Spin & Go Push-Fold Chart at 10 BB: How to Use It at the Table

1. Why push-or-fold takes over at 10 BB

With 10 big blinds, a standard raise commits a large share of your stack, and a min-raise leaves you in no-man's land: you cannot fold to a shove without losing a lot of equity, and you cannot call without risking most of your chips anyway. The simplest, most robust line is therefore to shove or fold. This is why charts built from Nash equilibrium calculations (often called "Nash charts" or "push-fold charts") are the standard reference for short-stacked play in 10 BB hyper-turbo formats.

2. How to read a push-fold chart

A chart is a grid of 169 starting hands. Each cell tells you whether to shove for a specific position and stack depth. To use it correctly:

1. Find your effective stack: the smaller of your stack and the largest stack you could be called by, expressed in big blinds. Round to the nearest chart (8, 10, 12 BB...).
2. Find your position: in a 3-handed game, the button shoves the widest range, the small blind shoves a very wide range when the button folds, and the big blind calls shoves rather than shoving first.
3. Check the hand in the grid: if it is in the shoving range for your stack and position, shove. Otherwise fold.
4. Re-check as stacks change: the chart is stack-dependent. A shove at 10 BB can become a fold at 14 BB and an even wider shove at 7 BB.

3. What changes as your stack moves

The wider the shoving range, the more the calling frequency of your opponents matters: against opponents who fold too often, you can shove more hands; against opponents who call very wide, you should tighten up and shove for value.

4. ICM: why the Nash chart is a baseline, not a script

In a winner-take-all-like structure or when prize money depends on being among the last players, chips are not worth their face value: this is ICM (Independent Chip Model). Three-handed, the chip leader has pressure on the short stacks, and a short stack can profitably wait for a spot where a stack is eliminated. In practice:

• When you are the short stack with a medium stack behind you, you should often fold hands that look like automatic shoves in a chips-only (chip-EV) model, because losing first costs you the entire prize equity.
• When you are the chip leader, you can apply pressure with wider shoves because your opponents are reluctant to call without a strong hand.
• Always check whether your chart is chip-EV or ICM-adjusted, and which payout structure it assumes.

5. Adjust to your opponents instead of copying a chart

A chart assumes that both players play the equilibrium strategy. Your opponents do not. Track how often each opponent calls shoves (the "call vs shove" frequency) and fold to steals, then adjust:

• If an opponent folds the big blind too often against shoves: widen your shoves from the button and small blind.
• If an opponent calls too wide: tighten your bluff-like shoves and shove strong hands.
• If the blinds are passive and recreational: you can steal more often with moderate stacks, but keep your cEV record to check you are actually gaining.

This is precisely where a HUD and a profile badge speed up decisions: see automated player tagging for Spin & Go and the HUD guide for Expresso Nitro.

6. Measure whether your shoves are profitable

It is easy to remember a few unlucky all-ins and conclude your chart is wrong. The reliable way to evaluate your short-stack play is to track chip EV (cEV), which neutralizes the randomness of all-in outcomes, over a large sample. Our guide to calculating and increasing chip EV explains how, and how to split it by position and by stack depth so you can see exactly which spots leak.

Frequently Asked Questions