Poker News

Richard Burke

On a cool fall Sunday I loped into our local card room just behind Fred and we both registered for the noon, no-limit hold’em tournament. While we waited for it to start, he again asked about the Independent Chip Model. He understood that when he had fewer chips than five times the big blind, he needed to take desperate measures either to win the blinds and antes or to double-up. He had digested that tactic, he said, but everyone knew that getting blinded off was the dumbest thing one could do in a tournament. Wasn’t there more to the ICM than that, he asked.

Let’s use our example from the last issue of Poker Player, I answered, of an eighty-table no-limit hold’em tournament in its later stages. For purposes of clarity we’ll ignore blinds, antes, and any small, rounding errors. Notice the changes in the players’ equities in the ICM’s before-and-after table when a small stack doubles through a large one. The small stack gains plenty, and although the large stack loses the most, the ICM shows that everyone else at the table loses equity. This is an important finding, I told Fred, for no one is just a bystander. That’s why you often see two or more callers when a short stack goes all-in. They know that the small stack’s chances decrease exponentially as the number of callers, so they gang up on the shrimps.

That’s also why the large stacks pound on the smaller ones. When a small stack felts, as the next ICM table shows, everyone else gains equity. The larger stacks at the table will often cooperate because they realize that ?the enemy of my enemy is my friend,? the enemy in this case being the short stack. When two or more players call an all-in player, you’ll usually see them check the hand down, wishing to avoid risking their stacks further. Later on, when the small stacks are gone, they’ll compete mano a mano. Until then, they become ?partners of convenience.?

Occasionally, when someone is all-in, a player will fire at a dry pot, either because she has the other live player beaten, or wants to convince him he’s beaten, and thereby isolate the all-in player. That’s an advanced play: playing A-B-C tournament poker, they’ll merely check the hand down.

Of course when two players call, sometimesthe short stack triples-up. This before-and-after ICM table shows the short stack gains equity handsomely in that event, while every other player at the table loses. To prevent tripling-up a short stack, the larger stacks may take turns calling the all-in moves of desperados, again in the spirit of temporary partnership .

Fred was astounded that one could divine these tactics from the ICM. The next issue of Poker Player, I told him, will have a few more revelations from the Independent Chip Model.

See Also:

ICM Part 1

ICM Part 2

ICM Part 3

ICM Part 4

Filed under: Poker News