What is a poker range
A range isn't one hand - it's the whole set of hands a player could hold given a specific action in a specific spot. When someone says "they open wide", they don't mean one hand, they mean dozens of possible ones - some they'll continue with, some they'll fold.
Why think in ranges at all
You never see your opponent's cards before showdown - only their actions: raise, call, fold. An action narrows down the hands they could be playing that way. That's range reading: not "they probably have AK", but "this action fits about twenty percent of their hands, and here's roughly which ones".
What a range looks like: the 13x13 grid
Every starting hand in hold'em fits a 13x13 grid - 169 cells, one per rank combination. A range is just a shaded part of that grid. Below is a real opening chart by position (the same one used in Whygrid reviews) - pick a position and see the width change.
This is not GTO solver output - these are your coach's working ranges for micro-stakes tournaments. The core matches solver ranges; in early positions our ranges are softer than the solver's - the coach only punishes clearly loose opens, not borderline hands. Want to play tighter - stick to the solid lime zone. There is no single correct chart: strong players and different schools use their own ranges, and that is fine. We keep ONE consistent reference so the coach never contradicts itself; if you play a different chart, say so in the review - the coach will take it into account instead of calling your hand a mistake.
Baseline for stacks of 20 big blinds and deeper: shorter stacks are push-fold territory. Deeper than 60 blinds the edges can widen slightly.
Tight and wide ranges, in numbers
"Tight" and "wide" aren't a gut call - they're a share of all 1326 possible hand combinations. Opening from UTG (the earliest seat) is roughly 23.4% of hands: nobody's folded yet, so you play carefully. Opening from the BTN (the last seat before the blinds) is roughly 49.9%: everyone else has already folded, so you can play noticeably wider.
How this works in Whygrid
During a review the coach sometimes asks: "what range did you put your opponent on before the money went in?" You answer on the same grid, not in text - you click the hands you think they had. From there the coach isn't guessing equity in words - the parser computes the exact number against the hands you marked. You call the range, the code does the math.
All of Whygrid's ranges - opens, BB defense, 3-bet, push-fold - live on the charts page See the charts
Want to see what your opponent's range looks like inside a review of your own tournament? The first review is free.
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