Poker Range Percentages: What a 10%, 20% or 30% Range Actually Looks Like
You read a chart that says “open 22% from the cutoff”, or a video where the coach mentions a villain who “3-bets 8%”, and you nod along. But if someone handed you a blank grid and asked you to shade in that 22%, could you? Most players can't, and it's not because they're bad at poker. It's because almost nobody explains what the percentage is a percentage of.
Here's the answer up front, because it's the part every other guide skips: a range percentage counts combinations, not squares on the grid. There are 1,326 possible starting hands but only 169 boxes, and those boxes are wildly different sizes. Get that backwards and every number you read will be off. This guide fixes it, then shows you six grids so you can see exactly what 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 30% and 40% look like. If shorthand like A4s+ or 66+ still reads as code, our hand notation guide decodes it first.
Why 20% of the Grid Isn't a 20% Range
A deck of 52 cards makes exactly 1,326 two-card combinations (52 × 51 ÷ 2). But we don't think about AhKh and AsKs separately, because they play the same, so we collapse them into 169 strategically distinct hands: 13 pocket pairs, 78 suited hands, 78 offsuit hands. That collapse is what makes the 13x13 grid readable. It's also what makes it lie to you.
The grid draws all 169 boxes the same size. The deck doesn't. Offsuit hands take up 78 boxes, the same as suited hands, but they account for 936 of the 1,326 combinations while suited hands account for only 312. So offsuit hands are 46% of the grid by area and over 70% of the hands you'll actually be dealt. Count boxes and you'll be wrong every time.
The 6-4-12 Rule: One Offsuit Box Outweighs Three Suited Ones
Every box on the grid is worth a fixed number of combinations. A pocket pair box is 6, because there are six ways to pick two cards from four of the same rank. A suited box is 4, one per suit. An offsuit box is 12, four choices for the first card times three remaining suits for the second.
Now the consequence, which is the single most useful thing on this page. KQo alone costs you as much range percentage as KQs, KJs and KTs combined. One offsuit box is 12 combos, three suited boxes are 12 combos. That's why adding a few weak offsuit hands blows up a range percentage so fast: putting A5o through A2o into your range adds 48 combos (3.6% of all hands), while A5s through A2s adds only 16 (1.2%). Same four boxes on the grid, triple the cost. If you want the strategic side of that split, our suited vs offsuit guide covers what those extra combos are actually worth.
What the Top 5%, 10% and 15% of Poker Hands Look Like
Ranges are built by taking hands in order of strength until you hit your target number of combos. The grids below use the ordering equity calculators like PokerStove and Equilab use, which ranks each hand by how it performs all-in against random opposition. Every combo count is computed from the notation string printed under it, so you can check the arithmetic yourself.
Start tight. The top 5% is smaller than almost anyone pictures: big pairs, the best suited broadways, and AK offsuit. That's it.
Top 5% of hands
Top 10% of hands
Top 15% of hands
Look at what happens between them. Going from 5% to 10% doubles the percentage but adds only 10 boxes. Going from 10% to 15% adds another 9 boxes and 70 combos, and most of that weight is offsuit broadways, not new suited hands. The grid grows slowly while the percentage runs. For which of these hands are genuinely worth playing rather than just counted, see our starting hands guide.
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What a 20%, 30% or 40% Range Looks Like
Now the wide bands, the ones people quote most often. Notice how the shading spreads down and to the right from the top-left corner, and how much of the new territory is offsuit.
20% range
30% range
40% range
Here's the payoff of the 6-4-12 rule in one line: the 40% range fills 77 of 169 boxes, which is 46% of the grid's area, but only 40% of the hands. The gap between area and percentage is the whole illusion. Tight ranges are suited-heavy, and suited hands are cheap, so a tight range always covers more of the grid than its percentage suggests.
One oddity worth flagging before you spot it and think it's a bug: the 30% grid includes A5o but not A6o. That's correct. A5 makes the wheel straight, and that extra straight equity is enough to jump it ahead. Different tools also disagree about one or two hands right at the edge of any band, because several boundary hands are near-tied. The grids here follow the PokerStove and Equilab convention.
How to Convert a Range Percentage Into Combos (and Back)
You don't need a calculator for this. Since there are 1,326 combinations, 1% is 13.26 combos. Multiply the percentage by 13 and you're within a couple of combos of the real number, which is close enough at the table.
- A 10% range is about 133 combos.
- A 20% range is about 265 combos (our grid above lands on 266).
- An 8% 3-bet range is about 106 combos.
- A 45% button open is about 597 combos.
Going the other way is just as easy. Count a written range by weighting each box 6, 4 or 12. Take “TT+, AKs, AKo”: five pocket pairs at 6 each is 30, plus 4 for AKs, plus 12 for AKo, which is 46 combos, or 3.5%. That's a genuinely tight 4-bet-ish range, and now you can say so with a number instead of a feeling. To see how a range you've written actually performs against a specific hand, drop it into our equity calculator.
