I wouldn't doubt on Sandman his input, OP.

He is very experienced with 180's. If you want to be successful at 180's ICM is important, period.

Yeah i do value his opinion. Ive only said that there are some very succesful 180 man players who dont mind icm that much. That said i dont dispute the fact that ICM plays a role in all SNG/MTTs. In 45s it plays def a much bigger role. And the past few days i have analyzed a lot of FT spots to get a better feel for icm on 45s.

This is because i replaced most of my 180 traffic with 45s. 1.5$ and 3.5$.
I still run really bad though. Its not only chip ev, but the lineups at important moments are really horrific. Feels like when im getting called im always dominated. Even in unlikely spots, like shoving 56s and getting called by K5s.

Below results since the start of this "blog". $ results are bottom right. Ive lost more then 90% of my roll. Still have around 75 bucks left before busto. I know i should remove the 3.5$ but i am not going to do that. Going down with the ship.

I am sorry to hear that it hasn't gone well so far.

I think you should drop down straight away, this will be lesson as important as icm or odds. Things can go wrong and when they do you can protect yourself by dropping down reasonably early, if things get better it then doesn't take long to move back, if it still goes bad move further if possible. The sooner you do the sooner you can usually get back up. Moving down late, as you have, means it can take an age to rebuild.

You haven't yet actually played that many games so it is much too early to get an accurate roi from just results - the variance in 180s is massive and it does take more like 20 or 30k games for an roi to steady out... and it's easy to hit a decent sized downswing at any time.

Many do think that it is easy to have a 20+% roi at these 180 MttSngs but imo this is wrong, only the very best get this high. If you look at OPR only the top 0.5% look like they stand a chance at sustaining 20% so that's a 1 in 200 level of quality.

I suspect it is quite a bit easier to have a 30+% roi at bigger MTTs with double starting chips but these have even more variance and also each game often lasts much longer so less overall game volumes, generally all large field games are very hard on the mental game.

Also try not to focus on any chipev differences as you can't control it and it can easily affect your game. It is also very hard to know how a bad some allin ev affects final overall roi. The differences are nearly always dominated by late final table parts of your results and although these matter the chips are worth much less at these points. In HU play we only contest about 10% of the complete prize pool but with all of the chips in play and so a few big hands can sway allinev and yet not have a great effect on the roi of many games. (A starting stack hu is only worth about 10% of it's value compared to the start of the tourny.)

Im not going to refute that icm is key in sngs, because it is. I play many formats ranging from 90,180 and 6, 14 man hypers sngs and a few more. In the 6 max hypers i would never stray from icm at all, essentially anything less then a 180 i would stick to purely icm ranges. i learned this the hard way trying 45 and 90 mans and playing them the same way i would with 180s

However when i play 180s i use chip ev until about 5-6 players left then ill switch to something between icm and chip ev. following icm super strict if there is a super shorty left but otherwise finding some balance between the two. Just the way i learned to play and it works for me but that said my game isnt perfect either!

Variance is huge in the 180s all you can do is have a proper bankroll and adjust your games accordingly and study study study

So, you broke yet Leia?

Soo.. The state of the games?

P.s OP I only scanned the ICM discussion but sandman is right

very quick response. still alive, still not broke.

ive removed all 180s from my game in order to reduce variance. only play 45s now (couple of 180s in my mid-day session to get enough tables running). Have done a lot of ICM studying. Goes really well up to now. Dont have a sample yet to show you any meaningful results. But i'll post my results after a couple of weeks of grinding.

cheers.

<3 ICM

Some things to consider when learning and using ICM is

1. to know when your ranges do expand. For example with 2 very short stacks folding before you in a 18man, 4 left, a 8BB vs 9BB SB/BB range is only 50% of what a 9BB/8BB range could be. (could be 8 ABB also, doesn't matter that much in this example). So pushing a -EV hand to get to this 9/8 difference can yield you a wider range which could be more +EV overall. But it's hard to decipher.

2. Other spots are when you can push 100% but you shouldn't, so that your enemies calling range can tighten way up if they play by ICM, which give your actual shoves more fold equity (= more dead money in the form of +EV spots instead of actual hand strength). If you push 100% and your enemy knows your pushing 100%, they can have a clear range of what they can call and what not. If you just fold once, they know you're not playing 100% so they have to adjust. Folding 32o once in a while is good for you.

3. Knowing real player tendencies is king. In a 3handed FT; GTO suggest you push 10-15% and SB pushes 100%. But they won't. Most players are icm newbies and push maybe 40% or something. If you adjust that in HRC, all of a sudden you can push like 80%. So if you ever fold your K2o only to see that the SB has clicked fold pre, keep that in mind.

4. If you enter a pushing range, you might want to put AA on 50% or something because no player pushes AA 100% of the time like they would A8o. This turns their ranges weaker and let you call more.

