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
- Click ICMIZE to see how the optimal strategy versus opponents who play optimally looks like. BTN made the raise, and Hero can now fold or go all-in, if he goes all-in, it would be the first all-in, then the player on BB can fold or go all-in, and if he goes all-in, it would be the second all-in, and ICMIZER terms that 'call' and marks the range with C symbol.
- 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.).
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.
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.
Practice the mathematically optimal tournament game Disclaimer. You may not use the ICM Trainer while running a poker client issued by a poker room which explictly forbids. You can start a training session by clicking Start new ICM training after you have set the filters under. ICM stands for Independent Chip Model. Essentially, this is a mathematical model that calculates a player’s equity in a tournament given their chip stack and the other stacks and payouts. It doesn’t come into play until we are near or in the money, and has its most pronounced effects when there are large pay jumps looming, like at the final.
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.
Test your knowledge with our short quiz below
| Written by Lars Kyhnau Hansen |
If you have ever played poker tournaments, you have probably heard the term ICM. It stands for Independent Chip Model, but what is it actually?
And how should it influence our strategy, if we are a cash game player mixing in some tournaments on the weekend or getting a ticket for a freeroll?
ICM exist in tournaments that pay more than one place, because this means that even you win all the chips, you don't win all the money.
Using a traditional 9 man SnG (Sit and Go) as an example, these events typically pay 50% to the winner, 30% to the runner-up and 20% to the third place finisher.
So when the last hand is dealt, and the event is over, each chip is only worth half of what it was at the beginning.
This means that in poker tournaments losing chips is always more bad than winning chips is good, especially if you are playing for your entire stack or a significant amount of it.
And therefore as a general rule we want to be more risk averse in tournaments.
To some extent this is common sense. If we lose our last chip, then we are out. But as long as we have “a chip and a chair”, then there is still some hope for a comeback.
There is however also some math behind it, which I am going to dig a bit deeper into in the rest of this post.
ICM in the Early Phase of a Poker Tournament or Sit and Go
Still using the traditional 9 man SnG as an example, each player starts with 1500 chips, and if they are all equally good, then they each have an expected share of the prize pool of 11.1%.
This is the ICM value of their 1500 chips.
If 2 players go all in against each other, and one of them wins, then this player now has 3000 chips, and the remaining 7 players still have 1500 chips each. I am ignoring the blinds and antes to make the math simpler.
If we plug this into an ICM calculator, then we find that the player with 3000 chips now has an ICM value of 20.3%. So even though he doubled his stack, his ICM value only went up by 83%.
This means, that if for instance you find yourself in late position with a hand like AK, and some goofball decides to open jam from early position with his whole 75 BB stack, you should lean even more towards folding, than you would in a cash game.
ICM on the Bubble of a Poker Tournament or Sit and Go
As the number of remaining players is reduced, and the payout are closer, ICM becomes even more important.
Still using the 9 man SnG as an example, when it is down to 4 players, each have an ICM value of 25% of the prize pool assuming equal stacks.
If one player busts another in this situation, then his ICM value is now 38.3%, so it only increased 53%, even he doubled his stack.
At this point the blinds and antes are typically a lot larger relative to the players stacks though, which does make the situation a bit better for the player doubling up.
But unless the blinds are really large, like they might be in a hyper turbo tournament, then you should be extremely conservative about risking all your chips in this situation.
This is something that Daniel Negreanu actually discusses in much greater detail by the way in his new poker training course.
You should be especially conservative about calling is what I mean though. If you are the one jamming (shoving), then there is always the chance that everyone else folds.
So even though it is somewhat counter intuitive, jamming is often less risky than calling.
This is also why, you see good players use smaller open sizes in tournaments, when stacks get short. If you still use the traditional 3BB, as you perhaps do in cash games, you simply lose too many chips, when someone jam on you, and you have to fold because of ICM considerations.
Since it's very bad to get called, unless you have a really good hand, you also want to consider, who the other players are.
Just like in cash games many fish don't like to fold, so jamming on them with a nice bluffing hand like A♥5♥ can be a bit suicidal.
If they call you with J♣8♦, because they think you are a bully, you are probably actually losing money when ICM is taken into account.
My Free Poker Cheat Sheet Teaches You How to Make $1000+ Per Month in Low Stakes Games
Are you struggling to beat low stakes poker games like 2NL, 5NL, 10NL, 25NL 6max, Zoom or full ring online, low buy-in tournaments or $1/$2, $2/$5 live?
Do you want a simple step by step guide to show you exactly how to start winning consistently right now?
That is why I recently wrote this free little 50 page no BS guide to teach you exactly how to start crushing these games right now.
