What is push/fold strategy in poker?
Push/fold is the short-stack regime — roughly 15 big blinds and below — where your only two opening moves are all-in or fold, played from charts derived from Nash equilibrium solutions of the jam-or-fold game.
Why it matters
Short stacks can't afford speculative raises: a 2.2bb open from a 12bb stack commits a fifth of your tournament life and then faces a shove with no good options. Jam-or-fold removes that trap. It converts poker's hardest street (the ones after the flop) into zero streets.
Because the game tree is tiny, push/fold is genuinely solved — the rare corner of poker where memorizing a chart makes you unexploitable, not just less bad.
The numbers
- HoldemPro's chart covers 5, 10, 15 and 20 big blinds from five seats. Shove-range width at 10bb runs from 10% (early) to 39% (small blind); at 20bb from 5% to 18%.
- The 15bb early-position shove is only 8% of hands: 77+, ATs+, AJo+, KQs.
- Position is worth more short than deep: at 20bb the small blind shoves 3.6× as many hands as early position.
Figures come from the same preflop charts and research data the rest of the site uses (charts last updated July 5, 2026); they change when that data does.
Simplified Nash open-shove ranges for 5–20bb from every position, written out as text.
Common questions
At what stack size does push/fold start?
Below ~15 big blinds it becomes the default from most positions; below 10bb virtually every open should be a jam or a fold. From 15–20bb it's position-dependent — late-seat min-raises are still fine.
Do push/fold charts work in cash games?
Rarely relevant — cash stacks are usually 100bb. They matter in tournaments, sit-and-gos, and any spot where blinds have eaten your stack. If you top up in cash games, you'll almost never be in the push/fold zone.
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