PREFLOP CHART · ~55% of hands jam
BTN push/fold range at 10bb
At 10bb effective stacks, the math of postflop play collapses. The pot becomes nearly all-in by the time you bet a single street, removing the implied-odds incentive to play hands speculatively. The Nash equilibrium for the button vs blinds is pure push-or-fold: shove about 55% of hands, fold the rest. Calling becomes essentially extinct.
Range — the hands you play
- All pocket pairs (22 – AA)
- All suited aces, suited kings down to K3s
- All suited queens down to Q6s
- Most suited jacks and tens
- All Ax offsuit, KT+ offsuit
- Suited connectors and one-gappers down to 54s, T8s
Key insights
- BB will call your jam ~25% of the time — KQ, K9s+, A4o+, 55+, plus a slice of suited connectors.
- At 12bb you can still occasionally limp/raise or open-fold marginal hands; at 10bb the math forces push-or-fold.
- Don't deviate down to a 'safer' tighter range — every hand the equilibrium tells you to shove is +EV against the equilibrium calling range.
Frequently asked
What about open-shoving 10bb from positions other than BTN?
CO opens about 36%, HJ about 27%, MP about 20%. Same Nash logic, narrower stack-depth-adjusted ranges. The SB shoves much wider (~68%) because there's only the BB to get through.
Is push/fold ever a leak in MTTs?
Only if ICM pressure is significant (final tables, bubbles). At a 200-person field with hundreds of bb left in the average stack, raw cEV (chip-EV) push/fold is correct. Add ICM math near payjumps and you tighten slightly.