What Is Playability & Why Does It Matter?

Playability is a massively important concept to grasp in poker.

You should always consider your hand’s playability preflop, but also on the flop and turn.

In this article, you will learn what playability is and how it will help you make the more profitable decisions at the table.

So without further ado, let’s dive in!

What Is Playability?

Playability is a starting hand’s potential to be played across all streets. In more complex terms, playability refers to a hand’s capacity to realize its equity against a given range of hands.

For example, a hand like 8♥ 7♥ isn’t a super strong starting hand (it’s just eight-high) but has good playability. Many cards can come on the flop that improve this hand’s potential for winning.

Conversely, hands like A♣ 7♦ do not have great playability. Not very many flops will give this hand high potential. You could flop top pair with the Ace, but even then, you could be dominated.

A hand with high playability will tend to fully realize (or over-realize) its equity. While a hand with low playability will tend to under-realize its equity against a specific range of hands.

Playability is a fundamental poker concept. It’s referenced regularly inside the Upswing Lab, where professional players teach people like you how to win more money at the tables.

Example of Playability

To make this concept clear, let me show you a practical preflop example. For this presentation, I will be using the tools Flopzilla and HoldEq.

Suppose the player in the Cutoff raises and the action folds to you in the Big Blind.

Let’s take a typical Cutoff raising range and pit it against to two hands with which you would potentially defend your Big Blind: K-6 offsuit and 8-7 suited.

You can see in the two Flopzilla screenshots, on the bottom right side, that both these hands have roughly 39% equity against the Cutoff opening range.

So, if raw equity was the only factor, then you could say that these two hands are equally valuable. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In the following image, you will see the optimal Big Blind defense strategy against a Cutoff raising range (as calculated by a solver).

What are the key takeaways from this Big Blind defense range?

K-6 offsuit is far away from the weakest offsuit King that calls from the Big Blind (K9-offsuit). It’s not even close to being profitable!

On the other hand, 8-7 suited is not just calling but is also strong enough to 3-bet. The solver is splitting roughly equally between calling and 3-betting with it.

The main reason behind this strategy lies in the amount of playability that each hand has. 8-7 suited has much higher playability than K-6 offsuit. But why is that?

What Drives Playability?

Playability is mostly driven by the probabilities of hitting hand categories that are strong enough to continue against a bet. This allows the hand to realize more of its equity by seeing the turn, the river, and ultimately the showdown more often.

Flopzilla is a nice tool that allows us to see what the probabilities are of hitting certain hands on the flop. What kind of hands might be interesting to us?

Well, it would be hands that can always (or almost always) continue when faced with a c-bet. Which hands are strong enough to do that?

It’s going to be hands like:

• One pair or better
• Gutshot straight draws
• Open-ended straight draws
• Flush draws
• Combo draws

These hands will (almost) always be strong enough to continue facing a bet.

In the bottom right side of the two images below you can see how often both K6-offsuit and 87-suited hit these types of holdings:

You can see that K-6 offsuit will only hit one of the “strong enough to call” hand categories ~40% of the time. 8-7 suited will hit one of these hands ~62% of the time.

That means that 8-7 suited will be able to continue more than 1.5 times more often on the flop when facing a bet, compared to K6-offsuit.

Why Is Playability Important?

Considering the playability of your starting hands will help you make fewer mistakes. That translates into winning more money.

From a technical standpoint, understanding playability helps you choose the correct hands to play given the ranges involved. That’s whether you’re defending against raises (open-raises, 3-bets, etc.) or raising yourself (3-betting, 4-betting, etc.). 

Playability helps you filter through the hands that have the same equity and better pick the best candidates for the situation.

Final Thoughts

By understanding playability, you are one step closer to holding all the puzzle pieces that make up poker strategy. Take your time thinking about how this concept shapes the preflop strategies that you are using and it will pay dividends over time.

Playability has an impact on postflop strategies as well but is much less of a factor at that stage of the game, with equity and implied odds being much more important in the decision-making process.

That’s all for this article! I hope you enjoyed it and that you learned something new from it! Let me know if you have any questions by posting them in the comment section below.

If you want to learn about another critical poker concept, check out What is Fold Equity and Why Does it Matter?

Till’ next time, good luck, grinders!