A theory post....ICM (part 1)

I occasionally remember that a blog should be about more than just whining about some donkey sucking out on you, so here's the first in a series on...

ICM
ICM (independent chip model) assumes that the chances of any player winning a tournament at any given point depends on how many chips he has relative to the total amount of chips in play. For example, a player with 10% of the chips has a 10% chance of winning.
A simple example
Four players remain in a satellite with three $10K packages. ICM can be used to calculate the players expectation at this point:
Each player has a 25% chance of finishing first and winning $10K, for an expectation of $2500
Each player has a 25% chance of finishing second and winning $10K, for an expectation of $2500
Each player has a 25% chance of finishing third and winning $10K, for an expectation of $2500
Each player has a 25% chance of finishing fourth and winning nothing, for an expectation of $0
Total current expectation (tournament equity) for each player is therefore $7500.
So what?
Apart from determining what a fair deal would be if the players decide to deal, does this matter?
Yes. It does. A lot.
Consider what happens if one player moves all in, and another wakes up with a hand big enough to consider calling. Under normal circumstances (early in a tournament, or in a cash game), the second player should call if he believed his hand to have more than 50% equity against the shoving player’s range.
However, in this case, he needs significantly more than 50% to correctly call. To investigate how much more, let’s look at what happens to the tournament equity of the four players if Player A moves all in from the SB, player B calls in the BB, after players C and D folded, and when the hands are turned over, it’s a true 50/50.
Before the hand, all four players had $7500 equity.
Once the call is made, ignoring the unlikely case of a chop, players C and D’s equity increases by $2500 to $10000 (as they are now guaranteed a seat).
Players A and B now have only a 50% chance of winning $10K, so their equity drops $2500 to $5000.
Therefore, when he makes the call, Player D is risking $7500 in equity to win only $2500, so he needs odds of 3 to 1 against the shover’s range to call correctly (in other words, he needs 75% equity).

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For this shit, too old I am getting

As Yoda said to me the other day.

The World 24 Hour championships is upon us, or rather me, again. It seems like no time at all since the horrors of Seoul, but on Thursday we fly out to Bergamo for this year's version. Physically seem to be in decent enough shape, if carrying a kilo or two too much excess baggage. The long runs have posed no problems at all: I did the last one, or rather last three, the day before flying out to San Remo. I have definitely lost a bit of speed in the past year but at my age, that's pretty inevitable. As I, or rather Yoda, said, for this shit, too old I am getting.

Mentally I have done more or less zero preparation. At this stage I'm just hoping a relaxed "Just do it" approach similar to two years ago will yield the best results. I have no idea whether the requisite desire to just do it, when it means pushing your body to the maximum extremes of fatigue and despair, is there or not. This is presumably a make or break race: if it doesn't go to non-plan, I'll probably call time on my career as an international ultra runner. I started running purely for the health benefits (my obsessive nature eventually leading to the madness of ultras), and I'm happy at this stage to go back to that if I can no longer compete at the top level. For this shit, too old I am maybe getting.

Decent enough week online since returning from Remo, up about $1500 despite doing the guts of $1K on unfruitful WSOP sats. Played the Fitz last night, and played very well but just kept losing races, some of which weren't even races. Twice I lost with dominating aces for big pots. Exit hand was not AJ for once. Down to 15 bigs, three high blind limpers limped to me in mid position. I decided this was a good spot to shove (with TT) as the chances of a bigger pair out there were slim, I could add 40% to my stack if it got through, I might even get a donktastic call from 88 or 99, and otherwise I'd probably be racing getting 7/5 on my money. With antes and a 20 minute clock, you can't be hanging around too long. So it panned out: the BB made a donktastic "lucky not to be a dominated little donkey" call with AQ and hit the ace. Ah, the joys of tournament poker. For this shit, too old I am getting.

When I came back from San Remo, I thought I'd be playing the Bruce freeroll thing as I'd been second in the Westbury standings after the date had closed and Larry had pretty much assured me I was in. However, Franco (the owner of the club, I believe) somehow leapfrogged past me to claim the second berth. Slightly surprising for a number of reasons, but perhaps not for at least one other. No point in getting too worked up about it in any case, as for this shit...

