Lesson: more about equity and ICM

This is probably the most important thing to know about STTs and it's what will make you money in the long run. Just learning how ICM works is enough to make, I'd guess, 10% ROI at the 6.5s. If you knew it perfectly, more, but a good knowledge would be sufficient.

Why do I say that it's so important? Think about it. This is the blind structure on Stars (other sites are similar, but Tilt has a weird structure of its own): 20, 30, 50, 100, 150, 200, 200a25, 400a25, and so on. Each level is five minutes in a turbo and if the game goes fairly slowly, that can be as little as four or five hands. So you can easily arrive at t150 having not played a hand, and your stack will be about 1100. Remember, we are playing ultra tight, and letting the other guys knock themselves out. A golden rule of STTs is that with < 10BB you either push or fold. So what do you push, and what do you fold?

Remember that we said that your stack has a dollar value at all times in the tourney. When you begin, in a $10 tourney, it is worth $10. Its value does not strictly correlate to the amount of chips you have, but changes in relation to the other stacks. 1000 chips is worth more fourhanded with a guy with 100 chips than it is if no one is shorter than you are. Why that is becomes clear when you learn what the ICM is.

The best explanation I have seen of the ICM is that an STT where players have equal skill is a lottery, and each chip is a ticket to that lottery. You can win a prize with just one chip (but not often) but the more chips you have, the more chances you have. Remember what we said about EV. It is a value that represents how you will do over the long run, over the millions of hands you will play. It doesn't correspond to any particular value you will get in any particular game. It's an average. But it's the best measure we have of the value of our actions.

So when should you push and when should you fold? You should push when the value of your stack after pushing will be worth more than the value of your stack after folding. Hang on, you're saying, how do I know what value my stack will have?

Well, it's, kof, simple.

Say you are on the first hand of the tourney. Your stack is 1500 chips and it's worth $10. You are in the big blind. Someone shoves. What would you need to call?

Here's the equation. It looks scary but bear with me.

EVcall = (% wins x value of 3030 chips) in $
EVfold = 1480 chips in $

If EVcall > EVfold, call.

Well, that doesn't tell you whether you should call! How do you figure that out? Well, let's call "% wins" x, let's say that EVfold is $9.99 and the value of 3030 chips in dollars is $19 (it's a bit less, I think).

We need the value of EVcall to be more than 9.99. If x(19) = 9.99, the call is break even. To figure out what x needs to be, we can divide both sides by 19 (because we are multiplying x by 19, we can divide out the 19 to make it 1). So x is about 53%.

But how do I know whether I have a 53% chance against his hand? Well, this is the crux of it! You have to put your opponent on a range of hands. What does he do it with? Usually, you're asking what he calls with. Well, it's tough to know! Different players have different standards. How loose or tight they are will help you decide; how they've played; what the average player does (and this will very often be what you decide). Having fixed him with a range, you need to calculate your equity against it. You can do this by hand in Poker Stove, but generally, we do ICM calculations in SNG Wizard.

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Now that all sounds pretty tough. Putting guys on ranges is tough and you need to do a ton of work with SNG Wizard to learn what is and what isn't a shove. Luckily, you can cheat a bit at the lower limits and it won't hurt you much.

A poster on 2p2, bighomeytim, posted a strategy for the 16s that you could probably print out and it would work okay. You'd definitely win with it at the 6.5s. Luckily, no one reads this blog, because this would probably be sufficient to win at a good clip at that level.

When blinds are 100+, you can do this. Do not limp. That's important. If you cannot raise, fold. Do not even limp in the small blind. Raise or fold. AJ+, 88+, raise 2.5BB when you have more than 14BB. If you face a shove, you need to use your discretion whether you call. In general, if you have AK, AQs or TT+, you're mostly calling. If the other guy is a LAGtard, calling with everything won't be far from correct. If he's very tight, JJ+, AK only, and you might even fold JJ. Shove over limpers with more than 14BB (shoving over limpers is art, not science and you'll learn how not to fuck up). Under 14BB, shove that range from any position. Only shove over raises with AK, JJ+. Under 10BB effective stack (if you were heads up, the effective stack is the smaller one; on the button, it's the smallest of yours or either blind's), shove ATC from the small blind into the big blind. This is often correct and you can assume BB won't call wide enough to make it wrong. You need a good reason not to do it, and "I'm a pussy" is not a good reason. bighomeytim recommends doing the same from the button at t200 with antes, but that's a bit loose. You should be shoving very wide though.

Shove the top 30% (T9s+, J8s+, Q8s+, K8s+, A2s+, JT+, QT+, KT+, A5+, 22+ -- this means these hands plus the corresponding ones higher, so T9s is a no-gap suited connector and you should also shove JTs, QJs, KQs, the corresponding hands at each higher rank, and so on) from button, or from cutoff at t200 plus antes (I'd go a little bit tighter than that from the cutoff but I don't know that I'm right). If you have less than 10BB, shove AT+, 66+, and a bit wider as your position improves.

Don't call too often. You generally need a very strong hand to call a shove, and I mean very strong. AA is very strong. AT is just ordinary. The shorter the shover gets, and the more cards he's shoving (which usually go hand in hand), the more you call. If you are being offered 2 to 1 pot odds, you call with ATC and hope that the poker gods love you one time. This will mostly happen when you're in the BB.

The bottom line is when you are shoving, tend to shove wild and loose; if you are calling, call tight. Err too wide for shoving and it's not so bad; err too narrow for calling, it's also not so bad. And be lucky.