ICM theory question
According to ICM, chips increase in value as a tournament progresses. Thus, it would make sense that you would need to make high variance plays in later stages to win (e.g. 4-bet preflop all in with A5o, all in on flop with straight & flush draws).
At the same time, people have argued that in the early stages of a tournament, you should treat it like a cash game and be aggressive to accumulate chips. But if chips in the early stages are not as valuable, why put oneself at risk with LAG playing style & high variance plays?
Am I misunderstanding ICM?
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According to ICM, chips increase in value as a tournament progresses. Thus, it would make sense that you would need to make high variance plays in later stages to win (e.g. 4-bet preflop all in with A5o, all in on flop with straight & flush draws).
At the same time, people have argued that in the early stages of a tournament, you should treat it like a cash game and be aggressive to accumulate chips. But if chips in the early stages are not as valuable, why put oneself at risk with LAG playing s
Yeah, you have it exactly backward. Your chips are more valuable as a tournament progresses. That means that the divergence between the value of chips you gain and chips you lose increases as the tournament goes on.
For example, in a cash game, if you lose $50 in chips, you lose $50. If you gain $50 in chips, you gain $50.
In a $50 tournament, though, you start with $50 in equity. If you bust on the first hand, you lose $50 in equity. If you double up on the first hand, though, you don't gain $50 in equity, it's closer to $45 (and everyone else in the tournament actually gains a little bit of equity too).
This "ICM effect" becomes more pronounced the deeper into the tournament you get. It's most pronounced around the final table bubble and early on the final table, strong at the money bubble, and also has strong effects from about the final 2-3 tables onward. But it always has at least a minor effect.
The deeper you get into a tournament, the more simply staying alive and outlasting other players has value. It's most pronounced at a final table, where simply letting one or two players bust ahead of you makes you a significant amount of money. Whereas, at the beginning of the tournament, letting 80% of the field bust ahead of you makes you no money (in a typical 15% payout structure, anyway).
Therefore, the chips you currently have are more valuable than the chips you can gain by putting them at risk.
And in short, you need significantly more equity in a hand to put those chips at risk in the late stages of a tournament than in the early stages-- and the more chips you're putting at risk, the more pronounced that effect is. Simplest example, if you're 9-handed at the final table and second in chips, getting in a flip with the chip leader is a huge disaster for your real-money equity.
