ICM- Using software (3k post)

[Longy]

Well what are the chances? This happens to be my 3000th post.

The main way to become ICM proficient is to use 3rd party software as a study aid. These tools won't magically make you amazing at ICM or have you killing $1000 sngs, but with lots of study they will markedly improve your game imo.

I will be mainly focussing on using sngwiz (www.sngwiz.com) it is available for a free 30 day trial, though you do have to pay after this to continue using it . There are alternatives available like SNGPT (sit and go power tools)but this is the market leader at the moment and therefore seems to be the best tool to talk about. This isn't intended to be a tutorial on how to, but more how I utilise sngwiz when studying my game.


Quiz Mode

This is where i would start with the software, no matter what you consider your level of ability.It gets you use to the interface that sngwiz uses and practice makes perfect. From the drop down menus you can pretty much pick your regular game at any number of sites. I would suggest moving down your maximum stack in blinds to 15, as with anymore than this there are far better options than push/fold.

When i first started using sngwiz i would do at least 50 questions everyday mainly before starting a session, it gets the mind moving and thinking about the right kind of things. You will soon get an idea of general situations you are getting wrong and then you can narrow down your parameters. Maybe you are missing shoves on the bubble, so I would set the parameters to max/min 4 players and then do 50 question on that subject etc. I will still do this at times when i feel like i have developed a leak in my ICM or I'm having alot of wtf moments in game.


Reviewing your own Hand Histories

This is the part of sngwiz i use just about everyday i play poker, mainly right after a session. It tends to vary how long i will use it for sometimes its 5 minutes, other times its over an hour. Normally depends on how I'm running and how I'm feeling about my game.

When I'm playing i always have a notepad and a piece of paper (you can replace this with a word doc on your computer) where i will note down any hands of note, where I'm unsure of the optimal play. I will note the blind level, my cards and the tournament id. When i have finished my session i will dig those hands out from sngwiz and go through them. This is the bare minimum i do at the end of a session, sometimes i will have 1 hand other times I have ten. Fwiw i use to have pages of hands when i started learning ICM.

Other times i will simply run through a set of 10 or so games maybe more and go through each tourney. Sngwiz has a neat feature, where it will give you a green tick where you make a correct action, a red cross where you make an incorrect action and question mark where you have pushed over 10bbs or the decision is marginal. Depending on my mood i will go through all the red crosses and some of the question marks. Be careful though these tick, crosses rely on sngwiz default ranges and sometimes you will get a cross where you have made the right play as sngwiz has a bad range for that particular player.


General Mucking about with Specific hands/ Situations

When looking at any hand, especially when you find the result surprising, simply knowing that it is right or wrong is not really enough. Be inquisitive and curious you will often find some interesting stuff

The first thing i would do is move about my opponents ranges, if i tighten their range does this mean i can push this hand etc. Ranges affect some hands more than others and it is important to know which hands these are especially on the bubble.

Sngwiz has a great little feature where there is a graph function which shows you how your EV changes from them having top 1% of hands to having top 100% of hands. I always look at this and you will find some crucial facts about hands. For example you will find inexploitable shoves where the graph never dips below 0, so ranges of your opponents are irrelevant. Now in sngwiz in the main hh screen the opponent will have a green label next to him if pushing in to him is inexploitable. It will normally be red and green representing the +ev and -ve parts of his range.

Move your opponents stack to give him more chips or less, does this affect the hand you can call/push with. It often does especially on the bubble where the stacks become as a relevant or even more relevant than the actual cards you are holding. One of the reasons why newbies are so poor at bubble spots as they never look beyond their own cards.

Move your position about, the ranges you can push with get alot wider when you are in later position (including sb) in unopened pots.

Once you become experienced in putting all this knowledge together, alot of situations become 2nd nature. The way my mind works is that i will focus on a minimum hand i can make a call or push with. Then will move that hand about if i have any specific reads.

For example 7 handed table, I'm on the button with 10bbs. My mind goes to qjo as a marginal hand to push in this spot given ranges, therefore anything better this i will insta shove, anything a lot worse i will insta muck and i will go to my reads on the blinds if it is close to value of qjo.


Nash Equilibrium

Here is the wikipedia page on NE http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium, it is a part of game theory that applies to sngs and poker in general.

In sngs we have reached a situation where some people in your games will know alot of the above especially the higher the buyins you go up. Therefore people start to play close to perfect and to counteract that people start to call perfectly against these ranges. Eventually these two ranges will polarise to a fixed point, though these points aren't unique (this is really mathsy if anyone wants it expanded on just shout).

So when I'm up against good regs who will pushing close to Nash equilibrium i will turn this nice little resource http://www.holdemresources.net/hr/sngs/icmcalculator.html. From this i can input a situation and it will give me a solution that will be a good approximation to what will happen in game. I use this mainly for sb vs bb (and heads up)confrontations where good regs ranges are very different to anybody else.


