Stack Size in Big Blinds: How to Count It and What It Changes
Your stack size in big blinds is your chips divided by the big blind: with 12,000 chips at 300/600, you have 20 big blinds. That number, far more than your chip count, decides what you can do: raise and play postflop when it is large, shove or fold when it drops under 10 to 12. Move the slider below to see how strategy changes with depth.
What depth changes: the push/fold example
Heads-up, from the small blind, the Nash equilibrium shoves 40.2% of hands at 20 big blinds, 45.6% at 15 and 58.3% at 10: the shorter the stack, the wider you shove, because the blinds you can steal weigh more against your stack and you have less left to lose. Details are in the push/fold chart.
Big blinds or Harrington's M?
Example: 12,000 chips, blinds of 300/600 and a big blind ante of 600.
| Measure | Formula | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Big blinds | chips ÷ big blind | 12,000 ÷ 600 = 20 |
| Harrington's M | chips ÷ (small blind + big blind + antes) | 12,000 ÷ (300 + 600 + 600) = 8 |
M answers a different question: how many orbits can you survive without playing a hand? It is always lower than the big blind count, because it also counts the small blind and the antes. Dan Harrington sorts stacks into zones: green from 20, yellow from 10 to 20, orange from 6 to 10, red below. Some authors prefer the plain big blind count, which is easier to compare from one tournament to the next: what matters is to track one of them, always the same.
The main depths
In tournaments, a stack is usually called short under 20 big blinds, medium from 20 to 40 and deep above that.
| Depth | What changes |
|---|---|
| 100 big blinds and more | full postflop play, speculative hands are playable (see deep stack strategy) |
| 40 to 100 big blinds | standard raises, postflop play close to a cash game |
| 25 to 40 big blinds | smaller raises, fewer speculative hands, a 3‑bet already commits a big part of the stack |
| 12 to 25 big blinds | min-raise or shove; outside the big blind, flat calls become rare |
| Under 10 to 12 big blinds | shove or fold |
Do not confuse it with the effective stack: the smaller of the two stacks in a hand, which is the one that counts for these decisions.
The common mistake: counting chips instead of blinds
A 30,000-chip stack looks comfortable; at 1,000/2,000 it is only 15 big blinds, a depth where the standard raise is already rare. Recount at every blind level: it is the first habit to build with an MTT poker trainer, and the basis of both push/fold and calling all‑ins.
Sources
- Heads-up push/fold chart computed by this site (Nash equilibrium, small blind against big blind) for the shove percentages.
- M and the colour zones: Dan Harrington, Harrington on Hold'em, vol. II; criticism of M in favour of the big blind count: Las Vegas Advisor, "True M vs Harrington's M".