How Push/Fold Works
Below about 15BB, a normal open leaves too few chips to play after the flop, so your choice is shove or fold. Shoving gets the most fold equity your stack has and skips the postflop play where a better opponent beats you.
Stack-to-Pot Ratio (SPR)
Stack-to-pot ratio (SPR) is the stack you have behind divided by the pot. It tells you how many bets are left before you are all in. At an SPR of 5 or more you have room for two or three bets after the flop. Below 2 you have room for one: open to 2.5BB with 12BB, get called, and a pot-sized flop bet leaves 4.5BB behind.
The SPR column shows the flop SPR after a 2.5BB open is called, with a 5BB pot. The poker glossary covers SPR in deeper games.
| Stack depth | 2.5BB open, % of stack | Flop SPR |
|---|---|---|
| 30 bb | 8.3% | 5.5 |
| 20 bb | 12.5% | 3.5 |
| 15 bb | 16.7% | 2.5 |
| 12 bb | 20.8% | 1.9 |
| 10 bb | 25.0% | 1.5 |
| 8 bb | 31.3% | 1.1 |
| 5 bb | 50.0% | 0.5 |
Ranges Widen as Stacks Shorten
Shove wider when fewer players are left to act and when your stack is shorter. With 0.5/1 blinds and a 0.125BB ante, the solver shoves 44% of hands from the button at 10BB. From the first seat at 10BB it shoves 21%: every pair, most aces and the strongest kings. At 5BB in the small blind it shoves 81% of hands, J4o included.
96s is a shove from the small blind at 10BB when the action folds to you, both at 6-max and heads-up.
Heads-Up Push/Fold
Set Players to 2 for heads-up push/fold charts. The small blind is on the button and acts first, and at 10BB the solver plays 54% of hands from there, mostly as a 2BB raise with a shove for the rest. The big blind's calling range appears when you set the small blind to shove.
Calling Is Tighter Than Pushing
A shove wins when your opponent folds or when you win at showdown. A call can only win at showdown, so your calling range is always tighter than your shoving range at the same stack.
Blind Versus Blind
Most short-stack chips are won and lost between the blinds. Limping the small blind and folding too much in the big blind both cost you chips every orbit.
If the big blind folds too often, shove wider than the solver. If they call too often, shove tighter. Set each player's RFI% to match how often they open.
Reading the Ranges
Green is shove, purple is raise and grey is fold. Light purple (+EV Fold) hands make money shoving, but folding makes more. Combos count 6 for a pair, 4 for a suited hand and 12 for an offsuit hand.
The star is your seat, and you can click any seat to move it. Set each player in front of you to fold, shove or raise. If someone raises, you get two tabs: your shove range, and their calling range when you shove.
Nash Is Only a Baseline
Nash ranges cannot be exploited, but they do not exploit anyone either. Click any hand to add or remove it, and the solver updates the other player's range. The badge changes from NASH to ADJUSTED, and Reset to Nash undoes your edits.
Chip EV and ICM
These ranges are in chip EV, which ignores payouts. Near the bubble or a pay jump, losing chips hurts more than winning them helps, so medium and short stacks should shove and call tighter while big stacks can shove wider. Check those spots in the ICM deal calculator.
Limits
The solver is tested at 6-max from 5BB to 20BB and averages 0.71% off reference Nash ranges. At 8-max it fails half its tests, so it stops at 6 players and 20BB. For bigger tables or deeper stacks, use BBZ's Pre-flop Charts.
It does not adjust for ICM or for postflop play.
Sklansky-Chubukov Numbers
A Sklansky-Chubukov number is the deepest stack where a small-blind shove still makes money even if your opponent can see your cards. It is a different model from Nash.
All 169 hands, ranked by threshold →
