Shove Fold Charts Poker
In the last Sit N Go article I discussed the role of ICM in SNG strategy. Another key part of SNG strategy as the tourney moves on into the middle and late stages is the Push/Fold Game.
Push Fold Charts Discover the importance of push/fold poker charts in tournament strategy and find out when you should employ each and how in your poker game.
What is the Push/Fold Game?
- Free downloadable push/fold charts to help you play perfect short-stacked poker in heads up games. Never make a mistake when you fall below ten big blinds. Play error-free poker!
- ICM calculators vs. Push-fold charts What are your guys' thoughts on these? I've tried using both the Power Numbers chart from Kill Everyone, which is based upon 3-8M play far from the money (very rare scenario in a SNG), and also calculators like ICMIZER.
- The best short stack poker strategy is to play tight preflop, fold all speculative hands like suited connectors and suited aces, bet small postflop with both your bluffs and your value hands, play your draws fast and use the squeeze play often. These are some of the most important parts of a good short stack poker strategy.
Push/fold strategy boils down to limiting your choices to either pushing all-in or folding your hand. This allows for maximum fold equity to pick-up the blinds and antes and makes it so you don’t commit some valuable chips pre-flop but then fold to post-flop pressure. You also get the added benefit of nice double-ups when your opp’s call you with inferior hands.
When to start the Push/Fold Game
The push/fold game starts once you reach the 50/100 and the 75/150 levels. Here, the 1,500 starting stack is only 10-15bb’s, and this is where many SNG players start their push/fold game. Everything you’ve learned up to this point has been geared to get you to this profitable spot. It’s profitable because your opponents call shoves too wide or don’t shove wide enough to pick-up the super important blinds and antes.
Pay attention to all showdowns and take note on your opponents regarding when they start their push/fold game and what they push with. Some begin early at sub-15bb’s. Others start super late at 7bb’s, and some never do it. Noting when they tend to push/fold will alert you to any changes in behavior, which could indicate hand strength. If you know that “9bb Norman” always pushes at 9bb’s or less, but suddenly at 7bb’s he min-opens, there’s a chance he’s got a nut hand and wants action. You can play him accordingly and give his unusual play the respect it deserves and fold out all but the best pre-flop hands.
(Of course, smart players can use this against you, so make note if you ever catch someone using a reverse tell like this.)
Why Use the Push/Fold Strategy
This is all about maximizing fold equity. When the blinds/antes are a big portion of your stack, you’ve got to do all you can to collect them.
If you’ve got a 1,500 chip starting stack, the 6 max blinds and antes at the 50/100 level could be 210 chips and collecting these adds 14% to your stack. At the 75/150 level? This would add up to 315 chips or 21% to your stack. Either of these are significant equity gains to your stack.
Pushing all-in maximizes your fold equity as only the strongest hands (or weakest players) will call for a big part of their stack, so we’ll be folding out most hands that would contend with a smaller raise of 2-3bb’s.
Another benefit of pushing all-in instead of making a smaller opening raise is that it doesn’t give our opponent the chance to re-raise all-in to put the pressure back on us. By shoving, we’ve put max pressure on our opponents and now the “ball’s in their court” as the saying goes.
Push/Fold Considerations
Your Hand
- The stronger your hand, the less fold equity you need; the weaker your hand the more you need.
- Try not to change your plays based on the strength of your hand. Like mentioned previously, perceptive opponents will notice when you deviate from your normal strategy and can change their plays based on your unusual actions.
Opponent Tendencies
- How likely will he fold? HUD stats and notes on opponents will tell you if he’s 90% likely to fold or only 70%.
- Against tight players (TAG’s and NIT’s) open up your range as much as possible
- Against loose callers (LAG’s, Fish and Donks) push a range that’s more value intensive (Aces are good for this as they’re less likely to have one if you do)
- Choose who you shove against wisely. Don’t jam wide vs wide callers.
