ICM Article from Current Issue

[Collin Moshman]

I think this is an excellent article for people who are already interested in ICM to further their understanding of how it works. Might be a bit steep for beginners.

One addendum that I think might be made to the article, however, is that the software on the market right now can automate these processes. For instance, you could plug the AQ hand given into SNGPT, assign Villain a hand range, and hit "Compute All" to get a complete list of +Equity calling hands (+Equity meaning either literally Equity > 0, or Equity > .1% or some other small threshold as the author discusses).

Anyway, cheers to Allen for a solid article representing us SNG guys!

Best Regards,
Collin

[Shandrax]

It's amazing that there is virtually no feedback to this article. In my opinion it's the one with the biggest impact on practical play and every SnG player should read it twice!

[kozip]

can someone post a link to it, please?

[Dynasty]

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can someone post a link to it, please?

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It's in this month's Magazine.

[kozip]

its an easy understandable brief explanation of ICM and should be read by players, who have not heard much about ICM yet.

thanks for the link!

[jfk]

I was curious about this line

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So, if using an ICM calculator...

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Please forgive my ignorance but are there ICM calculators (like a twodimes type thing) which players have open and put into use during play?

[Lottery Larry]

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It's amazing that there is virtually no feedback to this article. In my opinion it's the one with the biggest impact on practical play and every SnG player should read it twice!

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I've been meaning to get back to this article, but one thing that jumped out right away was this "silly" example:

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For example, lets say the blinds are 100/200 and you have AQo in the Big Blind and a stack of 2,356 with four people remaining. The little blind has 4,268. The cutoff has 2,780 and the button has 4,096 meaning you have about 19% tournament equity. The Little Blind moves all in. If you fold your blind, you will have 18.65% tournament equity. If you call and win, you will have 31% tournament equity.

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Calculating hundredths of tourney equity, based on chip stacks that shouldn't be possible (did we start with T1/2 blinds?), seemed a bit "strange" to me.

I'm assuming the author worked backwards from the percentage to get the stacks, but it bothered the nit in me a little. Just a comment..

[Red_Diamond]

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It's amazing that there is virtually no feedback to this article. In my opinion it's the one with the biggest impact on practical play and every SnG player should read it twice!


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ICM has been around for a while(despite its shortcomings), and 2+2 magazine has had quite a few ICM related articles published by now. Since not many were blown away by those before, why should they be mesmerized by this one now?

P.S. I don't have anything against this one, just making that clear so no one gets the wrong impression.

[JayTee]

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It's amazing that there is virtually no feedback to this article. In my opinion it's the one with the biggest impact on practical play and every SnG player should read it twice!

[/ QUOTE ]

I've been meaning to get back to this article, but one thing that jumped out right away was this "silly" example:

[ QUOTE ]
For example, lets say the blinds are 100/200 and you have AQo in the Big Blind and a stack of 2,356 with four people remaining. The little blind has 4,268. The cutoff has 2,780 and the button has 4,096 meaning you have about 19% tournament equity. The Little Blind moves all in. If you fold your blind, you will have 18.65% tournament equity. If you call and win, you will have 31% tournament equity.

[/ QUOTE ]

Calculating hundredths of tourney equity, based on chip stacks that shouldn't be possible (did we start with T1/2 blinds?), seemed a bit "strange" to me.

I'm assuming the author worked backwards from the percentage to get the stacks, but it bothered the nit in me a little. Just a comment..

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I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at.

I don't know if this was an example or an actual hand, but the stacks are possible since people can type in odd bet amounts.

Calculating equity down to fractions of a percent is necessary since the edges that you can accept for a play to be correct can be measured in fractions of a %, especially as the stacks become shallower.

[Red_Diamond]

Even if one could not use odd bet amounts, there is the problem of split pots which don't always work out even, and the issue of multi-side pots as well that would produce odd values.

If you don't believe me on this, try playing a lot of B&M where you can only use integral chip units. Often you'll have situations where a white is left over but needs to be given to TWO players. There is a rule on position related to the button in deciding WHICH of these players grabs the odd chip. Of course it doesn't really matter, since 99% of the time it goes into the toke box, the other 1% of the time a guy stiffs the dealer :P