Greetings,

A book I’ve been reading about NL tournament play recommends early in the tournament, 9 handed tables and large stacks, open-raise with a certain % of hands from each position at the table.

It recommends opening with:
Early position -10%
Middle position -15%
Cut-Off -22%
Button -30%

The problem is I have no idea which hands make up these %’s for the BEGINNING of the tournament and the book really doesn’t make it clear. Most of the info I’ve found online gives the hands that make up these percentages when you are heads-up at the very end of the tournament.

Does anyone know which hands make up these %’s at the beginning of the tournament, or at least where/how I can find them?

Thanks in advance!

My 20% might look fairly different to someone else's 20%, and my 20% may look different on hand one compared to having 8bb left, but I'm sure equilab or similar allows you to pick a percentage and get "standard" ranges

So opening the top 10% hands in EP early in a tournament (say everyone has 100bb) could be different from player to player?

There is no standard 10% hands...15%...22% that everyone uses, give or take of course.

This can't be a shock to you, 22

I just thought there was a standard number of hands that comprised the top 10%...top 15%...and so on, for very early in a tournament.

Like there are when you’re “heads-up” near the end of tournament.

10% simply means 132/133 out of the 1326 combos, you can pick whatever you want.
Obviously you might want to include the best ones and go from there rather than picking at random, but your range could include more Axs and pocket pairs, mine more broadways and suited connectors or whatever.

Different people may have a different idea of what constitutes 10% of hands and different people may open different ranges of hands at different stages of a tournament.

But if you line up all the hands in order, that order doesn't change because you are in a different stage of a tournament. If you think that AT is better than KQ, then that will be true on the first hand of the tournament and on the last hand of the tournament. Whether you open with AT or KQ will vary by position, stage of tournament, number of players, etc., but if you think that AT is in the top 10% then it just is in your top 10%.

Note it doesn't say "open top 10%" but just "open 10%" in early position?

If you only open the top 10% then people will quickly figure that you will never have stuff like 78s in this situation and consequently bluff you out of pots on low flops.

You can run a simulation and check which hands win most often if you just let it run to showdown...then pick the top few percent and fill up with some other combos that cover flops that don't hit those cards well.

hmmmm, seems to me a small pair plays differently based on stack sizes and tournament stage.

((I am not a tourney player...this tidbit is just something I remember reading here on 2+2... or maybe one of the books I've read))

Thanks for all the responses....it helps a lot and I really appreciate it!

As an example for a 10% range, I might prefer to play something like 66+, A8s+, A5s, KJs+, QJs, JTs, AQo+, KQo when stacks are deep and I want some "post-flop playability" or "board coverage", but if I'm down to my last few BB and I'm just shoving pre, I'd much rather wake up with AJo than JTs or A8s.

Hey Arty....is that a range you put together on your
Own from experience of what worked and didn’t work for you....or did you pick it up somewhere?