TL;DR introduction:
When people get to around 1000 posts they often try to make a post giving something back to the 2p2 community. I would like to thank the people who have helped review my hands over the last few months. Partly thanks to them I am winning online at microstakes:
http://pokerprolabs.com/players/lektoraj/pokerstars
and I am also doing well in small stakes turbo live tournaments over a small sample
http://www.olympic-casino.sk/poker/r...g.view.77315/3
Anyway, as a microstakes player I am not qualified to post my general theory of poker like some others have, but I hope the following will help someone anyway.
Start of post:
Kill Everyone introduces the concept of the "Bubble Factor", a way of quantifying the skew in the $ equity gained/lost after winning or losing a flip against a particular player.
e.g. On the bubble of a satellite paying 2 places (each place worth 300 dollars), with even our equity is worth 200 dollars. If we win a flip, our equity goes up by 100 dollars (we qualify), if we lose, our equity goes down by 200 dollars (we lose) so we have a bubble factor of 2 (200 divided by 100) against the other players. The book suggests dividing our (chip) pot odds by the bubble factor to get the ($) tournament odds e.g. to make a call.
It extends the principle to talk about "average bubble factors" as a way to measure how ICM-heavy particular structures and particular points in structures are. These are expressed as what the bubble factor between the players would be if there were even stacks with a particular number of players left. To help people playing their particular games, I have calculated the average bubble factors for different stages of common games. If there is something you would like to see added, please post the payouts and I will try to put it in (I can do up to 50th place with up to 40 payouts). There are no guarantees for accuracy but the results I have got agree with the few examples given in Kill Everyone.
First number is players left, second number is bubble factor
Classic Sit & Go. Payouts 50-30-20
2 1.0000
3 1.3333
4 1.8750
5 1.5385
6 1.3889
7 1.3043
8 1.2500
9 1.2121
Pokerstars 18-man, or my live tournament when fewer people come 40-30-20-10
2 1.0000
3 1.5000
4 1.8000
5 2.0000
6 1.6667
7 1.5000
8 1.4000
9 1.3333
Then
10 1.2857 11 1.2500 12 1.2222 13 1.2000 14 1.1818 15 1.1667 16 1.1538 17 1.1429 18 1.1333
Pokerstars 45m $1 (7 paid). Where I started donking and have recently returned after fixing my more serious leaks in the 25 cent games.
2 1.0000
3 1.3428
4 1.5596
5 1.7136
6 1.8143
7 1.8687
8 2.0433
9 1.8075
FT2 10 1.6587 11 1.5562 12 1.4813 13 1.4242 14 1.3792 15 1.3428 16 1.3128 17 1.2876 18 1.2662
FT3 19 1.2478 20 1.2317 21 1.2176 22 1.2051 23 1.1940 24 1.1840 25 1.1750 26 1.1668 27 1.1594
FT4 28 1.1526 29 1.1463 30 1.1406 31 1.1353 32 1.1303 33 1.1257 34 1.1215 35 1.1175 36 1.1137
FT5 37 1.1102 38 1.1069 39 1.1038 40 1.1009 41 1.0981 42 1.0955 43 1.0930 44 1.0907 45 1.0884
^ 8 handed is the steepest bubble of all listed tournaments except the satellite. Notice that the bubble factors ITM are still really high. At least at the low end of the micros the other players don't seem to realise this and go crazy as soon as the 8th man goes out.
Pokerstars 180m $2.50 Turbo - 27 paid
2 1.0000
3 1.4613
4 1.5383
5 1.4942
6 1.5156
7 1.5475
8 1.5384
9 1.5392
FT2 10 1.5350 11 1.4570 12 1.3989 13 1.3539 14 1.3180 15 1.2887 16 1.2644 17 1.2438 18 1.2263
FT3 19 1.2897 20 1.2703 21 1.2534 22 1.2384 23 1.2252 24 1.2133 25 1.2026 26 1.1929 27 1.1841
FT4 28 1.4125 29 1.3920 30 1.3735 31 1.3566 32 1.3412 33 1.3270 34 1.3140 35 1.3020 36 1.2908
FT5 37 1.2805 38 1.2708 39 1.2619 40 1.2534 41 1.2455 42 1.2381 43 1.2312 44 1.2246 45 1.2184
^ People who play these will be able to say more. It is unexpected (at least to me) that the biggest ICM pressure actually peaks at 7 handed, not the FT bubble or the min cash bubble and it is lower and a lot steadier than than the 45s.
Last night's live tournament. Bigger pay jump between 2nd and 3rd than between 1st and 2nd. They were paying bonuses for Full House and Flush, possibly taking them out of the first prize.
It paid (in euros) 154, 117, 75, 42, 29. We chopped at 6 handed so we never got to play the 3-handed bubble.
2 1.0000
3 1.5316
4 1.7460
5 1.6738
6 1.9541
7 1.6860
8 1.5355
9 1.4392
10 1.3722
11 1.3230
12 1.2852
13 1.2554
14 1.2312
^ It's interesting that this weird structure doesn't have a 3-handed bubble much bigger than some of the PS tournaments.
Satellite for 5 seats
6 5.0000
7 3.0000
8 2.3333
9 2.0000
10 1.8000
11 1.6667
12 1.5714
13 1.5000
14 1.4444
15 1.4000
I hope this can help at least some people. The thing that has helped me most is understanding that being under ICM pressure isn't a yes/no kind of thing. We are already under mild ICM pressure a couple of tables away from the money and we are definitely still under it even after we min cash. We don't take our buy-in into account when playing because it is a sunk cost. The money we have already won is the same - the opposite of "sink" is "refloat", so we could call cash already won as "refloated" so just as we ignore the sunk cost of the buy-in we should ignore the refloated gain of money already locked up. Winning zero more dollars from now on is always among the possibilities and (at least in 45s) we are always on the bubble of the next money to be locked up.