Simplification

No-limit hold’em is a deep and complex game. If you tried to learn every theoretical nuance used by strong players, you would literally spend months studying without ever playing a hand. That doesn’t sound like much fun. Fortunately, simplification is possible, and modern analysis tools allow us to present you with a simplified strategy that we know works. Specifically, we can demonstrate that the simplification described in CORE L1 gives up little in terms of profits relative to more complex strategies.

Why Simplify?

The power of a simplified default strategy cannot be overstated; it helps with tilt, allows you to develop your intuition, and gets you playing the game faster so that you gain real-time experience. Besides, for relatively new players, being confronted with full GTO solutions would be completely overwhelming.

The primary simplification we provide in the following opening ranges is that they are overly tight. Stated another way, in most game theory optimal (GTO) preflop simulations, you would want to raise more hands than those we suggest. GTO is one of the best baselines we have to compare strategies. Why would we recommend a strategy that is too tight?

We do this for two reasons. First, by constraining the hands you play at all, we eliminate expensive mistakes deeper in the hand. Some starting hands are simply more difficult to play for inexperienced players, and generate very little profit even if played well. Our experience suggests simply removing these marginal hands actually increases the win-rate of beginning players.

Second, almost every small-stakes game features overly-loose play. How can you tell if your game is overly loose? Look for the cold calls and limps. Cold calls and limps in GTO models shouldn’t happen very often (open limps would never happen), and the overwhelming majority of preflop calls should happen only from the big blind (BB).

Tight Ranges Exploit Low-Stakes Games

When you see the cutoff (CO) flat call J8s facing an open raise, you’re seeing a mathematically-loose play (even if you don’t feel your game qualifies as “loose”. In such a game, your preflop opens from early position will frequently get called by one or more players. And even though your calling opponents are the ones frequently making a mistake by doing so, being out of position to them puts

you

on the back foot.

It turns out that the way to combat opponents in these types of games is to tighten up your preflop ranges relative to GTO. In other words, the strategy and opening ranges presented in Level I of CORE are a deviation from GTO that combine for a perfect exploit of low-stakes games.

Here’s a quick video from SplitSuit that goes into a bit more depth on these ideas.

The main consequence of this rampant looseness in a typical small-stakes game is that playing tight is a powerful exploitative play. It can provide a higher win-rate than if you applied perfect GTO ranges.

Simplifying Is Practical

The last simplification you may want to consider as a relatively-inexperienced player is reducing the amount of these ranges you attempt to to memorize. Initially, we suggest you only use the 100% raise-or-fold hands. Going further, you could use the first early position range (EP1) as your range for every early position spot. Similarly, you can use the lojack (LJ) range for both LJ and HJ and use the button (BU) range for the small blind (SB).

Strongly consider this if you find yourself making significant mistakes postflop, tilting frequently, or just having other areas of your game that need substantial attention. Precision in your exact preflop ranges will not help you as much as solving those areas first.