Preflop Starting Hands Chart (6-Max)

Open-raise ranges for every position · 100bb cash game baseline

Most money in Hold'em is won or lost before the flop. Play too many hands and you bleed chips in bad spots; play too few and the blinds eat you. The charts below give you a solid, slightly conservative open-raise (first-in) baseline for 6-max cash games. Raise the hands shown, fold the rest — gold = raise, dark = fold. Suited hands are above the diagonal, offsuit below, pairs on the diagonal.

How to use this chart

• First in only. These ranges assume everyone before you folded. If someone raised ahead of you, tighten up dramatically — flat-call or 3-bet with the top of the range only.
• Raise, don't limp. Open to about 2.2–3 big blinds. Limping invites multiway pots where your strong hands win small and your weak hands lose big.
• Position drives everything. The button opens roughly three times as many hands as UTG for one reason: acting last after the flop is worth that much.
• Adjust to the table. Against players who never fold their big blind, trim the weakest offsuit hands. Against tight tables, add a few more suited hands on the button.

Why suited hands matter so much

Compare AJs to AJo: same ranks, but the suited version makes a flush about 6.5% more often over all runouts, and — more importantly — makes strong draws that let you bet aggressively with backup. That is why charts always include far more suited than offsuit combos: K5s is a button open, while K5o is a clear fold.

The biggest preflop mistakes

1. Calling raises with dominated hands — KJo against an UTG raise mostly makes second-best pairs.
2. Overplaying small offsuit aces — A4o looks pretty; it wins tiny pots and loses big ones.
3. Ignoring position entirely — playing 88 the same from UTG and the button costs real money in both directions.

Once your preflop hands are in order, check how much equity they really have with the odds calculator, and read the full starting-hands guide.