Many high profile poker players started out their career by playing single table tournaments, more commonly known as sit-n-go’s. Samer Khuri, more commonly known in the online sit-n-go world as “Braminc,” moved up the ranks in the online sit-n-go world and was one of the best players in the high-stakes six and nine-man sit-n-go’s on Full Tilt Poker.

After Black Friday, Khuri left the U.S. for Lebanon, where he has continued his sit-n-go career on PokerStars.

Khuri netted hundreds of thousands of dollars by understanding the nuances of these single table tournaments. He recently sat down with Card Player to talk about the Independent Chip Model (ICM) and the role that it plays in forming a solid sit-n-go strategy.

ICM or Independent Chip Model is the way of calculating the value of a chip stack in a tournament based on the prize pool and the number of total chips in play. Understanding the Independent Chip Model. In poker, the Independent Chip Model (ICM) uses the stack sizes of remaining players and the payout structure to calculate each player’s equity in the tournament.

Steve Schult: Can you explain what ICM is?

Samer Khuri: It stands for independent chip model and it is a way of assigning a value of chips at any stage in a tournament. The reason this is even necessary is because chips are not directly related to a dollar value during the course of a tournament the same way they are in a cash game. Because the formula is so complicated for calculating the value of your chips, some genius math guys created the independent chip model and some calculators that we can use to calculate the actual dollar value of our chip stack. It’s a way for measuring the value of our stack.

The term is overused in a sense. People will say things like “ICM doesn’t say to do that.” I think what people really mean to say is that it’s not a good shove or fold because of the value of your stack before and after based on what ICM would tell you. The daily usage of the term has gotten a little more generous if you will.

SS: How does ICM and different payout structures affect how you should be playing in the early stages of a sit-n-go and in the late stages?

SK: In general, it is going to mean that you have to play tighter than you would in a winner-take-all or a cash game format. That would be the first thing to note because when you get into more details it gets pretty complicated. Different payout structures have different results on what your strategy should be. If you are playing a very top-heavy payout structure, with the most top-heavy being a winner-take-all format, then you are going to be allowed to play very aggressively in order to have optimal strategy. Likewise, any tournament with a structure that comes close to that, such as a six-max sit-n-go with 70 percent of the prize pool going to first place, then generally a more aggressive strategy will be the best choice.

Conversely, a more flat payout structure where first place gets paid a much less percentage of the prize pool and second, third, fourth, and sometimes even fifth and sixth place getting some of the prize pool, then ICM will play a much bigger part of your strategy and will result in you playing much tighter in a lot of situations. In general, the presence of ICM will instruct you to play pretty tightly both early and later in the tournament. Now, later in the tournament, if your opponents are playing too tight or if they know they are supposed to be playing tight, you can actually play a little loose so it does become a little complicated and the details become more dependent upon the players you are playing against. In general, it is going to force you to play a tight early game and then a tight or loose late game depending on opponents.

SS: How would you respond to those who say that sit-n-goes are solved. If you are able to make adjustments based on your opponents, wouldn’t that lead to the game not being solved?

SK: I think in the highest ICM games, the games are closest to being solved. What I mean by highest ICM games are the flattest payout structures, like the double-or-nothings. All you have to do in that tournament is play ridiculously tight and make a few steals when you have a few opportunities just to stay alive into the final five. There is a little room for creativity, but in that tournament there really is no real room.

In a game like a six-max sit-n-go, where it’s 70 percent for 1st and 30 percent for 2nd. That is a game that is much less solved and there is much more room for creativity and different strategies that can also be winning strategies. There is no one set winning strategy in those games.

There is also a lot of stuff in between from top-heavy to flat. A nine-man sit-n-go which is kind of the most typically thought of format because it’s maybe the oldest one. It is a little more on the higher ICM side of things. It’s a little bit tighter and closer to the double-or-nothings although still not even close to as tight as the double-or-nothing. It is probably the second or third tightest structure and is a little bit more into the solved area.

The thing about being solved is that I think it is just being used as an oversimplification. It’s an exaggeration but it’s not completely untrue. If you have all educated one of the most solved games it’s going to be either unbeatable or beatable for a very small win rate. The thing is though is that it just never happens.

Independent Chip Model Poker

SS: Can you explain the “ICM Tax” that you hear about so often in sit-n-go strategy?