Stack Sizes
- Pay attention to the stack sizes of those remaining in the SNG
- Big stacks call wider vs short-stacked shoves; fish call wider as well
- The bigger your stack in relation to theirs, the more pressure your shove puts on them
- Short stacks are much more likely to call than big stacks. They have lots to gain with the blinds/antes along with your bet, so they’ll call very wide.
- You have lots of fold equity vs similar sized stacks
- As a big stack put pressure on the medium sized stacks, especially when there’s a short stack or two in play near the bubble
- As a medium stack with a short stack or two in play, be more judicious in your choices to push all-in as you need to outlast these shorties.
Number of Players Remaining
- Players are less likely to call when on the bubble (OTB) because of the pressure of outlasting opponents to get into the money
- Jam wider OTB to build a big stack
- Make reads and take note of how your opponents play the bubble and just before the bubble
- Be careful that you know your opp’s and are making notes and reads to help you decide whether or not to shove.
Learning From Your Push/Fold Opportunities
As an SNG player, you’ll encounter the bubble and push/fold situations more times than you can shake a stick at.
As you play, tag hands where you have a push/fold decision and analyze them later in your HH review sessions. Use an ICM calculator (like ICMIZER or SNG EGT as discussed in the Middle-Stage SNG post). As you assign ranges to your opponents, make their ranges a little tighter when calculating their all-in shoves and wider when calculating their calling ranges. Being a bit more conservative on both fronts will slightly tighten you up, making your all-in ranges stronger.
The more you study these push/fold spots, the better innate understanding you’ll have of them which will help with profitable in-game decisions.
Push/Fold Charts
I mention using Push/Fold charts in the SNG Middle-Stage article, so please check that out, but I’ll make a quick mention of it here.
I used them in the past, but I found them to be a crutch and I would follow them overly-strictly and not even rely on opponent reads or the current game dynamic. I do recommend trying them, though, as many SNG players swear by them. Google “push fold charts” and try some for yourself.
Practice, Practice, Practice
The Push/Fold game isn’t something that anybody gets right off the bat. It takes time on and off the felt to work on this part of your game. Drop in stakes if you have to in order to get comfortable with shoving at around 10bb’s if you don’t yet do this. Tag hands and analyze them later, take notes on what you’ve learned, and put these into play in your next session.
Until next time, study smart, play much and make your next session the best one yet!
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Table Of Contents
Are you struggling to figure out what starting hands to play and how poker positions change the way you play preflop? You are not alone.
This article isn't a poker strategy crash course. Instead of focusing on generic winning poker tips and bankroll management advice like many other training poker sites do, it gives you something different.
It's a collection of advanced poker charts that improves your poker game by showing you how to play preflop. It gives you a clear overview of the starting hands range you should consider through some handy poker hands chart images, PDFs, and Excel files.
Continue reading to learn:
- And lots more
In other words, if you are looking for an in-depth game strategy guide to learn what is the best way to play poker preflop, you'll love this collection of poker range charts.
Why a Page about Poker Ranges?
All poker players have been there. Short-stacked. Bleeding chips with every orbit while staring at junk hand after junk hand. Feeling their chances of winning the tournament dwindle ever further while their stack continues to shrink.
Finally, they get a halfway decent hand. Nobody has entered the pot.
Is it time to shove?
There's an easy way to find out. Enter poker range charts. These handy tools allow players to see which poker hand ranges to play in preflop scenarios where the pot is unopened and a player plans to shove or fold.
Playing the proper ranges according to preflop charts make it so your play can't be exploited, so memorizing these is the key to short-stacked play.
Read on to learn more and find the accompanied printable poker hand ranges chart as a tool you can study to improve your performance when short-stacked.
What are poker ranges?
For those unfamiliar a poker hand range is simply a set of poker hands that may be held by a player. We try to estimate our opponents' ranges because guessing exact hole cards is a fruitless, nearly impossible exercise in most cases.
For example, if the tightest player you've ever seen reraises you preflop in hold'em, you may estimate their range to be aces and kings only.
On the other hand, if a player who hasn't folded one hand in an hour calls your raise, you may estimate their range to include any two cards in the deck. Of course, most hand ranges will be somewhere in between.
