How do you practice tournament poker without playing tournaments?

Isolate the decisions tournaments create: shoving under 20 big blinds, calling someone else's shove, and tightening up near the bubble because of ICM. Each one can be drilled cold, with a correction, far faster than waiting for it to come up in a real event.

Is a push/fold chart enough for short-stack play?

It answers one precise question: heads-up, from the small blind, should you shove or fold. When a smaller raise is available, the question changes, which is exactly what the spot on this page shows. With more players at the table, the chart does not apply as is.

Does this trainer have a full tournament chapter?

Not yet. It offers heads-up short-stack spots, the push/fold chart and an ICM calculator. The bubble and the final table are covered in dedicated guides.

Do you need paid software for ICM?

Not to understand it. The calculator on this page turns each stack into its share of the prize pool for a given payout; paid tools mostly help when you review thousands of hands.

MTT Poker Trainer: Drill the Decisions That Cost You a Stack

By the Poker Puzzle Trainer team · Published October 21, 2026

A useful MTT poker trainer targets the decisions cash games almost never ask: shove or fold with fewer than 20 big blinds, call a shove, and play tighter near the bubble because your chips are no longer worth their face value in money. You can drill all three here for free: a 15-big-blind spot to play right now, the Nash push/fold chart and an ICM calculator.

A tournament spot at 15 big blinds

Heads-up, 15 big blinds effective. You are in the small blind (which is also the button) with A♣3♦. What do you do?

This puzzle on its own page →

See the answer

The expected answer is a min-raise to 2 big blinds. Ace-three offsuit is ahead of the unpaired, aceless hands the big blind defends, but behind most aces and pairs that would call a shove: A3 has only 32.4% against A9 and 30.5% against 77. Raising small keeps the weaker hands in and lets you play the pot in position, instead of risking your whole stack against the hands that beat you.

Shove or fold: the push/fold chart

When your only options are shove or fold, the right play has a computable answer: the heads-up Nash equilibrium. This site's push/fold chart gives it from 2 to 20 big blinds, for the small blind shoving and the big blind calling.

Effective stack	Hands the small blind shoves	Hands the big blind calls
10 big blinds	58.3%	37.4%
15 big blinds	45.6%	28.5%

The chart does not contradict the spot above: at 15 big blinds, ace-three offsuit is an equilibrium shove when you only have two options. The puzzle adds two more, the limp and the min-raise, and the min-raise is the answer it keeps. The chart only compares shoving with folding. The rule to keep: it is the reference when shoving is the only sensible raise; the shorter the stack, the more often that is true, and under 10 to 12 big blinds it is almost always the only question.

ICM: why chips are not money

In a tournament, busting costs more than doubling up earns, because prizes are paid by finishing position. ICM (the Independent Chip Model) turns each stack into a share of the prize pool. Change the stacks and payouts below to see what each player is really worth.

In practice: near the bubble, a call that wins chips can still lose money. ICM poker explained walks through the math, and calling all‑ins in tournaments shows how to set your calling threshold.

A practice plan for each stage of a tournament

Stage	Key decision	Where to drill it
Early, deep stacks	postflop play close to cash games	6‑max cash game trainer
Middle, 15 to 25 big blinds	raise small, steal blinds, call a shove	the spot above, calling all‑ins
Short stack, under 12 big blinds	shove or fold	push/fold chart
Bubble	tighten calls, pressure medium stacks	bubble strategy
Final table	ICM on every hand	final table strategy

What this trainer does not cover (yet)

To be precise: the trainer has no full tournament chapter. Its short-stack spots are heads-up, and the push/fold chart only covers the small blind against the big blind. Multi-player situations (shoving from the cutoff, re-shoving over a shove) are not covered yet. The free tournament trainers we found in October 2026 are mostly push/fold only; here you also get a playable spot with its correction and an ICM calculator. For the rest of the game, the free poker trainer applies as is to the early stage of a tournament, when stacks are deep.

The common mistake: playing 15 big blinds like a cash game

At 100 big blinds, opening to 2.5 big blinds and playing postflop is standard. At 15 big blinds, the same raise commits a sixth of your stack before the flop and often leaves you with no good option against a re-raise. Players who improve at tournaments first learn to count their stack in big blinds, then to choose between a min-raise, a shove and a fold based on that count.

To know where you stand, first count your stack size in big blinds.

Sources

Heads-up push/fold chart computed by this site (Nash equilibrium, small blind against big blind, no antes, 2 to 20 big blinds): the percentages in the table above come from it.
The 15-big-blind spot with A♣3♦ comes from the trainer (heads-up preflop chapter).
The comparison with other free tournament trainers: our review of the top search results for “MTT poker trainer” in October 2026 (US results), mostly push/fold trainers and app listings.