SK: Using the phrase ICM tax is kind of a user-friendly way of describing what ICM is. It’s not the most accurate way to look at something, but in general it goes back to the same principle of what ICM is and the fact that your chips are not directly related to the dollar value of your stack size and the way that fluctuates. Consider a situation where somebody is going all in and you have to call. ICM tax basically says that doubling up your stack is worth less than losing your whole stack.

If you lose your whole stack you lose 100 percent of your dollar value. If you double your stack, you do not gain 100 percent of your value. You usually a little bit less or a lot less depending on chip stacks and payout structures. So you will never be gaining a full 100 percent while you will always be risking a full 100 percent. You are paying a little bit extra to double up but you are still risking everything. So winning chips isn’t as important as keeping chips in a lot of spots.

SS: Can you talk about how ICM tax affects bubble play?

SK: Whenever you are encountering ICM tax, you are going to need better than average odds to call off your stack. Sometimes on the bubble, you will need 70-75 percent edge to turn a profit. If you are second in chips and facing the chip leader going all in, you can know that he is going all-in with every single hand in the world, including 2-3 off suit, you need a hand that has 70 percent or more equity against his range. A hand like A-K or A-Q don’t cover the ICM tax and usually in spots like this the bottom of our calling range will be either pocket tens or pocket jacks, which will have enough equity against an any two card range to make up for that ICM tax.

SS: Can you elaborate on a situation you have encountered where ICM tax really handcuffs you on the bubble?

SK: I’ve been in this situation hundreds of times where you are on the bubble of a nine-man tournament, so there are four players left. One player has around 1,000 chips, another player has like 2,500, and the big stack has like 5,500 and you are in the big blind with 4,500 and are dealt A-K suited. The blinds are 200/400, so you have about 11 big blinds and it folds around to the small blind who is the big stack at the table and he shoves all in. This player is somebody you know and you know he plays aggressively and you know he is shoving any two cards or very close to it.
Even if he is shoving any two cards, including 2-3 off suit, then you have to fold.

If you look it up in an ICM calculator, you will find that by making the call, you will be losing 1.77 percent of your prize pool equity. What that means is that if you measure your prize pool equity, which is the average amount of dollars you will win, at the beginning of the hand, and you measure after you have called, you will see that you actually have much lower prize pool equity. That isn’t 1.77 percent less than your starting equity. That will be 1.77 percent less than the total prize pool in play.

Normally in ICM studies, anything above .1 percent is a clear call or shove and anything where you are losing .1 percent is a clear fold. We are talking about decimal points here, so when something is 1.77 percent, it’s not even close or even debatable.

Khuri is currently an instructor at CardRunners and Pokerstrategy.com, as well as offering private coaching from his own site, www.Sngexperts.com.

The Independent Chip Model, or ICM as it’s more commonly referred to, is a mathematical model used in the late stages of tournaments to calculate your total equity in the prize pool, the money you stand to make in the tournament. This is calculated based on your chip stack in relation to the total amount of chips in play and the other players’ chips.

Doing the ICM calculations manually is very tedious and completely unpractical. There are several calculators available which can do all these calculations in under a second. Calculators allow you to import your game history from the majority of online poker sites. From there it will analyse every hand you played and point out the ones that are questionable. You can then select these hands and analyse them further by assigning a range of hands from your opponents and running a simulation of what would have happened if you’d called / folded.

It’s important to note that Pokerstars recently announced that it does not allow the use of ICM calculators while playing in a tournament on the basis that it gives players an unfair advantage.

Free ICM Calculators

• Poker Cruncher (Range of apps from free to $14.99)

These tools are a great way to improve your game, but they should be used to analyze your call / raise / fold decisions after the game instead of during. The use of ICM calculators during a game can be detrimental over time as you develop a dependency and your game becomes almost automated instead of using your own judgment.

What Is The ICM And How Do I Use It?

To help clarify the purpose of using ICM in a tournament let’s use the example of a cash game situation

In a cash game every chip has a specific value to make up your total chip stack amount. Knowing this information allows you to quickly assess where you stand in the game in relation to the other players but, more importantly, it helps you calculate the exact dollar amount of how much you stand to win or lose in the long run by making a particular call or fold, this is your expected value.

You’re playing in a $1/$2 and your stack is $120
You have K♠ Q♠
You raise to $6 in the BB, everyone folds but the dealer calls.
The flop comes
9♠ 10♠ A♣
You bet out $10, and he raises all-in for $26.
The pot is now at $49

Now let’s analyse the hand to see if you should call or fold.