You will learn the exact poker strategies I have used as a 10+ year poker pro to consistently make $1000+ per month in small stakes poker games.
Enter your details below and I will send my free poker cheat sheet to your email right now.
Independent Chip Model With Uneven Stacks
So far I have assumed that everyone has equal stack sizes, but as a tournament progresses, that is almost never the case.
If we again use the 9 man SnG bubble as an example but assume that one player has 10% of the chips, and the other three each 30%, ICM become even more important.
The 3 large stacks now have 29.1% of the prize pool each in ICM value and the short stack has 12.7%.
Note that the short stack now has more ICM value than he had at the start, even though he has actually lost some of his chips. This is the value of simply outlasting 5 other players.
If two of the big stacks go all in against each other, one of them now has 60% of the chips, one player has 30%, and the short stack still has 10%.
The player with 60% of the chips now has an ICM value of 41.2%. So even though he doubled his stack, his ICM value only went up 42%.
The ICM value of the short stack however went up 96%, so he benefited more from the elimination than the large stack guy, who did the job and took all the risk.
This is kind of common sense, because the short stack now folded his way to the money, while the guy who had 3 times more chips but risked them and lost, is out of the tournament without cashing.
For this reason you need to be even more conservative about risking all your chips, when you are at the bubble or a significant pay jump and someone else has a much shorter stack than you.
In this kind of situation, which commonly occurs at the final table of a large poker tournament, there are plenty of spots where you should consider folding versus value bets by a big stack to make sure you can get to showdown without risking all your chips.
Or in some cases you might avoid playing marginal hands against the chip leader altogether, because its so easy for him to take advantage of the situation and push you around.
By the way, I have already written the 'ultimate guide' to micro stakes poker tournament strategy covering every situation possible. You can find that right here.
Poker Independent Chip Model Hand Example - ICM Suicide
BU (Hero): 1,495 (50 bb)
SB: 3,115 (104 bb)
BB: 4,390 (146 bb)
Pre-Flop: (57) Hero is BTN with 9♥ Q♠
Hero raises to 90, SB calls 75, BB 3-bets to 360, BU (Hero) folds, SB calls 270
Flop: (822) T♠ 5♦ 8♣ (2 players)
SB bets 30, BB raises to 660, SB calls 630
Turn: (2,142) 9♣ (2 players)
SB bets 30, BB raises to 3,366 (all-in), SB calls 2,061 (all-in)
River: (6,324) Q♥ (2 players, 2 all-in)
Icm Poker Strategy Pdf
Showdown:
BB shows K♥ K♣ (a pair of Kings)
SB shows 7
♥ 9♠ (a pair of Nines)BB wins 6,324
This hand is from a 6-handed $3.50 SnG I played recently on Pokerstars, and it illustrates the importance of simply preserving your stack for ICM purposes.
After just 17 hands 4 players had already busted, and even though I had not accumulated any chips, 35% of the prize pool was now mine. Only two places pay, so the loser of this hand failed to cash.
In a cash game this would also be a badly played hand especially preflop, but getting it in on the turn with a pair + draw would only be a marginally losing play long term.
In a tournament however it's ICM suicide, because his last 2061 chips was worth so much more than the chips he was trying to win!
Icm Poker Theory
ICM at the Final Table (Heads Up)
Ok so you played wisely and got lucky, and now it's down to you and another guy. Here ICM is very simple, because it simply does not exist.
How To Use Icm Poker
To win the first place prize, you need to win all the chips, so each chip now has the same ICM value. Heads up poker is very different from ring games, but that is outside the topic of this post.If you want to learn the strategy specifically suited for ring games (cash games), check out Modern Small Stakes.
Final Thoughts
One important limitation of ICM is that it does not take future playability into account. I already mentioned how you want to avoid big pots against the chip leader if you are a middling stack.
So it also stands to reason, that you also gain large advantages, if you build a big stack and become that “chip bully” who everybody loves to hate.
Some of the winners of the WSOP Main Event in recent years seem to have been using this as part of their overall strategy.
It's difficult to quantify, but there is something to be said for ignoring ICM a little bit in the early phase of a big tournament and adopting a “go big or go home” mentality.
However when you get near the bubble, or when you are at the final table, you absolutely must take ICM into account, if your goal is to win money in poker tournaments.
Lastly, if you want to know how to consistently make $1000 per month in low stakes poker games, make sure you grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.
Let me know how you use ICM in poker tournaments or SnGs in the comments below.
Icm Poker Strategy
This article was written by blackrain79.com contributor Lars 'fundiver199' Kyhnau Hansen. Lars is a part time online poker player from Denmark currently playing 10NL and 25NL. Lars excels at the math side of the game.