A push fold chart shows a short-stacked tournament player which hands to open-shove and which to fold, based on stack size in big blinds. The Nash push fold chart, the best-known version, lists the largest stack at which each hand is a profitable shove or call, assuming both players play perfectly.
Solvers and study apps have made unexploitable poker strategies far easier to learn, and push/fold ranges are where GTO poker study pays off fastest. Follow the chart and your shoves are profitable over the long run, whether the profit comes from the fold equity you collect when opponents fold or from your hand’s equity against a correct calling range when they call.
What Is a Nash Push Fold Chart?
A Nash equilibrium is a set of strategies, one for each player, where no one can do better by changing their own play alone. In a push fold chart, that means a shoving range and a calling range that are each the best response to the other.
The chart below is built for heads-up play. Its push side gives the Small Blind’s open-shoving range, and its call side gives the Big Blind’s calling range against that all-in. Each number is the largest effective stack, in big blinds, at which the hand is a correct shove or call.
Using the Chart From Other Positions
The push side also works as a rough guide from later seats. From the Button, divide every number by two to account for the extra player behind you. With 95s on the Button and the action folded to you, halving the chart’s figure means shoving is profitable at 7.2bb or less.
From the Cutoff, divide the original numbers by four. The shortcut gets less reliable the further you sit from the blinds, because the chart caps its values at “20+” big blinds and many hands carry that figure.
When Should You Play Push/Fold?
Push/fold is the default framework once your stack drops to around 10bb or less. There’s too little behind to raise and fold comfortably, and an all-in gets the most fold equity out of the chips you have. Between roughly 10bb and 20bb, a mix of shoves and small raises is standard, and raise-folding is still correct in some spots under 15bb. From 20bb up, a min-raise that keeps post-flop play open usually beats shoving.
The same skills matter outside multi-table tournaments. In Sit & Gos, where the top three places take the prizes, so many hands are played short-stacked that a solid short-stack game decides a large share of your results.
What Changes Your Push Fold Ranges?
No chart covers every spot, so these are the factors that move your ranges away from the standard numbers:
- Your stack depth: the fewer big blinds you have, the wider you can shove.
- Effective stacks: you can only win or lose what your opponent has in front of them. If you have 15bb and everyone left to act has 10bb, you’re shoving for 10bb, not 15bb, and their calling ranges follow their stacks.
- Ante size: antes put more chips in the pot preflop, so the bigger the ante relative to the big blind, the wider your shoving range.
- Table position: the further you are from the big blind, the tighter your range must be. Every extra player left to act is another chance that someone wakes up with a hand good enough to call.
- Tournament structure: fast levels force you to build a stack, so take more marginal +EV shoves. In slower structures you can pass on some of those thin spots.
- Payout structure: near a significant pay jump, and above all at the final table, ICM changes the maths. Say one player has 20bb, you have 10bb and three others have 5bb each. Take far fewer chances with your 10bb and let the short stacks double up or bust first, so you move up the payout ladder.
- Opponent skill: the stronger your opponents, the more you should lean on push/fold and avoid post-flop spots, shoving any hand that’s profitable at your effective stack (especially under 20bb).
- Your skill: the stronger your post-flop game, the more you can mix open-raises into the 12bb to 20bb range instead of shoving.
How Do You Find Push Fold Ranges for Every Position?
For early and middle positions, and for any stack or table size, you need a tool that calculates ranges directly. SnapShove, an app developed by poker pro Max Silver, is built for exactly that purpose and runs on iOS and Android. The free version covers the basics, and paid options unlock the full feature set.
Enter four details and tap “Calculate” to get the correct shoving range:
- Number of players
- Ante/big blind
- Your stack in big blinds (or the effective stack)
- Your position
The app’s Call mode works the other way around. Add the position of the player who shoved and it shows the range you should be calling with.
SnapShove is ideal for a quick refresher at the table. For deeper study away from it, many pros use ICMIZER, which calculates push/fold ranges with ICM built in.
How Do You Read ICMIZER Push Fold Charts?
Each hand in an ICMIZER chart has a small number underneath it: the average number of big blinds you win or lose by shoving that hand. Multiply it by 100 to get a bb/100 win rate. A hand showing 0.35 earns about 35bb per 100 shoves, which is a healthy margin to shove with confidence.
The colours tell you what to do at a glance:
- Shove the hands in green and fold the hands in red.
