PLO by stack depth
You studied at 100bb. The button opens 26% of hands at 20bb and 52% at 150bb - same seat, a different game. These are the hands a solver adds and cuts as the stacks change, read straight from a six-max solve at each depth.
Position scales with depth
Open-raise width, first in. The button's range nearly doubles from 20bb to 150bb. Under the gun barely moves.
Every seat opens tighter when stacks are short. The button keeps widening all the way to 150bb and the cutoff levels off near 30%, while the hijack and UTG top out at 100bb and edge back. Either way the swing is mostly about position. From 20bb to 100bb the button adds 21 points of opens, UTG adds 4.
What the range adds and cuts
Pick a spot and a depth. Bars show how much of each hand class enters the range. The notch marks the 100bb baseline you likely studied.
Folds to the button, which open-raises first in.
Watch the hands cross
Button open, every depth. opens, folds, mixes.
| Hand | 20bb | 30bb | 50bb | 100bb | 150bb |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9♥J♥T♠Q♠ Nut broadway rundown | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| J♥K♥Q♠A♠ Nut broadway | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| 2♣7♦A♠A♥ Bare aces, rainbow | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| J♠K♠Q♥K♥ Kings with shape | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
| 6♠8♠9♦T♥ Suited one-gapper | 0% | 0% | 98% | 100% | 100% |
| 5♠8♠6♦7♥ Suited low rundown | 0% | 0% | 87% | 100% | 100% |
| 6♠7♠8♦9♥ Low connected | 0% | 0% | 23% | 100% | 100% |
| 3♦4♠6♠5♥ Suited baby rundown | 0% | 0% | 0% | 78% | 100% |
| 6♠9♠8♦J♥ Suited gapper | 0% | 0% | 0% | 46% | 100% |
| 4♣5♦6♥7♠ Rainbow baby rundown | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 85% |
| 2♦3♥4♠5♠ Suited wheel trash | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
The nut hands - 9♥J♥T♠Q♠ and their kind - open at every depth. Everything below them is a depth call, and the shape only pays when the stacks are there to win it.
The flop: same raise, different SPR
One button open, one big-blind call. The stack-to-pot ratio on the flop runs from about 4 to about 20 - the single-raised pot is a different animal at each depth.
Short, the button min-raises and the big blind calls 83% of hands - a cheap, wide flop at an SPR near 4. One pot-sized bet and a shove and the stacks are in, so the out-of-position player just check-raises all in and the button's position barely pays. Deep, the button pots, the big blind flats a tighter 31%, weighted to high-card and broadway hands, at an SPR of about 20. Now there are three streets to play, and the nutty speculative hands 3-bet rather than flat. That room is where position earns its premium - and it shows up in 3-bet and 4-bet pots far more than in this single-raised one.
How to adjust from your 100bb game
Shorter (20-30bb)
- Open tighter and smaller. The button opens 26% at 20bb vs 47% at 100bb, and min-raises rather than potting.
- Drop the speculative rundowns and baby suited hands (9876ss, 8765ss, 6543ss). With 20bb behind there is no implied-odds payoff for them.
- 3-bet high pairs and high cards for value - single-suited kings 3-bet 100% short. They win a low-SPR pot outright.
- Complete more from the small blind. It limps 26% of hands at 20bb (vs 11% at 100bb), taking cheap low-SPR flops - about 57% of hands in play.
- Position buys less. You are often all in by the turn, with no room to out-play anyone over three streets.
Deeper (150bb+)
- Open wider in late position, and tighten up out of position. The button reaches 52%.
- Add the speculative, nutty, suited hands - suited rundowns and gappers, low pairs. Deep stacks pay off their nut potential.
- Tighten the big blind's 3-bet against a button open, from 10.3% of hands at 100bb to 9.1% at 150bb. The cut comes out of high pairs and broadway hands. The double-suited rundowns stay: 8765ds 3-bets at both depths and folds at 50bb and shorter.
- Leave the small blind about where it is. It plays 40% of hands at 150bb against 43% at 100bb and still limps 11%. Its big change comes on the short side.
- Position buys more - but mostly in 3-bet and 4-bet pots. In single-raised pots it barely moves.
Methodology
Ranges come from six-max pot-limit solves at 20, 30, 50, 100 and 150bb - a GTO solver's preflop strategy at each depth, not a rule of thumb.
- Every one of the 270,725 starting hands is weighted by how often the range plays it, then counted exactly. No simulation.
- How much of each class plays is the combo-weighted raise frequency inside that class - what fraction of, say, low rundowns the button actually opens.
- Share of the range is that class's slice of everything the range plays, so the slices add to 100%.
- The opens are the sizes the solves use: a min-raise to 2bb at 20bb, a pot-sized raise (3.5bb) from 30bb up.
- SPR is the effective stack left after a button open and a big-blind call, divided by the pot. The 20bb button min-raises, so its SPR (4.0) sits just above 30bb's (3.5) before climbing with depth.