Small Blind Push/Fold: How Wide to Shove from the SB

Published 2026-10-20

The small blind is the widest push/fold seat at every stack from 5BB to 20BB. At 10BB it shoves 58% of hands against 33% for the button, because only the big blind is left to act and half a big blind is already in the pot. The range fades quickly as the stack grows, from 72% at 5BB to 40% at 20BB, so the stack depth matters as much as the seat.

Why does the small blind shove so wide?

Two things stack up in the small blind's favor. First, a shove only has to get through the players still left to act, and from the small blind that is a single opponent. Every other seat has at least two players left to act, and early seats have many more. Second, the small blind has already put half a big blind into the pot, so a successful shove wins a pot that already contains your own money and the big blind's, and folding gives up a stake you have partly committed.

The result is a range that sits well above everything else on the chart. At 10BB in 6-max the under-the-gun seat shoves 13%, the cutoff 24%, the button 33%, and the small blind 58%. The jump from the button to the small blind is 25 percentage points, which is larger than the jump from the cutoff to the button. For the full seat-by-seat picture, see push/fold by position.

How wide is the small blind push range at each stack?

It starts at 72% at 5BB and ends at 40% at 20BB, and the small blind is the widest seat at every stack in between. The right-hand column shows how far above the button it sits. The cutoff and button columns are 6-max; the 9-max small blind shoves exactly the same percentage, for example 58% at 10BB, because the same single big blind is left to act.

Each stack has its own chart hub with every seat side by side: 5BB, 8BB, 10BB, 12BB, 15BB and 20BB.

Which hands does the small blind shove that the button folds?

The extra width is mostly weak and medium offsuit hands that the other seats leave in the muck. At 10BB the small blind shoves K2o 100% of the time and Q8o 100% of the time, where the button shoves them 1% and 1% of the time. Even A2o, a clear shove from the small blind (100%), is only a 56% shove on the button at the same stack. The table shows the pattern across the four 6-max seats.

Hands at the bottom still fold from every seat: 72o is a shove 0% of the time even from the small blind. Wide does not mean everything. You can look up any single hand across all seats and stacks on the hand pages.

How does the small blind range change as the stack gets deeper?

Fast. Between 10BB and 20BB the small blind loses 18 percentage points of range, from 58% to 40%. Weak offsuit hands go first: Q8o is shoved 100% at 10BB and 1% at 20BB. Ace-high hands and suited hands hold on far longer, since A2o is still shoved 100% at 20BB and 96s is shoved 94%.

The deeper end of this range is covered in push/fold at 12BB, 15BB and 20BB, including which hands drop out first at every seat.

Does the small blind ever mix between shoving and folding?

A few hands sit on the edge of the range, and the chart gives them a frequency instead of a yes or no. At 12BB in 6-max the small blind's most marginal hands are Q8o and K4o, which the chart shoves only part of the time. These are the close calls: the value of shoving and folding is nearly equal, so the choice costs little either way. The Nash charts explained guide covers why these frequencies exist.

What are the common small blind push/fold mistakes?

The first is copying the button range. The two seats are close at deep stacks, only 20 points apart at 20BB, but at 5BB the small blind is 32 points wider (72% vs 40%), so reusing one range for both seats leaves a lot of shoving unclaimed. The second is using one number for every stack: the small blind range is 62% at 8BB, 58% at 10BB and 52% at 12BB, so a single "shove about half" rule is wrong at one end or the other.

The third is treating a chart as a promise of profit on every hand. Hands near the edge of the range are worth only slightly more as a shove than as a fold, which is why the exact boundary matters less than getting the big picture right: wide at short stacks, steadily narrower as you go deeper.

How should you use these numbers at the table?

Treat the small blind as the seat where push/fold is easiest to get wrong by being too tight. When the action folds to you, start from the chart for your exact stack, not from a rule of thumb: the range is 62% at 8BB and 52% at 12BB, and a single rounded number would be wrong at one end or the other. Remember also what the chart is: a shove-or-fold plan for the case where everyone else has folded. It does not include limping or min-raising, and the numbers are chip-EV Nash ranges rather than ICM-adjusted ones. For how that changes near a bubble, read ICM vs chip-EV push/fold.

To make the ranges automatic, drill the seat rather than the grid. The small blind is a good place to start because it has the most hands to learn and the biggest cost for forgetting them, and the memorization guide lays out a schedule. If you also play full ring, the same small blind ranges apply at 9-max, as shown in push/fold at a 9-max table. For exact lookups, open a spot page directly, for example the 6-max small blind at 10BB, the 6-max small blind at 15BB or the 9-max small blind at 10BB.

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