What is a shove in poker?
A shove (also called a jam or push) is betting your entire remaining stack — and for short tournament stacks, open-shoving replaces raising because it maximizes fold equity and leaves no postflop decision to misplay.
Why it matters
Shoving is the great equalizer of tournament poker. A raise can be 3-bet, flatted, or floated; a shove asks one question and ends the conversation. Below roughly 15 big blinds this simplicity stops being a compromise and becomes the highest-EV line for most opens.
The skill is not courage — it's knowing the chart. Which hands shove from which seat at which depth is a solved problem, and players who memorize it stop punting short stacks.
The numbers
- At 10 big blinds in HoldemPro's push/fold chart, early position shoves 10% of hands, the cutoff 22%, the button 32%, and the small blind 39%.
- At 5 big blinds the small blind shoves any two cards (100%), because with the blinds this big nobody folds enough to make folding better.
- The 10bb button shoving range is: 22+, A2+, K5s+, K9o+, Q8s+, QTo+, J8s+, JTo, T8s+, 98s.
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
When should you shove instead of raise?
As a default: below ~15 big blinds from most seats, and below 10bb almost always. Between 15–20bb late-position min-raises remain fine. The dividing line is fold equity — a raise you can never fold to a shove was a worse shove.
Is shoving with a short stack reckless?
The opposite — it's the disciplined play. Nash shoving ranges are unexploitable baselines: even if opponents call perfectly, the shove doesn't lose. What's reckless is open-raising a 9bb stack and folding to a jam.
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