tournament icm
When playing a poker tournament, the value of chips does not directly
correlate to the number of chips accumulated. A player could sneak into
3rd place with one chip left and be guaranteed a prize, whereas a player
who blows a big stack on the bubble leaves empty handed. This means that
there are some complicated formulas for calculating the value of your
chips (the ICM independent chip model) and whether certain moves like
going all in or calling all in are profitable in the long run, based on
your stack size, the stack sizes of your opponents, the blinds etc.
There are tools that will calculate your expected value for an action
(EV) . Take a look at
sngwiz.com and
sngegt.com. Some of these tools may offer live
play results which may break the terms of the site so check in advance
before using such tools while playing however you can practice scenarios
offline to get an idea of the basics of the ICM (independent chip model)
EV expected value concepts. In general, when playing a tournament, you
are more concerned about making it to the final table and into the money
more so than you are about accumulating chips. Although accumulating
chips will be the way to make it into the money, sometimes you can pass
up some action that you might otherwise readily take when in a cash
game, but in a tournament you would be better off laying low and letting
your opponents duke it out and get eliminated thereby giving you
positive EV . All this comes with experience and study. It is not
trivial to master but if you take the time to learn it will give that
that edge to become a winning player rather than one that repeatedly
deposits again and again.
