ICM is often flawed
 

ICM numbers are wrong a lot of the time, especially late in an event with big blinds, and short stacks. To use them to guide your play in these situations is often flat out wrong, yet a lot of people seem to be doing this. Any comments or opinions?

Re: ICM is often flawed
 

[ QUOTE ]
ICM numbers are wrong a lot of the time, especially late in an event with big blinds, and short stacks. To use them to guide your play in these situations is often flat out wrong, yet a lot of people seem to be doing this. Any comments or opinions?

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed 100%. I'm working on an adjustment, and will post my new formula once I come up with a decent rev.

ICM fails to take into account:

1) Blind sizes (this is a ridiculously huge oversight)
2) Your position (also huge)
3) Calling/Pushing standards for you and your opponents
4) Your relative skill vs. your opponents
5) Your folding equity before and after
6) Your opponents' folding equity, especially for short stacks.

My plan is to weight the stack sizes based on the above factors, then run the adjusted numbers through ICM. I believe that if you truly value the size of your current chip position correctly, then ICM will work as it should.

Opinions?

Re: ICM is often flawed
 

[ QUOTE ]
ICM numbers are wrong a lot of the time, especially late in an event with big blinds, and short stacks. To use them to guide your play in these situations is often flat out wrong, yet a lot of people seem to be doing this. Any comments or opinions?

[/ QUOTE ]

Give an example.

eastbay

Re: ICM is often flawed
 

Yeah Im sure theres some way to improve it like this and make it a lot more applicable. It's just disconcerting to me to see so many people turn to it, in totally absurd situations where you will be given false numbers, and then making their plays accordingly.
I'm going to continue to sound like a broken record whenever anyone does so, but I think it's important, because this ICM is just wrong so often. People need to just learn how to play good poker.

Re: ICM is often flawed
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
ICM numbers are wrong a lot of the time, especially late in an event with big blinds, and short stacks. To use them to guide your play in these situations is often flat out wrong, yet a lot of people seem to be doing this. Any comments or opinions?

[/ QUOTE ]

Agreed 100%. I'm working on an adjustment, and will post my new formula once I come up with a decent rev.

ICM fails to take into account:


1) Blind sizes (this is a ridiculously huge oversight)
2) Your position (also huge)
3) Calling/Pushing standards for you and your opponents


[/ QUOTE ]

I think 1 & 2 are overstated and 3 just doesn't make any sense to me. What's 3 got to do with it?

Blind sizes are the same for everyone. Why is that a "ridiculous huge oversight"?

As for position, unless you're down to a couple of blinds, I'm not sure why this is a big deal, either. Your position changes with each hand and everyone gets their turn.

My guess is that any set of heuristics you try to apply to adjust for factors X or Y will end up only generating more confusion and questions about validity. I'm interested to see what you come up with, though.

In any case, I think it's maybe important to recognize that the $EV figures generated don't have to be accurate in an absolute sense. They only have to give an ordering which is reasonable. Big difference.

eastbay

Re: ICM is often flawed
 

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah Im sure theres some way to improve it like this and make it a lot more applicable. It's just disconcerting to me to see so many people turn to it, in totally absurd situations where you will be given false numbers, and then making their plays accordingly.


[/ QUOTE ]

Again, maybe you can point out a specific instance of this "absurd" valuation that leads to bad decisions that you are railing against.

eastbay

Re: ICM is often flawed
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
ICM numbers are wrong a lot of the time, especially late in an event with big blinds, and short stacks. To use them to guide your play in these situations is often flat out wrong, yet a lot of people seem to be doing this. Any comments or opinions?

[/ QUOTE ]

Give an example.

eastbay

[/ QUOTE ]

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...;sb=5&o=14

Re: ICM is often flawed
 

Yes the problem is that a lot of the time the numbers are not reasonable. If the blinds are huge and you have 200 chips and your opponent has 10.
You dont have a 20x greater share of the prize pool than your opponent, however this is what the ICM tells you.

Re: ICM is often flawed
 

[ QUOTE ]

Yes the problem is that a lot of the time the numbers are not reasonable. If the blinds are huge and you have 200 chips and your opponent has 10.
You dont have a 20x greater share of the prize pool than your opponent, however this is what the ICM tells you.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, all I can say to that is "duh." I think it's clear that when you're talking about less than one blind, other considerations are more important than stack ratios.

If that's the main point of your objection, I think it's at best a footnote on a valuable technique.

eastbay

Re: ICM is often flawed
 

Thanks eastbay, that was the fuel that led to this post [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] People shouldn't use the ICM unless they can understand which situations it's applicable in and which it isn't.