5 ICM Tips to Crush Poker Tournaments

hello fellow Wizards my name is  Toano bres and in today's video I'll give you my top five tips  on your way to becoming the ICM wizard here's the plan one understand risk  premium and the main factors affecting it two how do we adjust our strategy based on our  stack size throughout the different phases of the tournament three start making ICM adjustments  earlier in the tournament four avoid flatting how to properly build our ranges based on playability  and blockers five defend big blind prop

erly because the majority of post flop pots are played  vers the big blind so we should be precise and confident when executing our strategy understand  risk premium the definition goes like this it is the extra Equity we need to add on top of pod  ODS in chpv to get the ICM mods since RIS prum is measured in percentage terms if we have  say 30% P outs in chpv and we have 10% risk premium the new pouts in ICM are going to be 40%  so we need 10% extra to justify for the risk that we're taking the

main factors that affect this  metrics are first and most important the stack sizes so what is our stock size compared to the  stock size of our opponent most importantly and then what is it relative to the other Stacks  at the table and in the whole tournament so for instance if we're a chip lader at the final table  it is really beneficial for us if there are some really short stacks because this will increase  the risk sping for other players it will make it hard for them to withstand our ag

gression then the  stage of the tournament as we're approaching the two most important stages of the tournament the  bubble and the final table we have to adjust our ranges based on how close we are to each of those  stages and then one more thing that some players are underestimating is the number of entrance I  think this is very important to understand that say if we're just in the money in a really really  big field we far far from Final Table therefore we can just play close to gpv whereas

if we're in  the money in a high roller tournament where only 10 or 15 players are paid then we're very close  to the final table and we need to think about the big pay jumps now and then last but not least  pay structures are different in different sides and also in different Live Events so the more  top heavy a tournament is the more it is worth gambling to play for big stack and give ourselves  a good chance to play for the first place play your stack size in this uh graph you can see a  visu

al representation of our risk premium in a 300 player field tournament where 41 players are  paid so in green you can see the big stock second in chips at the table versus the chip leader  risk premium in purple you can see meat stock versus the chip leader and in blue you can see the  short stack versus the chip leader so from left to right we have players left so starting from uh 82  players which is 2x itm since 41% are paid going through the bubble towards the final table on the  right and t

he higher the line goes the higher the risk premium so we can see uh 82 players is bit  less than 30% field left and we can see that for the short St the risk premium is very very low  maybe around 1% uh for the mix mid stock the risk premium is higher and for the biggest stack it's  the highest but at this point we don't really see uh such high risk premium compared to the bubble  and the final table as we go towards the bubble you can see that the green line the big stock uh  doesn't really uh

get affected that much because if he's such a big stack the EV of his stack  comes from a deep run and not from M caching the tourament so for him it is more worth it uh  to gamble and you know uh playing for M cash is not really number one priority and then we can  see on the other hand for the shortest stack uh his risk premium is the highest out of the  three stocks on the bubble by a big margin why because the EV of the short stock comes from M  caching if he doubles his five big blinds to

10 11 big blinds he still doesn't have such a big  a chance for uh the final table but uh if he M caches this is a big big difference in terms of  money to bubbling the tournament and not getting anything so the highest risk premium goes for the  short sack at the bubble and then we can see after cashing the tournament at 41 players uh rist Prim  significantly goes down for all three players and for the shortest stack it goes to almost zero he  can play chpv because being the shortest stack and

so far away from the final table uh you know there  is nothing really holding him back from playing to increase his stack and actually taking some risks  there are no big pay jumps coming ahead of us at 41 players and then as we go towards the final  table we can see there is a pretty big difference in risk premium between short mid and big stock  but uh this time we see the biggest stock having the highest risk premium and this is uh of course  because when you're the second stack at the table

there is a very big chance that someone busts  a tournament before you even if you don't do anything so these big pay jumps around the final  table and at the final table they're uh really really important to capture the bigger your stack  is and if you're the shortest stack the there is nothing to wait and we can see there is some  risk premium in the range of 7 to 10% in this example but it's by far lower than midstock and  big stock consider ICM earlier in the tournament the bigger your stock

the earlier you won't start  making adjustments because as we saw short stacks have very small risk premium even at around 30%  field left which is not the case for big Stacks who have big risk premium at even around 40 and  50% fi left so a general uh rule of thump I use is to start adjusting at around 50% field left  and in the following example I've taken uh this situation when we're playing 52 big blinds on the  button against the cut off open our opponent opens off 64 big blinds on the lef

t you can see the gpv  response against the open and on the the right you can see the 50% field left response what are the  key differences so first of all uh we can see that gpv Flats way wider uh pocket Deuces plus and then  97 suited all these suited connectors and then aex suited 108 jack8 queen8 which are not there in  the 50% field left so we're flatting tighter as we're approaching the bubble but there is one  more thing we're shifting our flat to Treet or fold of course this is not a ver

y extreme example  as we're still far away from the bubble but we can see that on the left in gpv we're three betting  these 98 suited 108 queen8 jack8 Jack n Queen n a lot of hands with playability uh king8 through  King five and these frequencies are going down at 50% fi left and they're being traded for more  blocker heavy combos such as king jack off Queen jack off king queen off and a bunch of those uh  ASX combos for more information on this you can read the article in our Theory section o

