Icm Poker Strategy
Poker Strategy - Introduction To ICM, The Independent Chip Model Mar 14, 2012 The Independent Chip Model, commonly referred to as ICM, is best understood by what it does, which is to assign a. Free poker training software and tools to improve your game - PokerTracker 4 trial, Hold'em Manager 3 trial, the PokerStrategy.com Equilab and many more. Poker Independent Chip Model (ICM) Guide If you’ve been reading the poker tournament strategy articles here at Ignition, you know that the chips you play with in these events don’t have monetary value – you can’t just leave the tournament and take your remaining stack to the cashier’s window.
In cash games, a $1 chip equals $1. If there is a 10 handed table, everyone buys in for $100 and is not permitted to quit or rebuy, when someone has all the chips, that person will have $1000 in real money. In a tournament that’s not the case however. In line with the 10 handed cash game above, let’s change it to a 1 table tournament, a sit and go. Now the person that wins all the chips does not have $1000 in real money, they actually only have $500 in real money (typical sit and go payout structure is 50%/30%/20%). Everyone gets this. What this means is though is when we are faced with ICM decisions, the chips we can gain from a play aren’t worth as much as the chips we may stand to lose from that play. An easy way to see this is to use a contrived extreme example. Let’s say it’s the bubble of that sit and go mentioned above, 4 players remain and it pays $500, $300, and $200 respectively for the top 3. Let’s further say the stacks are like this:
Hero: Big Blind 7,000
Player 2: Small Blind 7,998
Player 3: 1
Player 4: 1
For simplicity I’m ignoring the blinds and antes, so players 3 and 4 are not anted all in and both fold. The Small blind then raises all in, and the decision is on you. This is a clear ICM fold, regardless of what hole cards you have. Even AA is a fold. Do you see why? If you play this hand and win, you’ll have all but locked up the SNG. You’re not guaranteed the $500 yet because the small blind will still have some chips to potentially rally from, but your equity in the prize pool is now probably around $475 or even greater. If you call and lose the hand, you win $0. This is a pure ICM disaster, because by simply folding, you’ve essentially got 2nd place money locked up, and further once it’s heads up in the next few hands (or less), you’ll be very close in chips stacks, so you’re equity in the prize pool is probably around $440 right now by folding. So you can see if you call and win with the aces, you’ve only increased your equity in the prize pool nominally, while if you call and lose, you’ve forfeited all equity and walked away with nothing. The risk is enormous for a reward that’s extremely nominal. Thus the correct play, the one that maximizes your earn in the long run, is to fold all hands until players 3 and 4 bust their 1 chip and it’s heads up.
In poker, the Independent Chip Model (ICM) is a mathematical model used to calculate a player's overall equity in a tournament. The model uses stack sizes alone to determine how often a player will finish in each position (1st, 2nd, etc.). Remember: With ICM, we can convert the value of chips in a poker tournament into real dollars. Independent Chip Model: Example of an ICM calculation. Let’s make a sample ICM computation for the following situation: in a full ring SNG, 3 players are left (the.
The effect of ICM leads to some very counterintuitive shoves or folds late in games. I recently had the extreme example of this occur to me, where I folded AA before the flop live on stream while the chat went wild. Here was the situation: It was a satellite with 4 tickets to the target event, on the direct bubble with 5 left. The blinds were 2000/4000 with a 400 ante. The stacks to start the hand were:
UTG: 26,052
CO: 60,016
BU (Hero): 14,773
SB: 13,640
BB: 137,519
UTG raises all in for 25,652
CO re-raises all in for 59,616
In this scenario, where the stack in 3rd place is at immediate risk of busting out, it is the correct ICM play for us to fold all hands, including AA. If you run this through an ICM calculator, you’ll see this to be true:
This is, quite simply, because my equity in this satellite prize pool (my chance to get one of the 4 tickets to the target event), goes up if I fold AA vs. if I call with it in this situation.
