Make Preflop Ranges Stick

The chart on your desk lasts three days. The chart in your head lasts a season. The gap is method, not willpower. Four drills built on active recall, spaced repetition, and interleaving turn fuzzy chart knowledge into automatic table action, and the article puts them on a 25-minute daily schedule that actually survives a real week.

The cleanest tool for these drills is GTO Ranges+. Streaks reward daily consistency, mistake-breakdown reports surface the spots you actually need to drill, and custom saved drill sets let you rotate through the ranges you want to keep sharp. Below is the kind of chart it teaches you to memorize, a real one straight out of WSOP-relevant territory.

40bb · BB vs CO open · MTT · ICM near bubble Jam · 3-bet · Call · Fold Cell width = action frequency. Cell width is proportional to action frequency. Source: GTO Ranges+ · full 169-combo solve

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Pocket jacks, middle position, near the money

The companion deep dive opens with the spot every MTT player has felt in their stomach: pocket jacks in middle position at 18bb effective, two eliminations from the money. The hand looks strong. The board is empty. The wrong move is to think this is a chip-count decision.

Near the money, ICM rewrites every range you have. Survival has dollar value that pure chip math ignores, and that dollar value is asymmetric: the chips you lose by busting cost you more than the chips you gain by winning the pot. The post walks through what JJ actually plays as under that pressure, why call-frequencies from cover-stacks change the math, and how to size your decision against the rest of the table rather than against your own stack. Pair the framework there with the memorization drills above and you will have the ranges plus the recall under pressure.

Surviving the Money Bubble →

K-7-2 rainbow. The 84% c-bet, broken down.

100bb cash, BTN opens 2.5bb, BB calls. The flop comes K♣ 7♦ 2♥. BB checks. This is the textbook c-bet board, and the solver agrees, but the SIZING is where most players leak.

The GTO BTN response is bet ~25% pot 78.83%, bet ~80% pot 5.42%, check back 15.75%. Roughly 84% c-bet, dominated by the small sizing.

Why a small bet at high frequency? K-7-2 rainbow gives BTN clear range advantage (broadways, high pairs, AK hit the king; low cards rarely connect with BB's defending range). The dry texture removes draw equity, so a small bet locks in fold equity from BB's flat-junk without committing chips. The larger 80%-pot sizing targets specific value-blocker combos that benefit from a polarized line. The 15.75% check-back protects BTN's range so BB cannot freely float every flop. Sizing is the leak, not frequency: most low-stakes players c-bet 33-50% pot here when ~25% pot is the equilibrium pick. Pull the spot yourself in Solver+ and compare neighbouring textures (K72ss, K83r, A72r) to feel how the c-bet sizing shifts with the board.

Postflop+ closes the loop after the chart goes in your head

Memorized ranges win the preflop game. Postflop is where most stacks change hands. Postflop+ is the practice rig for the half of the game your preflop work sets you up to play well. Pick a spot, make the decision, compare against the GTO answer. The K72r small-c-bet spot above is a perfect first drill: the SIZING decision (25% vs 33% vs 50% pot) is one of the highest-frequency leaks at the table.

Open Postflop+ →

WSOP 2026 is roughly three weeks out. Bracelet hunters are mid-cycle on prep. If you have not allocated your trip budget yet, the schedule restructure changed the dollars-per-EV map this year, and the time to think it through is now. Our companion piece breaks down the tier-by-tier allocation framework for a 4–6 week trip: WSOP 2026 Strategy.

PLO is having its solver moment. Several major training tools shipped PLO-specific solver content this week, the same way Hold'em went through its solver revolution five years ago. If PLO is on your menu, the preflop ranges in PLO+ are a clean starting point while the postflop landscape settles.

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