5. Also you might want to skip all those +0.01 spots. From your pushing range (it just is a hell of a variance nightmare and would be only useful if there was no rake) and especially from the pushing range of most of your enemies. If you have a good reg, he will push those minimal spots. If you have a good rec, he will fold those spots. If you have a fish, he will also push -0.8 spots. Act accordingly.

ive quit this mttsng grind. I just cant seem to be able to win enough to make it worth while. I dont want to discourage new players. But i have studied pushing/calling and ICM a lot, and still i am not making much in any of these mttsng games. Its true that i have run very bad the last 5k sngs ( > 5M chips under ev) and over the first 5k sng my roi was 17% but now it has dropped to a level i dont like spending anymore time on this format.

GL to all of you!

Been fun exchanging theory with you

Bumping an old thread i found with the search option..

Can someone give me his/her advice on where to start with learning ICM or how?

Sure! My background for credibility I've been playing for about 2 years and specialized in hyper 6s for some time with an ROI of about 10 to 15 % on sites like ignition, and BetOnline. Sample size is probably just over 2k for $1.00 to $3.50 stakes.

4 of the major factors to keep in mind and when learning these ICM spots. I wish I knew these first, before just drilling SnG coach over and over.

1. Bubble factor usually shown as ~1 to 3 from little ICM to a lot. 3 means you could need 75% equity to make a call for example. It can be lower than one if, for example, you have less than 2 BBs in the BB position.

2. ICM Priority. Related to bubble factor, it matters which stack we are facing a bet against. In a hyper 6, top 2 pay, 3 players remain and we are in 2nd place. We really want to face-off against the 3rd place player because if we knock him out, we guarantee we are in the money. Facing the 1st place shove is really rough, because if we bust, 3rd place gets ITM and if we win we still don't guarantee we are in the money.

3. Collision potential. It was hard looking at ICMIZER spots and curiously, my range was tight with 3 players remaining if I was on BTN and 1st place was in the SB and short stack was on the BB. Instead, if 1st place is in BB, then my range widens on the BTN. This is collision potential because depending on just how big the SB is and the size of the BB player, the SB 1st place could be pushing any 2, and 10% of the time, 20%, 25% etc. the BB player should be calling, and the the BB could lose, resulting in us getting ITM.

4. FGS. If we win a close spot and become a big stack, this can help us bully in a final table and get one of the top 1-3 spots. In hypers, take into account we are in BTN and about to be hit with the blind. Another option, is we are in SB pretty much tied for 1st place with the person in the BB. We may want to shove a bit wider because if we get the fold and chip up here, then in future BVB situations we can keep shoving and he has to risk busting with high BF (bubble factor), and we can keep chipping up.


ICMIZER SNG coach is great. I have the annual plan. The additional recommendation I'd make is use Anki https://apps.ankiweb.net/ and focus on less spots, less questions per week/day and also see how changing if an opponent is wider/looser for a specific question. If you are going to spam questions, it's probably most helpful to do so for non-ICM short to mid stack situations that don't change so much from question to question. These are easier to learn, and can give you a bit of an edge, so it's a nice intro. Also keep in mind that heads up has no ICM, so you can really crush recreational players with a good strategy at the end of an SnG or MTT, if they are just way too passive, and going from 1st to 2nd is great for your profit.

Once you start using ANKI, you'll realize how little information you retain, and thus how important it is to use ANKI. ANKI is a digital flash card program that has an algorithm for to test you on cards that you are close to forgetting, or need to review. You may wake up one day and only have 20 cards of your 100 poker cards to review. Another day you may have only 10. It's also cool to see that once you review a card about 3-4 times in the span of a couple days/weaks, then it will wait a month or 2 to quiz you again, so you actually are retaining the information, and thus can actually use what you've learned at the table.

Note taking, develop a note system and use a HUD. Based on pool tendencies at your stake and bumper stickers in your HUD, it can become straight forward to bully tables where they are too tight, and exploit other players that you color code.

Very key color coding may include:
Pink, likes to gamble, shoves wide and calls wide.
Purple, very loose but does not call wide.
Green calling station.
Loose passive, may call to see a turn/river to see all the cards, the folds the river.
Aggro

I like having pink and purple the most. You may also want a general tag for weak players if you see them with a weird showdown, but don't know how to categorize them right away, and also a general, possible good reg. tag once you have a lot of hands on someone and they seem to be calling shoves correctly, etc.

Hope this is helpful! Let us know what games you're playing btw, STT, MTT SnG, MTT, or PKO, thanks!

Hey LearningMTTs, great post! Its cool to get some insight on another persons SNG journey, and use of ICM. I am personally doing the turbo structure myself of 9-18 man SNGs.

Do you dabble in MTTs as well or do you just prefer to specialize in SNGs? I personally like the mix of SNGs and MTTs because SNGs are more flexible in terms of time. Although when you play both at once, you can get mixed up in terms of pace/payout/etc. One move that works well for one is not necessary for the other.

I like your insight about going for the chip leader position near the bubble vs just trying to get in a cashing position. I do find myself weighing both sides. I've heard that cashing is more important in SNGs because the min cash is a larger percentage of the max prize, where as in an MTT, the min cash is very minimal and such a small fraction of the max prize. The ideal scenario in any SNG is to be that chip leader near the bubble where you are forcing the second place chip position to dwindle down as they wait for the others near the bubble to burst. It really helps to ensure a big chip lead by the time you are final 2. So ya, there are both sides to consider when assessing what to go for mid-game.