1️⃣ Opponents call all-ins too often with dominated hands.
2️⃣ Squeeze shove your best hands to punish those mistakes.
3️⃣ Call a wide range, but stay selective to avoid tricky out-of-position spots.
When the BTN min-raises and the SB calls, you're facing two quite different profiles.
BTN often has a decent range, close to GTO.
As previously discussed in the SB vs BTN open strategic guide, recreational players on the Button tend to play a range slightly stronger than GTO.
➕ Also important: when BTN min-raises, SB calls, and BB shoves, recreational players on the BTN tend to call too often with dominated hands (we won’t dive deeper here to keep things concise).
Recreational players tend to over-call the BTN’s min-raise.
Here are the stats comparing the SB call percentage between GTO and recs vs BTN open:
As you can see, recs are calling nearly half their hands, while GTO barely calls at all.
➕ And just like the BTN, recreational SBs also call too often vs BB’s squeeze shoves — even with marginal hands (again, we won’t go into detail here, but keep it in mind).
In this situation, the pot odds are excellent (1 bb to win 5), so you’ll fold very few hands.
As mentioned, BTN and SB tendencies make squeeze shoving a strong option.
It lets you:
Hands that dominate opponents’ calling ranges like strong Ax, KQ, and pocket pairs are ideal.
As effective stack decreases, you should gradually widen your squeeze range.
You know the drill by now.
Hands like A5s or 33 may be slightly more EV+ to shove at 25 bb, but add unnecessary variance.
Our ranges usually recommend calling these hands when deep, to control variance and keep the game flow manageable.
Let’s go deeper for those who want to dig in.
EV difference between squeeze shove and 2nd best option (call/raise/fold) vs 2 recs:
In our ranges, we prefer calling KQs (which plays well postflop) over shoving A8o (even if it has higher EV).
But both lines can be correct depending on your comfort with variance and postflop skill.
Same idea with small Axs and small pairs — they could be shoves, but we lean toward calling them to keep variance low while deep.
As mentioned, you have great odds in this spot — a full pot with only 1 bb to call — so you’ll defend a large portion of your hands.
But be careful:
Postflop play can get tricky if you’re not careful.
Also note: EV decreases gradually with hand strength.
What does this mean? There’s no hard line between “good” and “bad” calls.
95o might be slightly EV+ to call, but folding it wouldn’t be a big mistake.
Conversely, J3o might be marginally -EV to call, but it wouldn’t be a huge error either.
