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Push fold calculator.
A chart tells you what to do at ten big blinds and stops there. This page does the sum instead: how often they all fold, how you do when one of them does not, and what those two add up to in big blinds. Change the stack, the seat or the range they call with and the answer moves with you.
the calculator
Your seat, six handed
A5s, 77, KJo, or two real cards like Ah5h.
What is in front of you now, after the blinds and antes are posted.
The two blinds are 1.5. Add the antes if there are any.
Everyone folds
.
Your equity when called
.
Value of shoving
.
the same numbers, spelled out
every starting hand at these settings
Ace five suited on the button at ten big blinds is already loaded, because it is the hand that teaches the lesson: it is a comfortable shove, and the moment somebody calls it is a coin flip. Press the button and those two facts arrive as separate numbers.
the sum behind the verdict
Most of a shove is the folds.
Call your stack S, call the money already in the pot D, and call the number of players still to act k. If one player calls a shove with a share c of his hands, then everybody folding has a chance of one minus c, raised to the power k. When that happens you win D and the hand is over. When it does not, you are in a pot of two S plus D with your equity against the range that called, and you have S at risk. Put together: the value of shoving is the chance they fold times D, plus the chance they call times your equity times the pot, minus your stack. Folding is worth nothing, because the blind you posted is already gone whatever you do.
The first half of that expression is why ace five suited is a shove and ace five suited is not a good hand. Winning one and a half big blinds without a fight, often enough, pays for the times you get called and lose. It is also why the number of players behind you matters more than almost anything else. One opponent calling twenty percent of the time folds to you 80.0 percent of the time. Five opponents with the same range fold to you 32.8 percent of the time, and the whole plan falls apart. The same seats are laid out in the preflop chart, where position drives every range on the page.
The equity half is where a chart cannot help you, because it depends entirely on what they call with. This page never guesses at that. It computes your real equity against the range in the field, hand by hand, using the same evaluator as the odds calculator. Draw a calling range you want to test in the range visualizer and paste the notation straight into the field above.
Three assumptions are baked in and you should know all of them. Only one player calls, so a spot where two players get involved is worth less than this page says. Everyone behind you is given the same calling range, which is generous to the earlier seats and slightly overstates how often you get through. And chips count as chips, which stops being true near a bubble: at that point busting costs more than doubling gains, and calls in particular tighten hard. The ICM calculator puts a number on that difference, and the terms are in the glossary entry on fold equity.
how often they all fold
| Each of them calls | 1 behind | 2 behind | 3 behind | 5 behind |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10% | 90.0% | 81.0% | 72.9% | 59.0% |
| 15% | 85.0% | 72.2% | 61.4% | 44.4% |
| 20% | 80.0% | 64.0% | 51.2% | 32.8% |
| 25% | 75.0% | 56.3% | 42.2% | 23.7% |
| 30% | 70.0% | 49.0% | 34.3% | 16.8% |
Read down a column and you can see why shoving from the button works and shoving from under the gun does not. Nothing about your hand changes between those two seats. The only thing that changes is how many times in a row somebody has to fold, and that is a power, not a subtraction.
the calling ranges this page starts from
| Against a shove from | Stack | Share of hands | Notation |
|---|---|---|---|
| BTN | 10 bb | 33.6% | 22+, A2s+, A2o+, K4s+, K8o+, Q7s+, QTo+, J8s+, JTo, T8s+, 98s |
| CO | 10 bb | 24.9% | 22+, A2s+, A5o+, K7s+, KTo+, Q9s+, QJo, J9s+, T9s |
| MP | 10 bb | 19.3% | 33+, A2s+, A7o+, K9s+, KJo+, QTs+, JTs |
| SB | 10 bb | 39.7% | 22+, A2s+, A2o+, K2s+, K7o+, Q5s+, Q9o+, J7s+, J9o+, T7s+, 97s+, 86s+, 76s, 65s |
| UTG | 10 bb | 15.2% | 44+, A2s+, A9o+, KTs+, KQo, QJs |
These are big blind calling ranges at ten big blinds, and they are a starting point rather than a fact about the player in seat four. The suggestion button loads the row that matches your seat and the closest stack depth on file. Then change it, because the honest version of this calculation is the one where you test the range you actually think he has, and the one where you check that your decision survives him being wider.
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Most hands never reach ten big blinds.
This page covers the end of a tournament stack, where the decision tree has two branches. Everything before that has more branches and more money in play, and the seat you are sitting in decides most of it. That is what a preflop chart is actually for.
push fold questions
What is push fold poker?
Below roughly fifteen big blinds, raising and then folding to a reraise costs you most of your stack for nothing, so the sensible plan shrinks to two options: all in, or fold. Push fold is that plan. It sounds crude and it is close to optimal, because at those depths the value of taking down the blinds uncontested is a large share of what your stack is worth.
How does this calculator decide?
It works out what shoving is worth in big blinds and compares it with folding, which is worth exactly nothing. Two things drive the answer: how often everyone folds, which is the chance one player calls raised to the power of the number of players behind you, and how you do when somebody does call, which is your real equity against the range they call with. Both are shown next to the verdict.
What stack size should I start shoving at?
There is no line, and the answer depends as much on who is behind you as on the stack. The direction is consistent though: the shallower you are, the more the blinds are worth against what you are risking, so the range widens. Type your own stack into the field and press solve the whole grid, and you get the range for that exact depth against that exact calling range, rather than a chart rounded to the nearest one you remember.
Does this calculator use ICM?
No, and that matters. Everything here counts chips as chips, which is right in a cash game and in the early stages of a tournament. Near a bubble or a pay jump, busting costs you more than doubling gains you, and calls in particular become much tighter than these numbers suggest. The ICM calculator prices that difference.
Why does the answer change when I change their calling range?
Because that range is most of the calculation. Shoving into someone who calls with a fifth of his hands is a very different proposition from shoving into someone who calls with two thirds of them. If you do not know, start with the range this page suggests for the position and depth, then widen it and see whether your decision survives.
Is the answer exact?
The arithmetic is. The equity is sampled rather than counted, because counting every runout against a whole calling range would take minutes in a browser, so the margin of error is printed next to the result and hands that fall inside it are marked as too close to call rather than pretending to a verdict.
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