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San Remo I hate every inch of you

Actually, it was quite nice but that heading was too good an opportunity to pass up.

It's fair to say though that Remo didn't exactly got to plan. Readers of Dagunman's blog will already know that the "villa" turned out to be a bedsit with one bed, which meant Donal Norton and John O'Shea sharing a double bed (hard to say which of them was more excited by that prospect), Rob and Hali on camp beds, and me on the couch.

To say the main event didn't go to plan is putting it mildly. I went out late on day 1, and by then only John remained of the five of us (including Marty, but not including Rob who decided to pass on the main event in favour of pwning the sit and go's) and he was short. He fought a valiant effort on day 2 and had a decentish stack at one point but got unlucky. I had a feeling it wasn't going to be my day when the not very random seat draw had me wedged between Patrik "Look at me everyone, how hot am I?" Antonius and Donal. Benjamin Chen and Patrik's other half Maya were also at the table, which thankfully broke pretty quickly, but not quickly enough (I lost almost half my stack to Patrik very last hand in a blind on blind top pair dubious kicker second pair nut kicker hand that probably played itself). Interesting confrontation with Tom McEvoy at my second table where he made a bewildering donk lead on the flop which ended with me winning the only really decent pot I won all tournament. I never got going in truth and treaded water around the 7K mark until the blinds got so big late in the day that it was ship or fold (and with savage antes, folding was not viable for very long). I got bumped around through 4 different tables which didn't help either, before finally deciding that my AJ in the small was far enough ahead of Marcel Luske's MP raising range to be a ship only for he BB to wake up with KK. Was never very confident of sucking out when I saw the hand as I was pretty sure Marcel had folded a rag with an ace kicker, and anyway, AJ always seems destined to be my exit hand.

The 2K side event was a similar washout for the Irish 5, with just me surviving to day 2, and with less than starting stack. I got lucky early on and doubled up and after that really felt in the groove and got up to 120K without too much bother by picking my spots well. I went for it on the bubble but after losing a few pots found myself back down on 45K. A few uncalled ships got me back to 70K at which point we were near enough to the bubble to make it sensible not to risk going broke with anything other than a premium. By the time the bubble burst, I was down to 55K and the 3000/6000/500 blinds and antes were about to hit me. An orbit of card death and lack of shove spots saw me down to 41K with the blinds about to hit again so I ended up shoving a decent suited connected picture hand from early position into the aces. No suckout, thank you and arrivederci. Mixed feelings about the result: relieved to cash obviously having been one of the shortest stack in the tournament about 10 from the bubble, but disappointed at not being able to kick on for anything other than the min cash. No mixed feelings about my play though: day 2 of the 2K tournament is probably as good a day of poker as I have ever played.

Despite the lack of other results, we managed to keep our spirits up for the trip and it was a good laugh. O'Shea in particular is a funny sicko. I did get some cameraphone shots of himself and Norton stretched out on the ground outside the casino trying to sleep before the 2K game that I may publicise at some point unless they gave me one million dollari. They do look cute though. And homeless.

The other three left early on Thursday and despite Rob driving them to the airport he managed to get lost that afternoon. A 30 kilometre drive in the wrong way on the motorway saw us loop back in the far side of San Remo where despite my frequent reminders to keep the sea on our left he managed to go wrong again at the first, second and third possible opportunities. By the time we got back to the motorway, he almost managed to get on in the wrong direction again. Had he succeeded, I might very well have killed him. We got to the airport with 5 or maybe 6 seconds to spare. Back in Dublin, we headed to the Fitz thinking it was end of month. It wasn't. I did manage to come third in the €100 FO to recoup about a quarter of my loss on the Remo trip. Exit hand? AJ, of course.

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What's another year....

