Push/Fold Stack Size Calculator
Calculate the effective push/fold threshold in big blinds for poker tournaments.
Know when to push all-in or fold based on stack depth.
Why push/fold exists
Once your tournament stack drops below 15 big blinds, post-flop play becomes mathematically inferior to open-shoving or folding. You no longer have the chips to make pot-controlled raises, you cannot afford to fold to a 3-bet, and your opponents know it. Push/fold collapses the decision tree to one question: shove or muck.
Stack depth and strategy by big blinds
| Stack (BB) | Mode | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 25+ | Full strategy | Open-raise, 3-bet, post-flop play all normal |
| 15 to 25 | Selective shove | Open-shove from late position; raise/fold from earlier |
| 10 to 15 | Push or fold | Open-shove much wider; rarely just open-raise |
| 5 to 10 | Pure push/fold | Nash ranges apply; every hand is a binary decision |
| Under 5 | Any two | Shove any two cards from button or small blind |
Nash equilibrium pushing ranges
The Nash equilibrium for heads-up push/fold (small blind shoving, big blind calling) gives the mathematically unexploitable range. For a 10 BB stack, the small blind shoves about 53% of hands; the big blind calls about 38%. At 5 BB the small blind shoves about 70% and the big blind calls about 50%. These are the ranges to beat. Memorising a 10 BB chart for both sides covers 80% of late-tournament situations.
Antes change everything, but they do not change your stack
Here is a distinction worth getting right, because plenty of poker material blurs it and the two numbers pull in opposite directions.
Nash push/fold charts are indexed by your stack in plain big blinds. A 10 BB stack consults the 10 BB chart. Antes do not shrink your stack, and treating an ante-heavy 10 BB stack as though it were a 4 BB stack will have you shoving any two cards in a spot where the unexploitable range is about half the deck.
What antes do change is the prize. The measure for that is Harrington’s M, the number of orbits you can sit and fold before you are blinded away:
M = stack ÷ (small blind + big blind + all antes posted per hand)
A 600/1200 level with 200 antes at a 9-handed table puts 600 + 1200 + (200 × 9) = 3,600 chips in the middle before a card is dealt, a full three big blinds of dead money. A 12,000-chip stack is 10 BB, and its M is 12,000 ÷ 3,600 = 3.3. Ten big blinds sounds survivable. Three orbits does not, and three orbits is the truth.
So read the two together. Plain BB tells you which shoving range is correct; M tells you how urgently you need to use it. Antes make push/fold more aggressive by fattening the pot you are shoving to win, not by making your stack smaller than it is.
ICM and bubble factor
The chip-count math above ignores tournament payouts. Near the money bubble and on the final table, a chip you might lose is worth more than a chip you might win because busting in 10th costs you the 9th-place pay jump. Standard chip-EV push ranges over-shove in those spots. Real-world tournament players use ICM-adjusted ranges that fold more from middle stacks and shove wider as a chip leader. Software like ICMIZER or HRC is the working pro’s tool here.
The fold-equity reality
Push/fold lives or dies on fold equity. If everyone calls every shove, the math collapses and you are just gambling on equity. Look for tables where late-position opens are getting folded around enough that your shove picks up the blinds and antes uncontested. Free chips are worth more than coinflips.
How we build and check this calculator
This calculator runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter stay on your device. The math behind it is written by hand and tested against worked examples and standard references before the page goes live.
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