Cheat Sheet: Common Ranges and Their Percentages
Reference table for the ranges that come up constantly. Every figure is exact.
The row that surprises people every time: every pocket pair in the deck combined is under 6% of hands. Thirteen boxes, 78 combos, 5.88%. So “22+” looks like a big commitment spread across the whole diagonal, and it's actually one of the smallest ranges you can name. You'll be dealt a pocket pair about once every 17 hands.
What Percentage Should You Actually Be Opening?
The numbers only matter once they attach to a decision. For 6-max cash at 100bb, standard opening frequencies land roughly here: UTG around 17%, hijack around 21%, cutoff around 27%, button around 43%, small blind around 40%. Treat those as bands rather than exact targets, because solvers and coaches genuinely differ by a few points.
Translate one and it clicks. A 27% cutoff open is about 358 combos, which sits between the 20% and 30% grids above. So when you open from the cutoff, picture that 30% grid with its outer edge trimmed back a little. Reraising ranges are far tighter: a typical 3-bet is 6% to 9%(roughly 80 to 120 combos) and a 4-bet is 2% to 3%. Our 3-bet guide covers which hands fill that 8%, and the positions guide explains why the number climbs the closer you get to the button.
Why Your Chart's 20% Doesn't Match an Equity Tool's 20%
If you compare the 20% grid above against a solver-built 20% opening range, they won't match, and neither one is broken. They're sorted by different things.
Equity calculators rank hands by raw all-in strength. That pushes weak offsuit aces up, because A9o beats a random hand often enough. Real opening ranges are built for playability: how a hand performs postflop, in position, against a range that already folded its worst hands. By that measure A9o is mediocre (it makes weak top pairs and gets dominated), while small pairs and suited connectors are much better than their raw equity suggests, because they flop sets and draws that win big pots.
The swap is almost exactly one for one. Drop A9o from the grid above and you free up 12 combos. Add 55 and 44 and you spend 12 combos. Same 266-combo range, same 20%, meaningfully different hands. So the practical takeaway: use a percentage as a measurement of how wide a range is, not as a hand list. Two players can both open 20% and hold different cards. The fastest way to feel this is to build one yourself, which is what our range visualizer is for. Shade in your own 20%, save it, and compare it to the grid above.
Common Questions About Range Percentages
What does a 20% range look like in poker? A 20% range is about 266 of the 1,326 possible starting hands. Using the standard equity ordering that works out to 66+, A4s+, K9s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, A9o+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo, which is exactly 266 combos or 20.1%. On the 13x13 grid that fills 40 of the 169 boxes, clustered in the top-left corner.
How many combos are in a poker range? Multiply the percentage by 13.26. There are 1,326 total combinations, so 1% is 13.26 combos: a 10% range is about 133 combos, a 20% range about 265, and a 45% button opening range about 597. Counting the other way, weight each grid box 6 combos for a pocket pair, 4 for a suited hand and 12 for an offsuit hand.
What are the top 10% of poker hands? Roughly 88+, A9s+, KTs+, QTs+, AJo+, KQo, which is 130 combos or 9.8% of all hands. That's only 21 of the 169 boxes on the grid, so a 10% range is tighter than most players picture: no suited connectors, no small pairs, and no offsuit hands below AJo apart from KQo.
Why do pocket pairs make up such a small percentage of hands? Because each pair is only 6 combinations while each offsuit hand is 12. All 13 pocket pairs together are 78 combos, which is 5.88% of the 1,326 total, even though they take up 13 of the 169 boxes. One offsuit box like KQo carries twice the weight of a pair box.
Why does my chart's 20% range look different from an equity tool's 20%? Equity calculators sort hands by raw all-in strength against random hands, so their 20% includes a weak offsuit ace like A9o. Solver-built opening ranges sort by playability, so a real 20% open usually drops A9o and adds small pairs or suited connectors instead. Same size, different hands. Treat a percentage as a measurement of how wide a range is, not as a fixed hand list.
Putting It Into Practice
You can now read the language. “Opens 22%” is roughly 290 combos filling the upper-left of the grid, a bit wider than the 20% picture above. “3-bets 8%” is about 106 combos of premiums and blockers. “He plays any two” is 1,326. The percentages stop being noise and start being shapes you can picture.
But percentages describe ranges, they don't make decisions. Knowing that the cutoff opens 27% doesn't help if you freeze when K9s is folded to you on the button. That gap closes through repetition, by seeing the same spots often enough that the answer arrives before the chart does. Go build a range on the range visualizer to make these shapes stick, and keep the notation guide handy for the shorthand.
Turn Range Percentages Into Instant Decisions
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