How Do You Calculate Poker Ranges?
Analyzing ranges can be a tricky proposition, and only by learning game theory and playing thousands of hands can a poker player get better at it.
Including some proper proper preflop strategy in your poker training will help you understand what poker hand ranges they'll play.
The more time you spend playing and watching opponents' hands at showdown, the more clues you'll get about their strategy. That will enable you to get more precise estimates of their ranges when playing future hands.
This video from poker pro Jonathan Little explores the concept in a little more depth and tries to answer the question 'how do I think in terms of hand ranges?'
How to Use Preflop Range Charts
Every position at the poker table has a certain range of starting hands that can be profitably shoved at a given stack depth.
Generally, these stack depths are at 20 big blinds or less.
Preflop range charts outline the hands that constitute a winning shoving range.
A player who knows these charts can shove with a positive expected value (+EV) no matter what cards are held by the opponents remaining to act.
Here on PokerNews you find free preflop poker charts for five different stack depths at both six-max tables and nine-handed tables.
Here's how to use them:
- Figure out how many big blinds you have in your stack.
- Go to the corresponding chart. If you have a stack that doesn't match one exactly, pick the closest one.
- Go to the column that corresponds to your seat.
- Scroll down until you get to the row that corresponds to your hole cards — the chart starts with pairs at the top, then ace-high hands, then king-high and so on.
- You can shove all of the hands listed there, as well as any hands to the left that were shoved in an earlier seat.
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Poker Ranges Charts
Here are 10 essential poker charts to help your preflop poker game.
They're broken into two categories: full-ring ranges and six-max ranges. Each category features shoving hands for five different stack sizes, raised in increments of three big blinds.
As you'll often have stacks in between these sizes, it may take a small amount of guesswork and intuition to expand or tighten the ranges a bit and get the appropriate strategy.
1. Full Ring Ranges Poker Charts
2. Six-Max Ranges Poker Charts
Use the Printable Poker Charts on Excel!
Want to bring all the poker charts with you? Make a copy of this shared Excel file and download the full collection of our advanced poker charts.
To create your own copy of all the poker charts on this article:
- Click on 'File'
- Then click on 'Create a Copy'
- Done! You can now use all these poker ranges charts to improve your win rate!
These are optimal poker ranges for winning chips if your opponents are calling correctly. Each poker chart should be adjusted depending on reads you can gather when you play cash games or tournament poker.
- If your opponents are calling too wide, shove a little tighter so you're more likely to have the best of it.
- If your opponents aren't calling wide enough, widen your range of hands and shove a few extra hands because you are likely to be able to steal their blinds.
Considerations should also be made for the state of the poker tournament, i.e. proximity to the money bubble, a pay jump, or a final table.
These can heavily influence calling ranges and proper shoving strategy, changing the way you should play if you are using these poker charts to play winning poker.
Some bits of the poker ranges charts may look a bit weird, specifically in regard to suited ace-high hands.
This is because some of the small suited aces perform slightly better against calling ranges than middle aces. At certain stack depths and positions, it's better to shove ace-five suited than ace-seven suited, for example.
How to memorize poker ranges
Given that there are 169 different hands in Texas hold'em poker, differently sized tables, and slightly different shoving ranges for every stack depth, it's unreasonable to think you'll be able to perfectly memorize an exactly correct shoving strategy.
Furthermore, doing so would probably be counter-productive, as you're better off dedicating your brainpower and efforts elsewhere.
Getting a rough idea of correct preflop poker ranges to shove will allow you to play well with a short stack while still improving your game in other aspects with your remaining study time.
There's no handy acronym like 'Roy G. Biv' (rainbow colors) or 'PEMDAS' (order of mathematical operations) to help you remember the shoving strategy offered in all the preflop range charts on this page.
And despite what other poker guides and poker training sites say, the purpose of poker charts like these ones is not to have you memorise everything. That's not how you will improve your win rate.
The best way to learn is to make your shoves and then continually check afterward whether it was correct. Eventually, the raising ranges will start to take shape in your memory.