Other interesting notes from this ICM run… the cut off, who re-jammed, is actually only supposed to do this with AA/KK. Why so tight? Intuitively, if the cut off loses this confrontation, they will have 8.5 bigs left and be in 3rd, and should I and the small blind win our next all ins, they will be the shortest. Also, they can be at risk right now to the big blind who still hasn’t acted yet. But again, whether or not this sounds too tight, his re-shove with QQ slightly decreases his chances of winning a ticket vs. if he simply folded, another counter-intuitive result of ICM. By the way if we edit the re-shove range of the cut off to include QQ and AK, we still have a very clear fold with the AA vs. the 2 all ins.
Another interesting thing to look at here… when the UTG player jammed, I said on stream “well, I have to call him obviously” just before the cut off re-jammed. Is this correct, and if so how wide should I be calling? Yes, it’s correct, but I should be calling his shove very tight myself had the cut off folded rather than re-shoved:
So had the cutoff folded, my AA is a snap call, but KK is only marginally profitable and anything else loses me money/equity and reduces my chance to win a ticket (because I will be at risk right now). Had you asked me on stream how wide I would have called the UTG shove if the cut off folded, I would have said JJ+/AK. As the ICM calculation illustrated above shows, calling off with JJ would be lighting money on fire.
The moral of this story is, ICM pressure is a real thing, and it’s often better to be the one shoving rather than calling off in the face of ICM pressure. These effects are more pronounced the bigger the pay jumps, like occur at the final table of tournaments, or the direct bubble of a satellite. Getting your head around these concepts, at the very least in a basic sense, will help improve your decision making deep in tournaments or satellites, leading to more long term profit while your less savvy opponents make huge ICM mistakes and blow up their equity.
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If you’ve been reading the poker tournament strategy articles here at Ignition, you know that the chips you play with in these events don’t have monetary value – you can’t just leave the tournament and take your remaining stack to the cashier’s window. You also know that the chips you gain are usually worth less to you than the chips you lose. But all those chips still have to be worth something. The more you have, the more likely you’ll win the tournament, or at least make a deep run. How do you figure out what those beautiful betting disks are worth, so you can make smarter decisions about the moves you make on the felt?
Our top poker analysts have been working on this for years. They’ve come up with something called the Independent Chip Model, or ICM for short. There’s a lot of math behind it, but you don’t need to crunch any numbers yourself to use ICM to your advantage at the poker table. And while using ICM is considered more of a poker strategy for advanced players, anyone who wants to do better at tournaments can learn something from this simple guide. These might even be some of the most important poker tournament tips you’ll ever read.
Poker Tournament Chip Value
Before we get into Poker ICM, let’s take a closer look at why chip values fluctuate during a poker tournament. Imagine you’re playing an event with just three people – you and two opponents. The buy-in (no entry fee charged) is $100. The prize pool is $300; first place gets $200, second place gets $100, and third place gets zilch. Everyone starts with 1,000 chips, so there’s a total of 3,000 chips in play.
At this point, every chip on the table is worth the same amount. Assuming all three players are of equal skill, their expected return (also known as their equity) in this tournament is $100 each, so divide that by 1,000 chips, and you get 10 cents per chip. So far, so good.
Now imagine that Player 1 knocks out Player 3 on the first hand and takes all their chips. Player 1 has 2,000 chips, and Player 2 has the remaining 1,000. However, Player 1 didn’t double their tournament equity when they doubled their stack size. Some of that $100 in equity that Player 3 used to possess went instead to Player 2, who has just locked up at least second-place money without having to do anything. And that means the chips in play can no longer be worth 10 cents each. Player 1’s chips are worth less, and Player 2’s are worth more.
Poker ICM: How It Works
This is where the Independent Chip Model comes into play. In this example, Player 1 now has two-thirds of the chips available; they also took two-thirds of the $100 in equity that Player 3 had, leaving them with $166.67. Player 2 has the remaining $133.33. Now let’s divide those amounts by the number of chips everyone has:
- Player 1: $166.67/2,000 chips = 8.33 cents per chip
- Player 2: $133.33/1,000 chips = 13.33 cents per chip
This is why we keep saying the chips you gain in a tournament aren’t worth as much as the chips you lose. Of course, most tournament situations won’t be this simple to calculate. There will be multiple stack sizes in play once the action gets rolling and the chips are jumping from one player to another. There will also be more than three players to worry about. The math gets way too complicated to bother doing by hand – you’ll need an ICM calculator to figure it out. These are available on the internet, some for free, some not. Make sure you get yours from a reliable source if you want to improve your tournament bankroll management.
