Thoughts on ICM

[trojanrabbit]

In thinking about ICM, there is something that never occurred to me before. Don’t know if this has been discussed before, but I couldn’t find any reference on it.

Say you’re on the bubble with 150/300 blinds and these stacks:

SB 1800
BB 1600
CO 2600
Button 2000

Let’s say you’re in the CO and you have a borderline hand that you think might be slightly +EV to push. When you calculate what is your baseline prize equity after you fold, you use the current chip stacks. However, there’s a pretty good chance that some action is going to happen after you fold. Maybe the button will steal the blinds shrinking both of the short stacks or maybe there will be an all-in confrontation. Any sort of action improves your EV regardless of who wins. In fact, every time the other stacks are relatively equal you gain anytime there is action, regardless of the outcome. That makes the EV of folding actually better than the model predicts. Thoughts?

Tysen