the ranked Trainer’s opening-range puzzles use a separate, simpler hand-authored chart, not this one — the two models don’t always agree cell-for-cell, so don’t expect an exact match between what you see here and what the Trainer marks correct.