Venetian $1600 AA 1st hand played

I know Rick has said this before, but I've been wondering it too. Like, I play poker to make the best decisions that will make me the most money long-term. ICM is part of that. From how Rick describes hands and his approach to ICM and his dislike of solvers, it sounds like that's not why he plays. He plays because he likes to play a certain style and wants to be able to win in that style. In that case, I'm not even sure what utility there is in posting hands and questions, because it doesn't sound like his goal is to make the most +$EV decision every time.

The problem I have with ICM is that even though it is 100% correct from a winning money perspective it doesn't take into account the value of having a decent size stack.

Per ICM the fewer chips you have the more they are worth (if I am remembering correctly). To me this is contrary to the way I value chips.

The other issue I have is that ICM is a balanced GTO way of doing things. In the moment it is always imperative to me to be analyzing the players ranges who might decide to call me.

Could be I am wrong and will suffer from it. But it could also be that for me this is the way to go.

Also for the record I love solvers. I think it causes a lot of problems for how players size their bets. In situations where it is not obvious I find that GTO/Solver players tend to oversize when they are strong and undersize when they aren't.

Did the Australian mention his name? I know most if not all of the regs and will likely see him at a large live series coming up in August.

If you’re going to make a conscious decision to ignore ICM (and you wouldn’t be the first player to *flex* ‘ICM is for poor people’😉 then I’d urge you to read Dara’s book before staying forever on that track. The icm effects are huge on the final table in particular.

I can get behind the idea that ignoring icm until the final table may be OK in your own equity calculations - especially if you play a big stack well. But part of playing a big stack well lies in exploiting the icm constraints faced by your opponents from around half way through a tournament.

From memory Dara talks mostly about final table icm calcs and the benefit of late reg. The mid stages mtt icm effects have been discovered by solvers quite recently and are reflected in tools like GTOWizard - but if you don’t find a source it basically boils down to icm effects becoming significant from about half the field remaining.

I agree - ICM doesn't account for future value of chips which can vary greatly. A high level pro and an amateur should make much different decisions yet ICM will give them the same result. GTO is another overused term - live tournaments are usually very soft and like you pointed out contain highly exploitable players that would force us to play highly exploitable as well. Talking about balanced ranges and protecting your checking range in a live 1600 isn't really applicable - we're seeing most of these players for probably 100 hands or less. I think they're great tools but as with everything else in life they need to applied correctly - most don't.

Why SHOULD an amateur and a high level pro make different decisions? Shouldn't the amateur make the same decisions that the pro makes? Thats how pros become pros after all.

Utilization of chips - a double up late in a tournament has a higher dollar value to a pro then an amateur. That's what I'm getting at - ICM doesn't factor in skill differences.

Like fkn lol bro honestly.

Fold turn.

It is strictly true in the sense that still being in the tournament is the most valuable thing of all, and each additional chip is just adding to that.

As far as future value of a big stack-- as other people have said, a lot of that value is due to ICM itself, as per how you can leverage that against other players, vs. at times when they're playing closer to chip EV. But the flipside of that is, because of ICM, you don't want to be putting yourself unnecessarily at risk just to acquire one when the downside of losing costs you a lot of real-money equity.

So without a real understanding of which spots you're talking about, or when you might gamble for a big stack vs. play more conservatively, it's hard to say if what you're doing is making you money or costing you money. But, of course, if you just want to play a certain way, then what does that matter? You can always play however you want to play.

I don't understand what you mean by the first sentence. ICM means being conscious of how the value of the chips you're risking deviates from the value of chips you're winning. It's not even strictly a "way of doing things", although its effects will mean you adjust how you play certain hands at certain stages of the tournament. (You should be more willing to make the kind of gambles you're talking about early on in the tournament, while most of the field is left and/or before late registration has ended.)

I think everyone should be thinking about their opponents' ranges when they make decisions. ICM does not mean ignoring how your opponents actually play.

I think even if you find deviating from theoretically optimal strategies is correct in your games, it's still important to know and understand what those strategies are. (How do you deviate when you don't know what you're deviating from?)

Well, if they're really good and actually playing by GTO, they should be balanced and have a significant number of strong bluffs when they overbet. Most people don't bluff enough, so it makes sense that if they're not applying those principles in total, they might be giving away too much information by their bet sizing.

But the flipside of all this is, if a pro has a skill edge they could better leverage with a big stack, then they also shouldn't be taking big marginal spots late in a tournament, because of that skill edge.

@MrRick

If you enjoy exploiting a deep stack then you’re probably familiar with a deep stack strategy to attack the medium stacks once you get about half way into the tournament.

It’s an old school concept, but one that illustrates icm adjustments very well.

Increasing your 3! frequency against short stacks doesn’t work so well, because short stacks aren’t facing icm pressure. They have less to lose by accepting your challenge and flipping cEV range v cEV range.

Widening your 3! range against medium stacks is a great strategy though, because the medium stacks generally continue to open their cEV ranges but are then forced to make tighter $EV decisions v your 3!

So they either start to fold more often to your 3! or they tighten their opening range leaving you to wield your stack against the blinds. Either outcome is good for you.

It’s been working for years (I first heard this at least 15 years ago), but it’s only very recently that solvers have crunched the numbers to explain why it works best from around half way through the mtt.

One concept directly applicable here is maximal v minimal exploit strategy, described by Michael Acevedo in Modern Poker Theory. The best icm adjustment you can make deep stacked v medium stacks, if you are likely to be at the same table for a while (WSOP), is to widen your three bet range a little bit. If you’re too wide and too aggressive even a medium stack will spot it and counter exploit. And that smug look on their face when you 3!/fold is tilting. Small adjustments, however, are unexploitable.

There are other ways to apply pressure deep stacked against medium stacks. It’s worth kicking back with a glass of red and musing over spots where pressure can be applied - like 1BB donks that force a flat and lead to you realising all your draw equity super cheap. Just remember that the reason it works is because your medium stacked opponent is facing $EV equity decisions whenever the action may lead to an eventual AI decision.

Finally, you’re still to able to make adjustments for individual player ranges in everything above, which I’d imagine is a strength of yours.