Here are a few poker tips to keep in mind:
- Pairs are great to jam with. If you're under 10 big blinds, you can almost jam with any pair from any position. With such a small stack, waiting for top pairs is not a good idea.
- If your cards are unpaired, it's obviously preferable to have high suited cards.
- Small suited hands lose a lot of value in preflop shoving situations compared to their deep-stacked playability. Many hands wind up unimproved by the river, so the higher cards will win in these spots.
- Still, hands with a high card and low card (something like king-five offsuit) might be favored against something like ten-nine suited in a head-to-head clash, but the latter performs better against opponents' calling hands, so it's preferable to shove with.
The biggest jumps in shoving range will come the closer you get to the big blind — i.e., the difference between shoving in the first two seats is far less than the difference in shoving between the button and small blind.
This is because one extra fold represents a much bigger portion of the remaining opponents, meaning the likelihood of running into a big hand has decreased more significantly. So, get comfortable shoving very wide in the small blind and still quite wide from the button and cutoff.
Most Common Preflop Ranges
All percentile ranges you see below are taken from pokerhandrange.com
Top 7%
If you run into a very tight opponent, expect here or she to be opening something like the top 7% of hands from early or even middle position. Only the tightest ranges will play this way.
What does that look like? About as strong as you'd expect:
- 88
- ATs , AQo
- KJs
Top 15%
Opening the top 15% of hands is still quite tight, but allows a bit more play down to the strong offsuit Broadways, most of the suited aces, and all of the suited Broadways.
It's probably close to a 'typical' opening range for a standard live player:
- 66
- A5s , ATo
- K9s , KJo
- Q9s , JTs
Top 35%
If you run into a player who is aggressively trying to steal seemingly every time it's folded to them in late position, their range might be in the top 35% or so of hands, or potentially even wider.
That's going to include a great many suited combos with even just one Broadway, as well as some fairly weak offsuit holdings down to jack-nine:
- 33
- A2s , A5o
- K2s , K8o
- Q4s , Q9o
- J7s , J9o
- T7s
- 97s
- 87s
Shove Fold Charts Poker Dice Game
Top 60%
Only the absolute loosest, most aggressive opposition will play a range this wide, but it certainly does happen.
The top 60% is usually reserved for short-stacked players shoving from the button and small blind, so if you wonder what that range might look like, here it is:
Poker Shove Fold Charts
- 22
- Ax
- K2s , K3o
- Q2s , Q5o
- J2s , J7o
- T2s , T7o
- 94s , 97o
- 84s
- 74s
- 64s
- 54s
Additional Readings
Now that you have our starting hands range and you have all the information you need on your Excel printable file, it's time to continue this poker lab experiment with more poker guides.
If you are really committed to playing better poker, here's a list that will help you reach your goals.
- Essential Poker Tips: a complete collection of the most effective poker tips we know. While some might be more beginner-oriented, other tidbits might help also more seasoned players.
- Poker Equity: one of the most popular poker articles ever published in our advanced poker strategy section. This is one of those must-read poker guides you need to go through at least once in your (poker) life.
- Poker Positions: having our printable poker range charts in PDF is not enough to become a winning poker player. You need a lot more — including this guide to poker positions. Learn how every position named at the table and learn how to use everything to your advantage when you fire up your poker software.
- The Best Online Poker Sites: the world-famous and award-winnings PokerNews rankings. If you ever wanted to play a hand of online poker, this is the perfect starting point for you.
- Mobile Poker Sites: some poker software a great on desktop, but how about their mobile apps? Read this one to find out what brands offer the top mobile products in the industry.
- Free Poker Sites: Not all online games cost money. All the sites on this list offer great poker games that will cost you nada.
- Poker Freerolls: want to win real money prizes but don't want to risk your own? play a freeroll! This page gives you access to all the top free poker tournaments happening right now.
Additional Note:
Shove Fold Charts Poker Charts
The shoving ranges in this article, while available in many forms on different poker resources, were specifically taken from SnapShove. Check out SnapShove for more information about preflop shoving and calling strategy.