It’s different to a chip-chop (where prize money is split purely based on chip counts) as it includes the likelihood of the smaller stacks forging a comeback. ICM is also a popular way of making deals on the final table. It becomes extremely relevant once you’re in the money though, particularly as you approach a final table and play down to a winner, as the pay jumps are bigger. It doesn’t take your skill level or experience – or that of your opponents – into consideration.Īlthough your chips have value as soon as a tournament begins, the need for ICM consideration doesn’t really kick in until you reach the bubble. The Independent Chip Model (ICM) is a formula that converts your stack size into equity in dollars, regardless of the stage of the tournament.īut why do we need it? Well, the model determines how often you’re expected to reach the big prizes in a tournament based on how large your chip stack is. In this beginner’s guide, we’re going to break down what ICM is, how the formula came to be, and how it’s used in poker tournaments. To work all of this out, poker players use a mathematical formula called the Independent Chip Model, commonly referred to as ICM.īut how does ICM work? And why should tournament poker players know about it?

The bigger your chip stack, the more likely you are to run deep or even win the tournament, and therefore, the more equity in dollars your stack has.

It has an amount of equity in dollars relative to the prize pool, and it changes based on how many players are left. Your stack is worth something from the moment you register. But just because you can’t pick up your poker chips in a tournament and cash them out like you can in a cash game, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a monetary value. We’ve all had to explain to a friend or relative that when a player in a tournament has a stack of one million chips, it doesn’t mean they have a million dollars in cash in front of them.

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