Broadway

Broadway hands are a significant portion of any preflop opening range. The term covers any two cards from Ten through Ace, which means 16 distinct hand types ranging from AK down to JT, in both suited and offsuit varieties. These hands are valued because they make top pair with a strong kicker on high boards, they connect into the nut straight (the broadway straight: A-K-Q-J-T), and they dominate the weaker high-card holdings that recreational players tend to overplay.

A concrete example: in our UTG opens 100bb range, broadway hands form the backbone of the open-raise range. AK and AQ in both suited and offsuit form are always raises, AJs and KQs raise pure, KJs is in, and JTs sneaks in as the lowest suited broadway. The offsuit edges of the broadway region behave very differently. KQo opens, KJo is a mix, and QJo and JTo fold because they are dominated by the AQ, KQ, and KJ hands that will call or 3-bet against your UTG raise.

Broadway matters strategically because it determines how your range interacts with high-card flops. On an A-K-7 flop, your range that contains lots of AK, AQ, KQ smashes the board: this is a textbook range advantage spot where small continuation bets work cheaply against the BB defender's range. On a 7-6-5 flop the picture flips: your broadway-heavy range whiffs the board entirely, and the BB defender's suited connectors and small pairs do much better. Knowing which boards your range loves and which it hates lets you size your c-bets correctly and pick your bluffs from hands with backdoor equity rather than pure air.

Suited broadway hands also have a second life as 3-bet candidates. KQs and AJs are the canonical "thin value plus playability" 3-bets from the blinds against late-position opens. The suit gives you flush potential when called, and the blockers reduce the chance the opener has a 4-bet ready. Offsuit broadways below AQ are almost never 3-bets because they play poorly out of position when called and have no flush potential to soften the variance.

The common mistake recreationals make is treating all broadway hands as equally strong. They open QJo from UTG because "it is two big cards," then get crushed by AQ, AJ, KQ, KJ. The hand looks good but it is dominated by every broadway above it, and against a tight UTG calling range it is a money loser. Promote suited broadways, demote weak offsuit broadways, and let position decide the gray middle.

Related terms worth studying include the suited connector (the speculative complement to broadway in late-position ranges), the pocket pair (the other major class of premium hands), and range itself (the umbrella concept that lets you see why these classifications matter). To see broadway behavior across every seat at 100bb, open the UTG, HJ, and CO opening ranges side by side and watch how the broadway region fills in as position improves.