Join Date: Oct 2016
Posts: 592
Charts are only useful for ballpark strategies. To make sure you're not playing grossly outside the inherent mathematics of the game. I would strongly suggest learning why hands go into different lines. The kind of properties a hand needs to have in different situations. You have to be able to make changes on the fly. Expanding and contracting ranges. Switching from polarized to linear and back. Exploiting observed tendencies. Adjusting for different stack depths. Frankly, there are way too many different preflop situations to memorize charts for. There are basically infinite if you start thinking about multiway. Just understand the basic "shape" of ranges, then decide if the hand you're dealt likely falls into the range or not. It's not a big deal if you're a bit tight or loose sometimes. Like I said, ranges are not absolute anyway. The best range depends on the exact situation you're in at the time.
I'll leave you with some food for thought. There are 16432 distinct starting hands in Omaha. Playing with charts is utterly impossible (although some have tried!). Yet people have found a way to be very profitable in those games.