Which Positions Should You Open From?
The later you sit, the more hands you can open. At 20 big blinds it is 34 of 169 hands under the gun, 84 on the button and 139 in the small blind — four times as many as up front. The reason is not courage, it is information: fewer players behind you can still wake up with a better hand.
The number
We counted the opens in our own solver library: every spot where nobody has entered the pot before you and you hold roughly 20 big blinds. A hand counts when the solver does not fold it in the majority of those spots.
| Position | Hands of 169 | Spots |
|---|---|---|
| UTG (early) | 34 | 7 |
| MP1 | 32 | 2 |
| MP2 | 44 | 7 |
| HJ | 53 | 2 |
| BU (button) | 84 | 3 |
| SB (small blind) | 139 | 3 |
The right-hand column belongs there: MP1 rests on two spots, which is why it sits just below UTG. Read the ladder as a direction, not as a ranking between two neighbours.
What that looks like
Each chart shows all 169 starting hands. The coloured cells are the ones you open.
UTG — 34 hands
Button — 84 hands
Small blind — 139 hands
Why it works that way
Open from up front and you have seven or eight players behind you. Every one of them can be dealt something better, and every one of them acts after you do. A hand like K9s is respectable on its own — against eight unresolved opponents it is not.
On the button only two players are left, and both have already posted. The same hand often wins there without a single card being dealt. That is why the number does not grow evenly but jumps at the end: hijack to button adds 31 hands, button to small blind another 55.
The small blind is the odd one out. It opens widest, and for a different reason: against a single opponent, with half a bet already in the middle, almost any hand pays — even though after the flop it is the one seat that always acts first.
Where this answer stops
These numbers hold at roughly 20 big blinds in tournaments with a payout ladder. At 8 big blinds the same table looks different, and so it does at 60. They also describe the first entry into the pot: once somebody has raised in front of you, that is a different question and a different range.
At a final table everything shifts again. When one more place means real money, even the button tightens up — that is the ICM effect, and it deserves its own article.
Try it yourself
It sticks fastest when you play it instead of reading it. The trainer deals you spots like these; you decide, then you see what the solver would have done.