A tournament stack of 12 big blinds feels like plenty until you try to play it normally. Open to 2.5 blinds, get reshoved on, and you are folding away a fifth of your stack or calling off the rest with a hand you never meant to play for everything. The short-stack fix is older than online poker: stop raising small. Move all in or fold, and let the maths of fold equity do the work.
The chart below shows the equilibrium for the cleanest version of that spot, heads-up between the small blind and the big blind. Choose which side you are on, whether there are antes, and the effective stack. Shaded squares are the shoves (or, for the big blind, the calls) at that depth, and the small number in each square is the widest stack at which that hand is still a shove or a call.
SB shove, no ante, 10 bb: shoves 58.4% of hands
- Shove at the chosen stack
- Fold
- 11.6Widest stack in big blinds; * marks a hand with a gap
K2o
Offsuit - 12 combinations
SB shove, no ante: shove at 11.6 bb or less.
At 10 bb: shove.
Where these numbers come from
This is a heads-up Nash equilibrium for the push/fold game: the small blind may only shove or fold, the big blind may only call or fold, and each side's range is the best possible reply to the other's. Neither player can gain by changing strategy alone. We computed it ourselves. First, the all-in equity of every one of the 169 hand types against every other, from 100,000 simulated boards per matchup, with card removal counted (holding an ace makes the opponent less likely to hold one). Then the two ranges were solved against each other at every stack from 1 to 20 big blinds in steps of a tenth, measuring results in chips, with blinds of 0.5 and 1.
We checked the output against published heads-up equilibrium tables and the two agree to within about a tenth of a big blind for nearly every hand; the handful that differ more are the ones with gaps, described below. Simulation noise of that size does not change a decision you can make at a real table, where nobody's stack is exactly 11.6 blinds anyway.
How to read it
Everything is in effective stacks: the smaller of the two stacks, measured in big blinds. If you have 30 blinds and the big blind has 9, you are playing a 9 blind pot, because that is all you can win or lose. Find the hand, read the number, and shove if the effective stack is at or below it. K2o reads 11.6, so it is a shove at 11 blinds and a fold at 13. J2o reads 4.6. 72o, the weakest-looking hand in the deck, is still a correct shove at 1.6 blinds or less: at that depth the small blind you would fold away is almost a third of your stack, and even seven-deuce wins often enough when called to beat that loss.
A few small suited hands, 53s, 43s and 63s among them, carry an asterisk. They are shoves at the very shortest stacks, folds for a stretch, and shoves again a little deeper. That is not a mistake in the chart. It is how the equilibrium behaves when a hand sits right on the edge, and the detail card lists the exact windows. In practice, treat them as close decisions either way.
| Stack | SB shoves | BB calls | Shoves, ante | Calls, ante |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 bb | 72.2% | 62% | 75% | 69.5% |
| 8 bb | 61.7% | 45.4% | 66.8% | 49.9% |
| 10 bb | 58.4% | 37.3% | 62.3% | 42.1% |
| 12 bb | 53.2% | 33% | 58.4% | 37.3% |
| 15 bb | 45.7% | 28.8% | 52.3% | 31.8% |
Why calling is tighter than shoving
Look at any row of that table and the calling range is much narrower than the shoving range. At 10 blinds the small blind shoves about 58 percent of hands and the big blind calls with about 37 percent. The reason is fold equity. The shover wins in two ways: the big blind folds and the blinds are picked up, or the big blind calls and the shover's hand wins. The caller has only the second way. So a hand like 98 offsuit, which runs well enough to shove at every depth in the chart, is a call only at 6 blinds or less. If you are the big blind facing a shove, flip the chart to "BB call" before you follow your gut.
The same logic explains why the shoving range widens as stacks shrink. At 5 blinds the big blind is already getting a decent price on any call, calls with about 62 percent of hands, and your fold equity is small. You still shove about 72 percent, because the blinds are a big share of a 5 blind stack and even a weak hand keeps around a third of the pot when it is called.
Antes change the price
With antes in the pot, there is more dead money to steal and every range widens. The ante option models a classic structure in which both players post one-eighth of a big blind. At 10 blinds that lifts the shoving range to about 62 percent and the calling range to about 42 percent. Many tournaments now use a single big blind ante instead, where the big blind posts the whole ante for the table. The pot is bigger still in that format, so expect ranges wider than the ante column here, not narrower.
ICM, briefly
Everything above counts chips. Tournament payouts do not. The Independent Chip Model (ICM) converts stacks into shares of the prize pool, and its key lesson is that chips you lose are worth more than chips you win: busting on the bubble costs a payout you were one place away from, while doubling up does not double your equity. Near the money and at final tables that pushes ranges tighter, and it pushes calling ranges tighter much faster than shoving ranges, because calling risks your tournament without the fold equity that protects the shover. A big stack threatening a short one can shove wider than the chart. A medium stack calling a shove on the bubble should call far tighter than the chart says.
Shoving from earlier seats
The chart is heads-up. From the button or earlier, more players are left to act, and each of them is another chance that someone wakes up with a hand. We do not print numbers for those seats, because a sound multi-player equilibrium is a different and much larger calculation, and made-up figures would be worse than none. The direction is not in doubt: every extra player behind you tightens the range, so the small blind column is the loosest you should ever be. From early position at 10 blinds, stick closer to pairs, strong aces and the best broadway hands, and use the starting hands chart for opening ranges once you have more than 15 or 20 blinds.
When the chart misleads
An equilibrium assumes the other player plays well. Against a big blind who folds too much, shove wider than the chart, since your steals succeed more often. Against one who calls with any ace or any two suited cards, tighten up and shove for value, because your fold equity has gone. It also assumes nobody limps or min-raises. At 12 to 15 blinds, modern players mix in small raises and limps, and a pure shove chart is a simplification there. And it assumes antes and blinds as modelled; a big blind ante, a straddle or an unusual structure moves the numbers.
None of that makes the chart less useful. It is the baseline you deviate from on purpose, and it stops the most common short-stack leak outright: folding too much when shoving costs almost nothing.
Train the decision
The chart gives you the answer; repetition makes it automatic. All-in or fold deals you a hand and asks the same question every time. Its opponent always calls, so it trains the showdown half of the decision (which hands hold up when they get called) rather than fold equity, which is exactly why the chart shoves wider than the game rewards. For the odds behind every all-in, the poker odds section has the preflop matchups. And if short stacks are a regular part of your week, the bankroll guide covers how many tournament buy-ins to keep behind you, because variance at 10 blinds is brutal even when every decision is right.