ICM Beginners Guide – What is Independent Chip Modeling Or “ICM”?

The concept of Independent Chip Modeling, or ICM is a way of figuring out your equity in a given tournament hand. It will tell you what your current situation relates to in terms of money value. It takes into effect your chip stack, and the point at which you are at in the tournament.

How Does ICM Work?

ICM is a very popular system to use for Sit N Go play, and is usually really put into effect near the bubble. The situational decisions you have to make like shoving your A-Jo or K-Qo are ones that can be decided using ICM.

What Is The Benefit To Using The ICM System?

The easiest way to answer this question is that you will have an easier time making the best decision possible, and thats how you win at poker, by making good decisions.

In a ring game, the chips that you are playing with represent real money value, and have actual defined monetary amounts assigned to them. It is easy to use pot odds when playing in a cash game to determine how much value you are getting on a call, if you are calling $50 to win $150, you know you are getting three to one on your money. When playing in a tournament or a SNG, the chips you are playing with have no true monetary value. Since all your decisions in poker, whether in tournament or in a cash game should be based on profit and maximum value, you need to be able to assign a value to your tournament chips. This is what ICM allows you to do.

In a tournament with a large field, the chips are relatively easy to equate to real money because of the normally flat payout structures that have small increases from one payout level to the next. When you are at the final table of a big tournament, you see a bigger gap in tournament chip value and real money value, but in a single table tournament or Sit N Go, where only 3 spots pay, the difference between the final 4 places is big. The chips in play are simply not relative to cash at this point.

How is ICM Actually Used?

ICM is not really a calculation that can be done in game, as there is some serious math and quite a few things that need to go into it. The best thing to do is after you finish playing a SNG, you want to go back and find those tough spots, because the spot is probably a common one you will encounter as you play more and more. Using ICM when reviewing your play will let you figure out if your decision was right, and let you adjust your play for your next game. There are several programs that will figure out your EV for a given situation if you punch in the numbers. While it is encouraged to use anything that helps, it is good to know how the math breaks down.

You are 4 handed on a 9 man SNG that pays 3 places, the chip count breaks down as such:

Seat 1 (UTG) has 4k in chips

Seat 2 (Mid. Position) has 5k in chips

Seat 3 (In The SB) has 1k in chips

Seat 4 You – (BB) has 2500 in chips

Seat one folds under the gun, seat 2 shoves from middle position, the small blind folds, you look down and squeeze out a medium pair like pocket 8’s. This is a spot that takes some considerations.

First things first, you need to put the player on a range of hands. After analyzing his play, you decide he could be raising here with about seventy percent of all hands. Now you need to find out how your pair of eights is going to match up against that range of hands. Doing that math with an online calculator, I found it will win almost 64% of the hands played. So here, the pot odds are laying you about two-to-one on your chips, but the problem is still that the chips don’t represent actual money. You need to do an ICM calculation to see what you equity is with folding versus calling in this spot.

With most ICM tools available online, all you are going to have to do is enter in the information for all the stack sizes, and the different payouts for the tournament, and it will give you your equity. Folding in this spot gives your stack a value $21.78. If you make the call here, one of two things is going to happen. About 6.5 times out of 10 you are going to win, and have the chip lead, or be tied for it, the other 3.5 times you are going to lose your stack and be out of the tournament. Now, if we do the calculations for winning the hand, it works out like this. Your value goes up to $30.49 with a win. Something important to realize here is the gap in chip value and cash equity. Even though you doubles your stack, your value only goes up $9.

Here is the real breakdown of how the math works:

Folding puts you at a value of $21.78. If you call, you have your value, which is $30.49, multiplied by the 64% (the chance you will win) PLUS the 0 which is your equity if you lose, multiplied by 36% (the amount of times you will lose), and this equals $19.51

What this means, is that in this situation, over the long term, you are going to be losing about $2. If you are playing SNG’s at the $10 level, you are losing 20% to your total ROI.

Without being to confusing, to make a call here, you are going to have a hand here that beats over 70% of the hands he could have. So in this situation, you are going to need to have T-T or better to justify making a long term profitable call. Being able to put your opponent on a range is key.

Can I Rely On ICM Alone?

ICM, like any poker theory or system is simply not perfect. Many people feel that the ICM system does not value the small stack enough. This is due in part to the fact that it does not take into account any skill advantages a player might have. It also does not take into account the size of the blinds, or your position.

It is however the best system for decision making in SNG’s. It is a much better idea to play based on ICM calculations rather than playing on only a few previous hands against that opponent in the tournament. Basically it allows you to figure what the pot is offering to you relative to tournament winnings compared to the risk you need to take. It also take a lot of the stress out of tough SNG decisions, because in the long run it will work out to be the profitable play. ICM is not the only way to play, but incorporating it into your play will have you wining a lot more SNG’s