I think that is about enough, I have of course not covered everything, mainly as i don't want this to be a dissertation.

Any questions/queries and I will happy answer them.









 

[Charlie44]

Thanks Longy for the time you've put into this - it was very instructive. I look forward to spending many fascinating hours on sngwiz and hopefully improving my sit n go results no end.

I'm new to ICM and have not studied at all really. Am I right in assuming when you talk about +ev you are effectively talking about increasing your expected tournament winnings as opposed to chips ( which I believe can be significantly different) ?

Also I've been thinking about the principles of ev in a cash context. Let's assume somebody has 10 blinds and goes all in ( for simplicity sake lets ignore the blinds ) . Would I be right in thinking that to maximise ev you should call half way of your opponents expected betting range.  So if you believe he goes all in with 10 % of top hands you should call only with everything from  the top 5% of hands . Anything lower and on average you will loose more than you will win.

On the other hand if you are the bettor and you know that you are likely to be called by the top 5% of hands you should tighten up considerably and go all in only with the top 2.5 % of hands .

Do you agree with this principle or am I just talking rubbish ? Has the concept any relevance to tournament play ?

[thetank]

One issue I have with SnGWiz is that when assigning ranges to people, you can't choose specific cards.
You have to put in a %number or drag the bar.

When I'm trying to analyse whether to push over the limpers or not, I can't include a hand like 67s in someone's range without also including Q2o, J4o and T6o.

Is there a way to get round this?

[Longy]

Thanks Longy for the time you've put into this - it was very instructive. I look forward to spending many fascinating hours on sngwiz and hopefully improving my sit n go results no end.

I'm new to ICM and have not studied at all really. Am I right in assuming when you talk about +ev you are effectively talking about increasing your expected tournament winnings as opposed to chips ( which I believe can be significantly different) ?

Also I've been thinking about the principles of ev in a cash context. Let's assume somebody has 10 blinds and goes all in ( for simplicity sake lets ignore the blinds ) . Would I be right in thinking that to maximise ev you should call half way of your opponents expected betting range.  So if you believe he goes all in with 10 % of top hands you should call only with everything from  the top 5% of hands . Anything lower and on average you will loose more than you will win.

On the other hand if you are the bettor and you know that you are likely to be called by the top 5% of hands you should tighten up considerably and go all in only with the top 2.5 % of hands .

Do you agree with this principle or am I just talking rubbish ? Has the concept any relevance to tournament play ?

In cash games when you are talking simply about chip equity and looking at calling ranges like this is quite a reasonable barometer imo, as long as we are talking about getting it all in pre, of course with stacks so deep, there are loads of other factors to consider.

In tournaments it is different because of the payout structure, which is why we use ICM to analyse such situations. This tend to lead to tighter calling ranges and sometimes wider pushing ranges.

[Longy]

One issue I have with SnGWiz is that when assigning ranges to people, you can't choose specific cards.
You have to put in a %number or drag the bar.

When I'm trying to analyse whether to push over the limpers or not, I can't include a hand like 67s in someone's range without also including Q2o, J4o and T6o.

Is there a way to get round this?

I don't how to get round this either which is slightly annoying, you use to be able to do this in sngpt.

[thetank]

Belated congrats on the 3000th post btw.

Quantity and quality 

[Simon Galloway]

Thanks Longy, a useful kickstart for me to review my hands.  I thought I'd put this one up as it crops up in the first sng I reviewed, and I still prefer the way I played it rather than the ICM suggestion.  Would be interested in your thoughts..

Click to see full-size image.

[Simon Galloway]

Eek - the stretch didnt work..

Essentially the other big stack is to my left, The suggested push I don't like with my stack size and the (allbeit small) chance of CL having a hand.  The small raise seemed better, as I can get off the hand if I need to, but am  playing effective all in against either small stack.

Do you simply tone down ICM suggestions when >10BB?

[Longy]

Yep i would do what you did in this hand and make it 750, it commits yourself to getting it in against the shorties and allowing yourself to pass against a big stack shove.

With more than 12-13bb effective i ignore push/fold and therefore essentially ICM results (even though they are still mathematically correct) as making small raises is often more +ev than shoving. To extrapolate that to the extreme ICM will tell you pushing aa 1st hand is correct but making a smaller raise is more +ev longterm.

[TheChipPrince]

Yep i would do what you did in this hand and make it 750, it commits yourself to getting it in against the shorties and allowing yourself to pass against a big stack shove.

With more than 12-13bb effective i ignore push/fold and therefore essentially ICM results (even though they are still mathematically correct) as making small raises is often more +ev than shoving. To extrapolate that to the extreme ICM will tell you pushing aa 1st hand is correct but making a smaller raise is more +ev longterm.

