Push/Fold Chart: What to Shove With at 10, 15 and 20 Big Blinds

Short-stack poker is the one part of the game that has been fully solved, and most players still get it wrong. Once your stack is around 15 big blinds or less, there are only two preflop moves that make money: move all-in, or fold. Here is what to shove with, and why.

Why push or fold

With a short stack a normal raise commits a third of your chips and leaves you with nothing to fold if someone re-raises. Raising small and folding to a shove is the most expensive habit in tournament poker. Going all-in instead does two things: it takes away the other player's option to re-raise you off the hand, and it wins the blinds outright far more often than a small raise does, because nobody wants to call off a stack with a marginal hand.

The chart, in numbers

Share of all starting hands to shove when the pot is unopened, no antes, folded to you:

Two things jump out. The shorter you are, the wider you shove, because the blinds are worth more relative to your stack. And the small blind shoves the widest of all, because only one player can wake up with a hand behind you.

What the ranges look like

10 big blinds on the button (40%). Every pair, every ace suited or not, every suited king, K7 offsuit and better, Q6s and up, Q9o and up, J7s and up, J9o and up, T7s and up, T9o, 97s and up, 86s and up, 76s. Half the deck is a shove.

15 big blinds on the button (25%). Every pair, every suited ace, A7 offsuit and up, K7s and up, KT offsuit and up, Q9s and up, QT offsuit and up, J9s and up, JTo, T9s, 98s.

20 big blinds in the cutoff (11%). Fives and better, A9 suited and up, AJ offsuit and up, KJs and up, KQ offsuit, QJs. At 20 big blinds you still have a real raise available, so the shove range is tight and mostly for value.

Antes, and other adjustments

• With antes in play, shove wider. More dead money in the middle means the blinds are worth stealing with more hands. Add a few suited connectors and weak aces to every range.
• On the bubble, tighten up unless you are the big stack. Losing your last chips costs more than the blinds are worth. The tournament training in the app has bubble and pay-jump drills for exactly this.
• Against someone who never folds their big blind, shove your strong hands and skip the junk. The chart assumes the blinds defend correctly; a calling station makes your weak shoves worse and your strong shoves better.

The mistake everyone makes

Limping or min-raising with 8 big blinds "to see a cheap flop." There is no cheap flop with 8 big blinds. If you put in two and fold, you just gave away a quarter of your stack. If you put in two and call a shove, you were better off shoving first and taking the fold equity. Push or fold. That is the whole strategy.

Practice it

PokerSweepStars has live drills that put you in short-stack spots against a 25 second clock, and the Charts button on every training screen switches to the push/fold chart automatically once you are at 20 big blinds or less, preset to your seat. The charts are free. Get the app on the App Store or Google Play, or play in the browser.