Drill PokerFifteen blinds is a transitional stack. It is still big enough for raise-folding to make sense, and already small enough that every lost pot noticeably changes your tournament life. The chart below shows which hands are still a correct open-shove at 15 BB when nobody has entered before you.
Position
What makes 15 BB different from 10
At 10 BB, shoving beats raising almost everywhere: you have few chips, a shove generates more fold equity, and you don't need a postflop game on that stack. At 15 BB the picture changes in two places.
First, shoving ranges get tighter. You are risking a bigger stack for the same blinds: a 15 BB shove to win 1.5 BB has to get through more often than a 10 BB shove. Reference points without antes: UTG about 5%, CO about 20%, BTN about 30%, SB about 46%.
Second, from early and middle position some hands play better as a raise. Pairs from 99 and AQ+ make more money opened to 2–2.2 BB and calling off against a shove than shoved outright for just the blinds. Weak hands that can no longer be shoved at 15 BB and are too risky to raise are simply folds.
Where the pure shove still rules
- SB vs BB. From the small blind, shoving 15 BB with a wide range remains standard — raise-folding here hands the big blind a re-shove that is far too profitable.
- BTN vs tight blinds. If the blinds fold a lot, a button shove takes the pot down more reliably than a raise.
- Re-shoving over an open. The most important 15 BB scenario. A player opens 30% of hands from the CO, you're on the BTN or in the blinds with 15 BB: shoving pairs from 55, aces from A8s/ATo, KQ and part of the broadways forces him to fold most of his range. A 15 BB stack is the ideal re-shove size: big enough that your opponent can't call on autopilot, small enough that you're not afraid to go with a good hand.
When to deviate
- Antes widen shoving ranges by roughly a third, as at any stack depth.
- A big stack behind with a wide calling range — tighten your shoves, especially with hands like A5o and K9s that fare poorly against his calls.
- A passive table where raises rarely get played back at — open more, shove less: you preserve chips and still take down pots.
- A few eliminations from the money — ICM squeezes medium stacks hardest. Re-shoving into a big stack gets more expensive; shoving on the shorter stacks gets more profitable.
Common mistakes
- Shoving A7o from UTG at 15 BB — the hand isn't in the range for either a shove or a raise.
- Calling a raise with 15 BB instead of re-shoving or folding: at this depth, calling is almost always the worst of the three options.
- Raise-folding from the SB: it gives the big blind a free re-shove.
- Using the same range at 15 and 10 BB — at 15 it should be noticeably tighter.
In the trainer you can lock the stack at 15 BB and grind just this zone — including re-shove spots over an open, where most of the mistakes live.