Using ICM for Better Tournament Results
And you definitely should, if you want to win more money. By using an ICM calculator away from the tables, in between tournament sessions, you can analyze a hand and determine what the “right” play would be from a mathematical perspective. For example, you might be in a situation where your choice is between going all-in or folding; the ICM calculator will tell you which move will give you more equity.
Let’s take a somewhat more complicated example to illustrate how this works. You’re at a six-player No-Limit Texas Hold’em Sit-and-Go, with 70% of the prize pool going to the winner and 30% to second place. Four players are left in the tournament; blinds are 100/200.
How To Use Icm Poker
- Player 1 (cut-off): 3,490 chips
- Player 2 (button): 3,130 chips
- Player 3 (small blind): 780 chips
- Player 4 (big blind): 1,300 chips
Poker Icm Definition
You’re Player 4 in the big blind, and you’ve got Ace-Jack off-suit. Not bad, but Player 1 goes all-in and everyone else folds. Do you call here and risk your tournament life? Or do you fold, hoping for a better spot? Here’s what at least one ICM calculator says:
- Push ICM%: 17.93
- Fold ICM%: 15.99
According to the calculator, you’re better off calling with Ace-Jack in this spot – as you may have instinctively guessed. You’ll gain more equity in the tournament that way instead of folding. There are other real-world considerations that the math doesn’t take into account, like the relative skill of the players, or how important the money is to you; maybe that 30% for second place is life-changing money, and you’re more inclined to play it safe rather than risk going for first. But using the ICM calculator and doing the analysis will help you understand what the optimal play is, making it more likely you’ll do the right thing when it’s your turn at the table.
Pros and Cons of ICM
Icm Poker Strategy Chart
Before trusting your entire bankroll to the ICM gods, you should know that this model is still a work in progress, and it’s only a model. In practice, ICM overestimates the chances of short stacks going on to win a tournament, and underestimates the larger stacks. If you’re at the final table of an online poker tournament and you want to make a deal, think about your stack size and whether you want to use ICM to help split the winnings, or a more simple “chip chop” that divides the money based purely on everyone’s stack size.
You should also be aware that there are different flavors of ICM out there. The classic version is the Malmuth-Harville model, named after math/gambling wizards Mason Malmuth and David Harville. There’s also the newer Malmuth-Weitzman model (Mark Weitzman) and the Ben Roberts model, which try to smooth over some of the issues with the Malmuth-Harville way of calculating ICM. Knowing exactly how each of these models works isn’t necessary to play winning poker; advanced strategy enthusiasts will want to know the differences, though.
If you happen to be one of those enthusiasts, make sure you don’t go too far down the rabbit hole with your ICM calculations. Trying to get all the math correct to several decimal points won’t help you become a better poker player – quite the opposite, in fact. It’s more important to understand the underlying concepts behind ICM, so you can make informed decisions about why you need to adjust your tournament strategy. This happens all the time with Game-Theory Optimal (GTO) play, too – aspiring wizards get in over their heads and end up making all sorts of mistakes while trying to implement complex strategies.
Having said that, understanding ICM will indeed serve you well at the tournament tables, especially in those critical situations when you’re near the money bubble. How many times have you watched a poker tournament where a player makes a very tight fold, and the commentators don’t understand why? The “standard” play in some spots just doesn’t work in others. We have the math to prove it.
Icm Poker Strategy Examples
Making the right ICM play is even more important when you’re concerned about poker bankroll management. When you’re trying to stretch your tournament dollar, you already have the incentive to make slightly “nitty” folds with your marginal hands. Once you get deeper in a poker tournament and ICM considerations come into play, you have even more incentive to gear down and let someone else take those risks. Remember Player 2 from our first example? They “laddered up” into the money and gained equity just by letting Player 3 go bust. Discretion is indeed the better part of valor.
That’s our introduction to the Poker Independent Chip Model. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations: You now know why chip values fluctuate during a tournament, how and when to calculate those values, and how to alter your strategy to best take advantage. The more you practice ICM, the better you’ll play, so hit the tournament tables at Ignition Poker and show the world what a little know-how can do for you.