Push/fold charts by stack depth (5bb to 20bb)

Short stack, tournament, folded to you: the charts below say which hands go all in from which seat at 10 big blinds, at 5, at 15 and at 20, and a fifth says which hands can call one. Every chart is on the page as a table and every chart downloads as a printable image. No email, no account.

Shove width by stack depth

The lesson underneath all five charts is one shape: the shorter your stack, the more hands go all in. Four seats, four depths, drawn from the same ranges the tables below publish.

Under the gun goes from about a quarter of hands at 5 big blinds to roughly one hand in nine at 20. The small blind is the widest seat at every depth, because only one player is left to beat and the blinds are already worth more than half a 5 big blind stack. That gap between the first seat and the last is the whole short-stack game, and it is why folding the button and the small blind is the most expensive habit at this depth.

Get the charts, free

The PDF holds all five charts at print size, split across pages so the hands stay readable on paper. The images are the same charts if you would rather keep them on your phone.

The 10 big blind push/fold chart

Read your seat, find your hand, and if it is colored in, the chip goes in. Everything here assumes the pot is unopened when the action reaches you, the table is 9-handed, there are no antes, and you are counting chips rather than prize money.

The spread is the point. Under the gun shoves about 18% of hands with eight players left to get through. The small blind shoves about 69%, because only one player is left and the blinds are already worth more than half your stack. If you take one habit from this page, take that one: at 10 big blinds, folding the button and the small blind is a bigger leak than any hand you might shove too light.

ICM: when to fold hands the chart shoves

Every chart on this page counts chips. A tournament pays money, and chips turn into money unevenly: the ones you lose busting out cost you more than the ones you win are worth. That conversion has a name, ICM, and it is the reason a shove that is correct on this page can be a mistake at the table.

Here is the shape of it. On a chart like the 10 big blind one above, under the gun shoves every pocket pair down to deuces. Move the same seat to a final table with real pay jumps and the published ICM range starts at pocket threes instead. Deuces did not get worse. The money behind them got more expensive, and the same hand crosses from a shove to a fold without a single card changing.

The practical rule is short. Near the money, the hands you can call an all-in with shrink faster than the hands you can shove with, because calling gives up the fold equity that made the shove profitable. If you want the whole tournament picture around these decisions, the tournament strategy guide is the longer read.

The 5 big blind push/fold chart

Half the stack, and every range on the chart gets wider, which is the part most players have backwards. Down at five big blinds the instinct is to wait for a hand worth dying with. The blinds do not wait: posting both of them costs nearly a third of what you have left every orbit, so folding costs you more than shoving a mediocre hand does. Same conditions as the chart above, folded to you, 9-handed, no antes, counting chips.

Hold the two charts next to each other and you can see how far each seat moves. Under the gun goes from about 18% of hands to about 24%. The button goes from 44% to 54%. The small blind reaches 83%, and at that width the shortcut beats the chart: it folds 22 hands out of 169, and not one of them holds a card higher than a nine. From the small blind at five big blinds, a ten or anything above it is a shove.

The 15 big blind push/fold chart

Five more big blinds and every seat gets choosier. The reward for shoving is the same blinds it always was, the risk is half a stack larger, so the marginal hands come out of the range first: the weak offsuit aces, the small suited gappers, the hands that were only ever shoving because folding cost more. These ranges are the published 10 big blind chart tightened by about a fifth, which is where 15 big blinds sits between the two depths the books actually publish. They are the hands that are still a clear all-in at this depth.

At this depth the books that go further do not add a raise, they add a limp: the small blind at 10 to 15 big blinds plays push, limp or fold, and non-all-in raise sizes only start to appear around 17 big blinds. That is worth knowing before you treat a two-colour chart as the complete answer at 15.

The 20 big blind push/fold chart

At 20 big blinds, open-shoving stops being the default and open-raising takes over, so read this chart as the shove-only baseline rather than as a plan for the seat. The ranges are the 10 big blind chart cut by about a third, which is the reduction the literature describes between those two depths. Later seats still shove much wider than early ones, and the range at this depth is not premium hands only: suited aces, suited broadways and offsuit broadways are all in it. For the seats and stacks where raising is the better tool, use the standard opening charts.

One adjustment matters more than the chart here. If the players behind you call wide, tighten, because a shove earns most of its money from the folds and those folds are what a loose table takes away.

Calling a shove: why your range is tighter

Here is the asymmetry nobody explains up front, and it is the reason most short-stack money is lost. When you shove, you can win the pot two ways: everyone folds, or you win a showdown. When you call a shove, the first way is gone. Your hand has to be good enough on its own against the range that just went all in, so the range you can call with is far tighter than the range you can shove with.

Put the two charts side by side and the gap is stark. Under the gun shoves about 18% of hands. The seat directly behind can call with about 8%, and it is calling a range that already knows it will get looked up. The big blind calls widest of anyone, around 19%, only because it is getting a price nobody else at the table gets. AJo is a call in one seat and a fold in another for exactly that reason.

How to use push/fold charts

What these charts assume

Four conditions sit behind every chart here: the action folds to you, the table is 9-handed, there are no antes, and the numbers count chips rather than prize money. Antes change that arithmetic in your favor, because more dead money improves the reward side of the shove, so treat the chart as a floor once antes start, not a ceiling.

When does push/fold start?

Around 12 big blinds is the cleanest line the poker literature draws. Below it, all in or fold is close enough to optimal that the simplification costs you almost nothing. Between about 10 and 15 you are in a mixed zone where small raises and small-blind limps appear alongside shoves. Above 15, open raising is the better default from most seats, which is why the 15 and 20 charts here are a baseline rather than a whole strategy. Above 20 the answer is an opening range and a plan for the flop, which is what the preflop chart library is for. A chart stops at the lookup either way, and if you would rather drill these shoves until the answer arrives on its own, we compare the best poker training apps honestly, ours included.

Push/fold FAQ