You know the player on the button is a tight player so he is likely to have paired his Ace with a strong kicker, most likely AK.

On a board of 9♠ 10♠ A♣
K♠ Q♠ vs. A♥ K♥ = 45.15% vs. 53.94%

The pot odds were 4.9:1 ($10 to win $49), so let’s calculate the EV
(-$10 * 53.49%) + ($49 * 45.15%) = $14.97

On average if you make the call you would make $14.97.

This is what we’re trying to figure out by using the ICM, the dollar amount that you will win in the long run by making the call. In a tournament however, you will not make money on a per hand basis so instead we’re interested in knowing how calling or folding a hand will increase or decrease your odds of making it into the money.

Now that you have a better understanding of what the ICM is and how it can be used, let’s take a look at the calculations behind it.

You are registered for a $20+$2 sit and go tournament with 6 players registered.
Each player started with 1,500 chips, for a total of 9,000 chips.

The sit and go has the following prize distribution:
First place: $80
Second place: $40

The tournament is down to the bubble with 3 players left with the following chip stacks

Player 1: 4,500
Player 2: 3,000
Player 3: 1,500

Poker Independent Chip Model Anchor Chart

The first step is determining each players’ equity. In order to do so we need to know the odds of each player finishing in the money. The ICM model stipulates that your odds of finishing in a certain position are based on your chips in relation to the total chip stacks. Using this logic we can determine:

Player 1 – 1st place 4,500/9,000 = 50%
Player 2 – 2nd place 3,000/4,500 = 66.67% *
Player 3 – 2nd place 1,500/4,500 = 33.33%

* Because the ICM assumes the chip leader will finish in 1st place, we need to omit these chips to determine the 2nd and 3rd places.

Now we need to repeat the process to determine the odds of players 2 and 3 of finishing in 1st place, In this case we’ll need to omit the 2nd player’s chips to determine the odds of the first player finishing 2nd and similarly with the 3rd player.

After the calculations we get the following results

Player 2 – 1st place 33.33%
Player 1 – 2nd place 75%
Player 3 – 2nd place 25%

Player 3 – 1st place 16.67%
Player 1 – 2nd place 60%
Player 2 – 2nd place 40%

Now let’s calculate how often each player will finish in 2nd place.
Player 1 – 33.33% * 75% + 16.67% * 60% = 34.99%
Player 2 – 50% * 66.67% + 16.67% * 40% = 40%
Player 3 – 50% * 33.33% + 33.33% * 25% = 24.99%

Finally, the odds of each player finishing in 3rd place is just a matter of calculating the odds of finishing in first place and second place and subtracting this result from 100.

Player 1 – 15.01%
Player 2 – 26.67%
Player 3 – 58.34%

We’re finally ready to calculate each player’s equity. The equation is:
(Probability of being 1st * Payout for 1st) + (Probability of being 2nd * Payout for 2nd) + (Probability of being 3rd * Payout for 3rd) +

Crunch all those numbers and we get each player’s equity:
Player 1 – $26.99
Player 2 – $21.33
Player 3 – $9.66

We’re almost there. Now let’s use these numbers in a practical application. Let’s use the same example as we did with the cash game,

You’re the chip leader with 4,500 chips in the BB and you have K♠ Q♠.
The blinds are at 400/800
You raise to 1,600
Player 3 folds
Player 2 moves all-in in the SB for an extra 1,000.
There’s now 4,200 in the pot.
You put player 2 on A♥ K♥
If you remember from before we said that on a board of
9♠ 10♠ A♣
K♠ Q♠ vs. A♥ K♥ = 45.15% vs. 53.94%

If you call and win your odds of finishing first are: 7,100/9,000 = 78%
If you call and lose your odds of finishing first are: 1,900/9,000 = 21%
If you fold your odds of finishing first are: 2,900/9,000 = 32%

Let’s calculate the expected value
(45.15% * 78%) + (53.94% * 21%) = 46.54%
$80 * (46.54% – 32%) = $11.63

Poker Independent Chip Model Calculator

According to the ICM, by calling the all-in in this situation you will make on average $11.63 in the long run.

Remember that the ICM is not without its flaws. Perhaps the most important of these is the fact that it fails to take into account a player’s skill. The expected value above was calculated based on a speculative hand that you put your opponent on based on your observations of this player. Although we’ve all seen opponents push all-in with live cards such as 9-10 in which case the EV would have been negative.

Poker Independent Chip Models

Good luck at the tables!