SNG Strategy: The ICM Concept

What is ICM?

The ICM concept (Independent Chip Modeling) is an extremely important tool for playing sit and goes at the $50 level. In essence, it’s a way of calculating your SNG equity during any part of the game, taking into account your stack size, the stack size of the remaining players, and the payoff structure.

All long-term SNG players should take the time to learn ICM, as it increases your expected value by helping you decide when to call, fold or shove against opponents, along with the hand ranges required for doing so.

Calculating Your Equity

Example: You’re playing in a 10 man sit and go, where the top 3 players get payoffs of 50%, 30% and 20%. There are five players left and you have 70% of the chips. What this means is that in a normal SNG where everyone is the same skill, you’d have about 43% equity.

This long term calculation is based on the amount of chips you have, the payoff structure, and the chips of others. Although you have 70% of the chips, you’re still not guaranteed to come first, which is why your average equity is only 43%.

To put this idea in contrast, if the same situation happened in a winner takes all tournament, your 70% of chips on the table would directly represent 70% equity of the prize pool (since that is your chance of winning in the long term if everyone were exactly the same skill).

Importance of ICM in the Bubble

The concept of ICM probably seems confusing at the moment, so I’ll show you how it can be used in your game.  Basically, knowing your ICM allows you to make calculated decisions risking your stack that takes into account the rewards/risks of making a move with complete respect to your equity.  If you risk your stack during an SNG, you need to know whether the rewards in expected equity from a move outweighs the risk taken.

For example, imagine there are 4 players left (including yourself), and the top 3 places get paid.  One of the players has a 1BB stack.  You hold a great hand like AK or AQ and a player with double your chip stack shoves in front of you.  Even if you know you have him beat, ICM will virtually always tell you to fold.

This is because folding here will keep you on a higher equity than calling and risking your stack in the long term. If you fold, the chances are the player on 1BB will go out soon and you’ll be in the money. ICM states that calling would be wrong because even if you were, say, a 60/40 favorite, you are still risking your tournament life. If you lose the hand, you would drop to zero equity.

How to Calculate Your ICM

The best way to calculate your ICM is to use SNG software such as SNG Wizard.  The best way to improve your ICM game is to look through your history and see where the software suggests you played the hand badly.  By scrolling through your hands, you might see you’re calling too often, or not folding enough, not pushing when you should do, or something else – with regards to risk/reward equity decisions.

How ICM Affects Your Decisions

Using ICM affects your SNG play in three main ways.  Firstly, it makes you call with far fewer hands, especially when you’re approaching the bubble.  This is because the negative equity of losing chips is usually greater than the positive equity of gaining the same amount of chips (if that makes sense).

Secondly, because it makes your play much more mathematical, players aware of ICM will be tighter overall, and only call all-ins with stronger hands then they normally would.

Thirdly, ICM makes it much more advantageous to call a player’s all in if you have him stacked, rather than someone with 5 times your stack.  Calling the former means if you win, you eliminate him and significantly increase your equity. When you call the former however, even if you win, your opponent is still in a healthy position (thus your expected equity would be greater if you folded, than if you took the risk of losing you entire stack).

This article was written by MTT Strategy