Challenging the basics behind ICM

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2) ICM is backed by ridiculous amounts of empirical data. I actually wrote a program on my computer at home that tests ICM; it's very easy to do. It's very easy to write a program like this one. Also, I'm sure data miners can show that results come very close to ICM in actual SnGs (the difference would be because people with larger stacks on the bubble tend to be more skillful, so this would distort things).

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I don't know about this really.

ICM just happens to be a very simple model that accounts for the obvious situations where people have equal stacks and the end of the game when people place.

Calculating equity using ICM is pretty easy, but how are you testing it?

I haven't heard of any dataminers really testing it.

My best argument for it's empirical support is that the people that know it, or play like they do are generally successful, but that is just my impression as no one has any data on that either.

Anyway, sorry if I missed some of your posts where you went into your tests and for being generally argumentative as I pretty much agree with you.

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I made a computer program in which players start with stacks that I plug in manually and it chooses two players at random to exchange chips as a random percentage of the smaller stack (evenly distributed between 0 and 100%). This is essentially what a skill-less poker tournament is. I admit that this has its flaws, but it's damn good model and it supports ICM.

Also, ICM is mathematically sound, which is way more important than empirical data.