- The darker the green, the more profitable the shove.
- Solid green squares are the “slam-dunk” shoves, worth +0.20bb per hand (20bb/100) or more.
- Fainter green marks thinner shoves, worth between +0.01bb and +0.19bb per hand.
- Red hands lose money in the long run when shoved preflop, so fold them.
Push Fold Ranges at 12bb by Position
The ICMIZER charts below show push/fold ranges for a 12bb stack at a 9-handed table, with a 12.5% ante collected from each player every hand. For each seat, the first figure is the share of hands worth at least +0.20bb per shove, and the second is every hand with a positive expected value.
Early Position: UTG and UTG+1
7.39% with a minimum EV of +0.20bb; 12.67% with all +EV hands.
Early Position: UTG+2
9.8% with a minimum EV of +0.20bb; 17.5% with all +EV hands.
Middle Position: Lojack
13.12% with a minimum EV of +0.20bb; 21.21% with all +EV hands.
Middle Position: Hijack
15.99% with a minimum EV of +0.20bb; 26.49% with all +EV hands.
Late Position: Cutoff
23.68% with a minimum EV of +0.20bb; 33% with all +EV hands.
Late Position: Button
30.92% with a minimum EV of +0.20bb; 39.22% with all +EV hands.
Late Position: Small Blind
55.35% with a minimum EV of +0.20bb; 69.65% with all +EV hands.
How Do You Turn Percentages and Hand Notation Into a Chart?
Not every study source uses ICMIZER’s grid. Some give shoving ranges as a percentage of hands, others in hand notation, and an equity program such as PokerCruncher (Mac) or Equilab (Windows) turns either format into a visual chart.
Shoving Ranges as Percentages
If a source tells you to shove about 20% of hands, drag the slider under the program’s hand grid to 20% and the selected hands are highlighted.
The program’s ranking of the “top 20%” is partly arbitrary, so treat it as a starting point. Deselect hands you don’t want and swap in others when you build your exact range, such as 55 in place of A4s.
Shoving Ranges in Hand Notation
Other programs and sites list ranges in notation such as 66+, A9s+, A5s, AQo+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs. Paste the notation into the same software to see the range on a grid.
How Should You Adjust to Opponents Who Call Too Tight or Too Loose?
Charts assume your opponent calls with an optimal range. When they don’t, adjust your shoving range slightly.
If Your Opponent Calls Too Tightly
- Every hand you shove gains chipEV, because you win the blinds and antes uncontested more often.
- Some slightly losing shoves become winning ones, depending on how much more than optimal they fold.
- Marginal winning shoves turn into clear, “slam-dunk” shoves.
If Your Opponent Calls Too Loosely
- Your chipEV rises slightly for the hands you already shove, especially the strong ones, but your variance climbs sharply.
- Many players react by shoving a much narrower range than their stack calls for. That’s a mistake: they give up +EV spots with the medium-strength hands they now fold.
- Stick to your standard ranges and accept the variance.
Why Do Some Hands Shove Better Than Others?
An equity calculator shows why a chart includes one hand and folds another. Take A2s and T9s, and run both against a calling range of 22+, ATs+, KJs+, AJo+:
Head to head, A2s is a small favourite over T9s, at about 54%. Against the calling range, T9s does nearly six percentage points better (roughly 39% equity against 34%).
Counting the poker combos explains the gap: 52 of the range’s 138 combos are bigger aces that dominate A2s, before you count pocket aces. T9s is rarely dominated and can still make straights and flushes against big pairs. Running your own hands against realistic calling ranges is the fastest way to learn how to build your shoving ranges.
Key Takeaways
- A push fold chart shows which hands to shove or fold by stack size. The Nash version lists the largest stack at which each hand is a correct shove or call in heads-up play.
- For a rough guide from later seats, halve the chart’s numbers on the Button and divide them by four in the Cutoff.
- Push/fold is the default at around 10bb or less. Between 10bb and 20bb, mix shoves with small raises.
- Stack depth, effective stacks, antes, position, tournament structure, payouts (ICM) and skill levels all move your ranges.
- Apps and software such as SnapShove and ICMIZER give exact ranges for any seat. In ICMIZER charts, shove the green hands and fold the red ones.
- Against tight callers, your shoves gain value. Against loose callers, keep your standard ranges and accept the variance.
- Weak aces suffer more against calling ranges than suited connectors, because bigger aces dominate them.
