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Poker · Push or fold

Few blinds, one single decision.

When your stack is short, poker shrinks to one question: shove or fold. This tool does not hand you a chart to memorize — it shows you the math behind every shove.

The idea

The Nash chart comes out of this math.

With a short stack there is no play after the flop: every hand is decided before it. The all-in wins if you get called rarely, or if you get called but your equity holds. The famous push/fold charts are just this same math solved hand by hand — here you see the engine, not the cheat sheet.

Shove or fold?

With few blinds, every hand is a single decision: all or nothing.

How many big blinds you have.

What is already in the middle before your move.

%

How often you think someone calls your all-in.

%

Your chance of winning when you get called.

Expected value of the all-in

0.52 bb

Average gain versus not playing

Equity you would need

36%

For the all-in to be neutral

Profitable all-in

+0.52 bb

The all-in wins 0.52 blinds on average. Adding the times they fold and the times they call and you win, shoving beats folding.

Between 10 and 20 blinds you are nearly in push/fold: little room to play after the flop. The decision is usually shove or fold.

The Nash charts that circulate are not magic: they are the result of this very calculation, run for each hand and each stack. Understanding the EV of the all-in is worth more than memorising a chart — the chart changes with each opponent, the math does not.