We all make it 750-900 there, but lets say were the button, nothing better than re-shoving with junk here knowing UTG needs a monster to call you...

Only a bad play if the blinds are so short, they HAVE to call...

[Longy]

Yep i would do what you did in this hand and make it 750, it commits yourself to getting it in against the shorties and allowing yourself to pass against a big stack shove.

With more than 12-13bb effective i ignore push/fold and therefore essentially ICM results (even though they are still mathematically correct) as making small raises is often more +ev than shoving. To extrapolate that to the extreme ICM will tell you pushing aa 1st hand is correct but making a smaller raise is more +ev longterm.

We all make it 750-900 there, but lets say were the button, nothing better than re-shoving with junk here knowing UTG needs a monster to call you...

Only a bad play if the blinds are so short, they HAVE to call...

Yeah was thinking this it can turn it to a real game (dare i say meta game) if hero and button are both comptent sng players. As if im in hero's spot and i know button is likely to reshove me with a v wide range, I would open shove hands that are +ev, then starting making it 750 with very big hands (aa and kk probably) to induce the shove. Of course button may re react by folding alot of his range.

Hmmmm Metagame.

In this spot we have no reason to think button is good, so 750 ftw.

[Simon Galloway]

That's the sng beauty (is that a contradiction in terms??) of it.  The cautious 750 invites the steal.  If I Was CL here and the stacks were slightly more disparate, then I would shove.  As is, the shove is dangerous because losing the race takes you to the felt and every chance of 4th.  I'm not adverse to doing it, so long as I have some sort of indication that the raiser realises why they should fold, and not snap call with 22.

At low to medium levels, not that many players seem to routinely make this play, and those that are capable I generally have played with before and have tagged.  Against them, I would be handing them 750 chips, making the shove with AQ necessary.

The main query was that I was wondering if ICM had priced in the inherent danger of the CL steal and that was why it was coming back "push" - my sense is from what I've read is that it doesn't.

[Charlie44]

Longy

Having great fun on SnGwiz, and learning a lot too. Thanks for you the suggestion.

Just one observation . I managed to get 49 out of 50 on the easy level of quiz. However I think the knowledge about the likely calling range of each player helps a lot. In reality it's unlikely that you will be able to asses likely calling range anywher near as accurate as this. Do you agree ?

Also I assume this %age calling range is adjusted by the situation is it ? So for instance I had one question where I was in cutoff with 53 with stack of 4123 (biggest) , BB with 3230 and blinds 600,1200. Only 2 other players.

So when I go all in BB has approx. 2.8 -1 to call. Yet the call ratio for is just 19.5%. Is this % ajdusted to take account of the situation i.e the bubble with 20% winning to 3rd ? Otherwise the 19.5 % seems really low.

Also the fifure of equity if you pass and equity if you fold I assume is the %age of prize money. Is that right?

Any more educational posts coming up soon ?

By the way I'm now officially a junior member (over 50 posts). Do I get a medal or something ?

[Charlie44]

Sorry to be a pain Longy but I have another hand which I don't understand - even more confusing to me than the other hand.

6 players left in as follows-

Hero UTG 987 chips
UTG +1    5020     call % 12.8
Cut off     2078               11.3
Button     1112               15.0
sb           2232                15.0
BB          2071                18.8

Pot 600 (300/150 plus 25 antes)

Set as tight why is BB only calling 18.8*% of hands when he has hero well covered and will have 2.35 - 1, or have to put 30% only into pot. With those odds surely call with any 2 cards. Its an easy call for cash game . Can't get my head around why makes such a big difference here with prize money so far away !

Even if I change model to very loose for BB he only calls with 50 % of hands.

Your help would be much apprecaited.

[Longy]

Sorry to be a pain Longy but I have another hand which I don't understand - even more confusing to me than the other hand.

6 players left in as follows-

Hero UTG 987 chips
UTG +1    5020     call % 12.8
Cut off     2078               11.3
Button     1112               15.0
sb           2232                15.0
BB          2071                18.8

Pot 600 (300/150 plus 25 antes)

Set as tight why is BB only calling 18.8*% of hands when he has hero well covered and will have 2.35 - 1, or have to put 30% only into pot. With those odds surely call with any 2 cards. Its an easy call for cash game . Can't get my head around why makes such a big difference here with prize money so far away !

Even if I change model to very loose for BB he only calls with 50 % of hands.

Your help would be much apprecaited.

Sngwiz default settings are sometimes way off, especially in situations similar to the one above. With the quiz mode obviously make a stab at what you think the correct answer given those ranges but when you don't think they are realistic move them about to your best guess of the ranges and then look at your push range. Guessing peoples ranges in given situation comes with experience and you should be relying on your own reads in game than sngwiz default ranges imo.