Push/Fold Charts by Stack Depth: 15bb Down to 5bb

There isn't one push/fold chart — there's a different one for every stack depth. A hand that's a clear fold at 15 big blinds can be a clear shove at 8, and the player who uses a single "short stack chart" for everything is leaving chips on the table at both ends. This guide walks down the stack from 15bb to 5bb and shows exactly how — and why — your shoving range widens at each step.

If you'd rather see it than read it, our interactive push/fold chart lets you flip between every depth and position covered below. This article is the "why" behind that tool.

Why the chart changes with every blind

Every open-shove is a bet that wins one of two ways: everyone folds, or you get called and your hand holds up. The shorter your stack, the more the first way carries the load — and the math tilts in your favor. The break-even fold frequency for a shove with no showdown equity is just your risk over the total pot:

Look at how the bar drops. At 15bb you need opponents to fold five times out of six; at 5bb, not even two times out of three. A shorter shove risks fewer chips to win the same blinds and antes, so it can profit with far more hands. That single relationship is the engine behind every push/fold chart, and it's why the colored region of the grid expands as the stack shrinks.

15 big blinds: the transition zone

At 15bb you're on the border between "real poker" and pure push/fold. From early position you still want a genuine hand to jam — roughly the top 8–10%: big pairs, strong aces, the best suited broadways. But from the button and small blind, open-shoving already makes sense with a wide range because raise-folding a third of your stack is a disaster waiting to happen.

• UTG: premium pairs, AK/AQ, the best suited aces — about 8%.
• Cutoff: any pair, most aces, suited broadways and connectors — about 25%.
• Button: wider still — roughly 35%+, including offsuit broadways and suited gappers.
• Small blind: heads-up against one player with dead money in the middle — 40%+.

Above 15bb you can start to min-raise/fold again and the pure push/fold framework loosens; below it, the shove-or-fold logic takes over completely. For how the antes in your specific structure shift these numbers, see how ante size changes your push/fold chart.

10 big blinds: pure push/fold

At 10bb there's no debate — you are shoving or folding, full stop. A min-raise commits a fifth of your stack and you can't fold to the inevitable jam over the top, so the raise just becomes a worse version of the shove. Every range widens noticeably versus 15bb because your shove needs to work less often:

• UTG: ~12% — small and medium pairs join, more suited aces.
• Cutoff: ~35% — any ace, most suited kings, broadways, connectors.
• Button: ~50% — half of all hands; offsuit aces and kings come in.
• Small blind: ~50%+ — almost any two cards with a high card or suitedness.

8 and 6 big blinds: getting desperate, getting wider

Below 10bb, fold equity is still real but your own survival clock is loud. The counterintuitive truth is that you should be shoving wider, not tighter: waiting for a premium costs ~1.5bb per orbit in blinds and antes, and at 8bb that's bleeding 15–20% of your stack while you fold. From late position at 8bb the button can shove 55–60% of hands; at 6bb the small blind is jamming almost any two with a face card or a suited connection.

This is the single most common short-stack leak: folding too tight when you're desperate. The math says the opposite — get your chips in while you still have enough fold equity to matter.

5 big blinds: max fold equity, but they're priced in

At 5bb you barely cover the blinds. Your fold equity per shove is at its lowest in absolute terms (a 5bb shove into a 3bb pot only needs ~62% folds), but the players behind you are getting such a good price that they'll call wide — so your realized fold equity drops. The adjustment is subtle: keep shoving a wide, high-card-heavy range, but don't expect the folds you got at 12bb. You're now mostly racing, so prioritize hands with raw equity (any ace, any pair, two Broadway cards) over pure junk.

How to read a push/fold chart

Every push/fold chart is the same 13×13 grid: pairs down the diagonal, suited hands upper-right, offsuit lower-left. A colored cell means shove; a blank cell means fold. To use one in real time:

1. Find your effective stack in big blinds (the smaller of your stack and the caller's).
2. Pick the chart for your position — they differ enormously from UTG to the button.
3. Look up your hand and shove or fold. No middle ground.
4. Adjust for antes (wider) and ICM (tighter) — see below.

The other half of push/fold is the calling side: when you're in the big blind facing a shove, you need a tighter range because you're playing for raw equity with no fold equity of your own. Our push/fold chart has a dedicated big-blind calling mode for exactly this.

Two adjustments the chip-EV chart doesn't show

The ranges above are chip-EV baselines. Two real-world forces pull you off them:

• Antes widen everything. More dead money lowers the fold % your shove needs, so big-ante structures justify even looser jams. A no-ante chart is too tight in a big-blind-ante event.
• ICM tightens everything near pay jumps. On a bubble or pay ladder, busting costs real money, so shed the marginal shoves — and especially the marginal calls. We cover this in ICM bubble strategy and the Nash vs ICM breakdown.

Once the chart makes sense, the next step is recall under pressure. Set our preflop range trainer to push/fold mode and drill until shoving A7o from the cutoff at 9bb is automatic. For the foundational math, start with short stack tournament strategy.