Where the baseline comes from
Every range, drill, and grade on this site traces back to one authored dataset — 144 preflop charts derived from principles, not copied from a solver. This page explains how they are built, how much to trust each depth, and how changes ship.
Original, principle-derived
The DrawingDead baseline is authored from poker principles — position, implied and reverse-implied odds, nut potential, SPR and stack-off thresholds — applied consistently across one decision tree: six opens, fifteen defend matchups, fifteen facing-3-bet matchups, at four depths. Nothing is copied from solver outputs or third-party charts; that is both an editorial stance and a licensing one. The drills are generated and graded from the same data, so a chart edit changes the grading everywhere, automatically.
The confidence ladder
100bb is the teaching reference — closest to well-documented practice, and the firmest tier. 200bb is the brand tier: the adjustments are conservative extensions of known principles and we consider them stable. 500bb is exploratory: public verification for super-deep play is thin, so these are principled positions, not settled answers. 1000bb is highly exploratory — the same logic pushed to its limit, valuable for direction more than exact frequencies. Drill feedback grades against the baseline at every depth, but names it what it is: at 500bb and beyond, an answer that deviates is a disagreement with an exploratory baseline, not a mistake against a solved truth.
How to read the charts
Charts are pure-action simplifications: low-frequency mixes are folded into a single default action per hand. Baseline assumptions: 9-handed live, 4bb opens, no ante, low-rake structure, cold-calling allowed. With a straddle on, halve your effective big blinds and read the corresponding tier. The depth diff highlights — added, upgraded, or dropped hands versus the previous tier — are the product's core: they show you exactly where depth changes the default.
Versions and changes
Current baseline: v1, August 2026. The chart data lives in code behind automated integrity checks — malformed ranges, overlapping actions, or a facing-3-bet hand that was never opened all fail the build — and the full strategy output is locked behind a digest, so no range changes silently. When the baseline meaningfully changes, the version and date on every chart page change with it.