ICM

The term ICM in poker stands for the Independent Chip Model, which is a mathematical formula that calculates a player’s equity in an ongoing tournament.

ICM uses aspects such as the player’s chip stack relative to other stacks in the tournament and payout distributions to provide an approximate monetary value of one’s stack. This is a purely mathematical model that doesn’t consider more abstract things like a skill gap between remaining players.

Here’s a very simple example of ICM. There are five players left in the tournament and $10,000 left in the prize pool. All five players have exactly the same stack of 50,000 chips. In this simple scenario, each stack is worth exactly $2,000.

Of course, as chips fluctuate and players get eliminated, ICM starts to change, and things can get quite complicated. This is why players often use ICM calculators to figure out correct numbers if they’re discussing a deal (chop).

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