f the GTO  wizard blog when does ICM become significant in mtts and since we spoke about shifting our try  from flatting to more three bet or F then let's see how this works in PR practice in this case  we are comparing chpv scenario on the left to a near the bubble scenario on the right stock sizes  are identical we're playing the Buttle of 26 big blinds against cut off open of 22 both blinds  we have them covered uh they uh each have 13 and 18 respectively when we include the blinds  that they

have posted so even though we cover our opponent here we can see that we reduce the  amount of flatting that we do by a lot it is uh not only that we have some risk premium against  him because he's around 80 90% of our stack but also by being more aggressive we'll accomplish a  lot more in this case for instance when we three bet he's not really allowed to Flat that much when  he's near the bubble because we he'll put himself in a really tough spot post flop where uh he have  to Bluff catch so

metimes and this is very very dangerous on the bubble instead GTO will adjust  by playing uh more fold or forb Jam against our three bets therefore he won't be able to defend  that much against a three bet so uh going to flatting we can see that only the best hands are  left there is a flat A10 suited A9 suited hands that are not comfortable three B calling from the  button and they dominate quite a lot of opens ASX 10x 9x hands um and then a little bit of those  middle pair sevens and eights bu

t not really um anything else uh in terms of jamming we can uh  Jam more here uh because we cover and we put our opponent to the test for his whole tournament life  uh and then of course if we were the shorter stack then we wouldn't be able to jam as much uh but  yeah look at the three bet uh nonin to five big blinds first of all we can see that we're going  10 plus on the right near the bubble a jack suited and Ace Queen off for the most part and then we  have quite a lot of Bluffs out there so

we have a lot of off suited Aces we have a lot of off suited  Broadways right here we have even a decent amount of low suited Kinks and in this case our ratio um  value to Bluffs is going down uh meaning that we have more Bluffs to one value combo because the  risk premium is working in our favor uh when we compare that to chpv we can see that because of  the short stacks behind we're going to be shoving a lot more in gpv we're going to be trapping with  our AC and Kings uh for the most part an

d then we have some Ace King suited queens and Jack some  combos for Value therefore we cannot really have too many Bluffs tip number five defend the big  blind properly now in this example I've compared the final table situation to a situation where  three tables left in the tournament we're playing a multi-way defense uh from the big blind uh  Against utg One open of 24 bigs and a button flat of 125 bits in this case uh we can clearly see  that at the final table we have to be defending much l

ess in general cutting out our Flats by a  tone we can see that hands as good as king jack off and queen jack off Queen n suited Jack suited  they're not not making it as a call whereas at three tables left we see that we're we're calling  uh quite a lot more then uh in terms of uh three betting nonin we can see that only Aces King and  Ace King suet stay there at the final table and we expand that to Queens plus ajck suet Plus at  three tables left why because when we triet nonin we put ourselv

es at more risk then having the  higher risk premium at the final table we have to avoid these situations therefore we going to  use queens and Ace Queen sued as gems and ajck sued even becomes a coal so you can think about it  this way our 36 37 actually big blinds uh become just much much more valuable as we approach the  final table and then for shoving we can see that in general there is less shov at the final table  we can see that pocket n and pocket 10 are almost full frequency shs at thr

ee tables left there's  some fives and fours as well as Bluffs while at the final table uh we start pure shoving Jacks  and then T is mixing a little bit of frequency in there uh as for uh suited Broadways that  are really really good uh jams usually to fold out better hands uh we can see that we're just  jamming a lot more at three tables left because again we have lower risk premium so the 10x King  10 through uh Queen 10 Jack 10 are jams whereas at the final table these are Co and then uh ano

ther  difference here is that at the fin Final Table we're showing as a bluff um more blocker and  blocker hands as we call them so a suit or ace5 suit the great property of these hands is that  they're both blocking the value part with the high card with the Ace in this case and they're  not blocking the folding part of our opponent's ranges so they're not blocking an eight and nine  you know these race FS from utg or flat from the button uh and they have this inequity when C  and one bonus tip

now no matter how good you understand these ranges always try to be present  and play your spot in the moment against this exact opponent GTO equilibrium is so fragile that  even the slightest deviation from your opponent results in a completely different response by  you so try to understand how he deviates from the Baseline so that you're able to maximize your  profit for instance if you're playing against a passive opponent you can be flatting a lot more  than what GTO output suggest you can

be defending big blind a lot more as well but if you're playing  against an aggressive and capable opponent and he Tri bets you in position then try to stick uh to  these GTO ranges out of position because he will be able to put a lot of pressure post slop if you  have been fully involved watching this video you should be able to answer all of these questions  by now so I challenge you pause the video now and test yourself how many of these questions you  can answer and if there is something th

at is still unclear just go back and rewatch it 10 minutes is  certainly not enough to cover such a wide topic so if you still got any questions or need something  clarified please ask in the comment section below and I'll make sure to answer each one of them  to the best of my abilities I hope you enjoyed this video and that you will help you sharpen  your aame so you crush your competition at all stages of the tournament in the meanwhile you can  reach out Discord with suggestions about future

topics let me know what you want to see next from  us and we'll deliver see you at the final [Music] tables