ICM Discussion - Split thread

[flash]

ICM simply tells us what virtually all poker players recognize intuitively: the more chips you have relative to your opponents, the better your chances of winning.

No you don't. For humans it's easy to think linearly, but the equation is not linear. For ex. you gain 50% more chips, does your chance to win increase by 50% ? Does your chance to place second increase by 50% ?

I goofed my original sentence, I should have said 'the more chips you have relative to the total chips in play, the better your chances of winning'.

Well if I gain 50% of the total chips, then yes it does. If I remember correctly ICM states that your chance of winning is the fraction of the total chips in your stack. So if 10,000 chips are in play and your stack is 4,000 your chances of winning are 40%.

The calculation for the subsequent places is more elaborate, but once you've looked at enough numbers it's not too hard to eyeball it.

IE: in my example above if two other players remained with roughly equal stacks of 3,000 chips each. Then my chances of finishing 2nd or 3rd would be equal at 30% for 2nd and 30% for 3rd.

[Linuxrocks]

Interesting.
Not sure where to go from here. It seems to me that ICM works pretty well in most situations. However, it HATES bubble calls example.
Therefore, does it just come down to putting the villian on a range and determining if we are ahead? I guess some more examples might be the best to figure this out.

Like I said before, adjust the skill factor in SNGPT and try this again. I call in an instant in that hand. Yes, it's -EV. So, what ? If I get the chips, I am going for first. ICM by default doesn't take that skill into account.

You might have already seen this that is similar but I have AK

To open up some of your game, try calling with what looks like -EV calls in SNGPT but slightly +EV with adjusted skill level.

Overall, I like the idea of finding ways to get away from ICM.
However, I've seen a couple of references to skill. It doesn't take any skill to call an allin; therefore, I don't understand how that changes things.

It does. It's very simple. You make a slightly -EV call and get a bunch of chips. Now, according to ICM let's say your chance to place 1st increased by 10%, but if you have better than average skill it might be 20% or may be 5% if you don't know how to use your chips. That's how it matters.

See this post from 2+2 for some excellent explanations.

Also, are all of the non ICM people saying that your AK hand is an auto call?

Dave said I should fold from the previous confrontations. In vacuum, he probably would say call. But, I set him up for this kind of situation. He was obviously pissed at my nonchalance to his stack, so I called. It's -EV but marginal in my opinion.

[tightpoker]

Here's another perfect example of outside variables, which will totally take precedence over ICM. I mention this because this is the exact situation last night at the Caesars $120 + $100R tournament last night I was in.

Prize pool is $5,000 and payouts are roughly $2,500 / $1,500 and $1,000. 4 players left, but 4th gets nothing. Aggressive lady to my left has massive stack of about 70k chips. Loose donkey to her left (who doubled up through me twice on huge all-in preflop 70/30 matchups, grrr..) has about 15k. Weak-tight Hawaii shirt guy to my right has about 12k. I have 9k. Blinds are 600/1200 with 200 ante.

Folded to me, and I look down at Q7s. In a normal situation, this is auto push, no thinking. Blinds are quite high, the pot is 2600 and I have 9k in chips. It's practically a 'duh' move. I fold however. One of the reasons, is Lady is pretty aggressive and has just an enormous pile of chips. Her calling range is decently large and she's looking to take players out. I'm figuring my fold equity isn't' drastically high, even though there's enough chips in the pot that any two is quite good.

The reason I do fold is because out outside factors. Lady and Donkey have a personal battle going on, because Lady likes being aggro and Donkey likes calling. I was putting a very good chance that Donkey was going to bust because he kept putting chips in the middle and figuring out ways to lose them.

While I normally always advocate going for 1st, this situation was a very clear one that there was no way in hell that any of the remaining 3 players were going to take first short of a miracle. Lady was very good playing big stack and putting pressure, so it would eventually force race situations where the math was simply behind the big stack.

Thus, in this situation, with the payout of 1,500 and 1,000 to 2nd and 3rd, there also isn't a huge reason to scramble for 2nd at major risk, because of the gap in the prize structure. I would reason that 2nd and 3rd are just going to be racing off for those spots anyways, so the key element to the game right now was survival. The weak tight was essentially sitting pat and letting himself get blinded out, which meant that he was under constant attack from Lady and Donkey.

Though he had more chips, the weak tight had no way of getting them back, while both the Lady and Donkey were very aware that I was capable of making moves and defending my blinds, which about 30% of the time made it folded to the SB, who would end up folding to me. This pretty much kept me at a much slower rate of decay than the weak tight player and let him get into a race situation first.

So, a flat out ICM application to this situation would have been off by a significant margin IMO. First place was simply just not feasible, so all of the risk involved in attacking was greatly amplified and the $EV calculations via ICM would be much higher than by sheer math given the external variables.

[randy72560]

Good example. So, how did you finish? I'm going to guess 2nd?

[tightpoker]

Donkey lost a decent pot to aggro lady and it went on break, when we decided to make a deal. Everyone walked out with $1k, Lady walked out with $2k. Blinds were going up to 1,000/2,000, so it was just going to be over real soon after break, which I think everyone figured out and realized that nobody wanted to gamble on a race for money or no money.

[if1995]

great posts, MJ.

i used SNGPT just recently on the advice of fellow tightpoker forum member. I think most of my raw poker instincts agree with SNGPT but on some bubble situations, SNGPT promotes push push and push. In several situations, i think me before SNGPT would have folded, but post-SNGPT, I pushed and i lost many of the critical all-ins that i normally would have folded. I agree with ICM that in the long-run, it would all work out but the short-term variance is something that i can't tolerate. Perhaps the fact that i was a winning player pre-sngpt plays a role in me being semi-negative on sngpt and don't have the patience to keep experimenting. $79 down the drain!!!

I think for me, ICM is something that i would learn but not applied to my game right now. The most important reason being that i don't play enough to warrant this kind of strategy. If i am 8 tabling, this strategy would make sense, but currently I 3 table at most.

lastly, i reread your blind stealing theorem several weeks ago and i must say it's a damn good read. the first time i read that was when i just start out playing poker, i had no idea what you were talking about but now it all makes sense.