Well, chances are if you're interested enough to be reading this random witter brain dump of a blog, you probably already know that I went deep in the Irish Open, but not deep enough, going out in 85th or so with 72 paid. No regrets, I was short, the ship was plus Ev, I ran into the bullets, I didn't suck out, standard, no point in dwelling on it.

Despite what many probably think, I've never been one to try to cling on in tournaments near the bubble: with a 25K stack I had at least €10K in tournament equity so long as I was happy to gamble with it. Clinging would have meant settling for €3500 money back at best, so no regrets.

Someone recently suggested I played scared because of my cautious approach to one hand which is just wrong. There's a huge difference between playing a hand cautiously because you believe it maximises your equity, and playing scared. I never have and never will played scared poker. As a total novice, I put my tournament life on the line with a bluff against Joe Beevers on my first ever major final table, so I don't think I've ever lacked courage (even if sometimes it's been fool's courage).

I also played the side event, got reasonably deep, but came unstuck when my 9's ran into another big pair in the blinds. Std, no point in dwelling or whining etc. etc. Favourite hand of the weekend at least came in this event: a mad Scandi wearing a PaddyPower bag on his head came to table with huge stack. I hadn't really got going and was playing about 7K starting stack with blinds 300/600. Trevor Dinneen limped utg, I had TT in second position, normally a standard enough ship or pot committing raise with that stack, but it was the Scandi's button and he was down to 8k after losing a big one so I decided to go for the squeeze inducer and just flatted. He shipped, Trevor folded, I snap called, and he snap turned his head in surprise at the call so fast the bag fell off his head, before sheepishly turning over 84o.

Overall, I was very happy with how I played, particularly my play against maniacs. Since two maniacs gave me such problems in the recent Deepstack, I've put a lot of thought in how to play them and I now see a maniac at the table as an opportunity rather than a problem. Any time anyone is playing sub optimally, whether it's too tight or too loose, too passive or too aggressive, it's to your advantage.

I had something of a mini epiphany at the weekend. My game has undergone quite a few changes recently, some of them undoubtedly good, but not all of them. I was talking through some of the hands with a friend and player I admire, things got a little heated as they sometimes do, and at one point he attempted to "settle" an argument over a hand by saying "if you posted it on Boards, everyone would agree with me". I didn't doubt the truth of the statement but I've always felt that if everyone is playing from the same gamebook, then nobody can have that big of an edge. I've maybe gotten suckered into playing other people's game a bit too much of late. In the big events I've played this year I've returned to my own natural game and it seems to work better.

The weekend wasn't a total writeoff: I made almost €300 in 30 minutes playing cash waiting for my lift to arrive. Perhaps I should play more cash at these things but I really don't enjoy it. Also, as I was going in the first day, Albert Kenny asked me if I wanted to swap, and since Albert is a class player I was more than happy to agree. Ironically I'd put quite a lot of thought ito my swaps and done quite a few to reduce my variance but I ended up outlasting all my other swaps. Fair play to Albert though: he cashed and was very unlucky not to go even deeper.

The other positive aspect was the atmosphere and banter around CityWest which was buzzing all weekend. The Irish poker scene is full of great characters, and many of them took the opportunity to abuse me not only for the Sole Survivor getup I had to wear, but also the hat I decided to wear to look a bit different from the other 120 sole survivors. First prize for wittiest comment goes to Trippie Gordon, who described it as the Rocky look.

Since then, it's been back to the grind. I'm running well online again. Last night after coming home from Malahide I played 4 45 mans on Tilt and won one for almost $1200, and I'm going ok on the STTs on Ipoker again. The grind shall continue until Saturday when I'm off to San Remo. After the lack of resultage at the IO I'd decided to be sensible and only play the 2K side event out there (and had already informed my English backers of the decision), but Dagunman was not only his usual persuasive self but not only put his money where his mouth is but arranged for me to offload as much as needed in about 5 minutes to be make it comfortable for me to play so a big thank you merited there. So now I'm really looking forward to my EPT debut and a week in San Remo with some degens. I shall endeavour to be a good influence.

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u play poker very good....and have nice legs

My Gmail account was hacked last night. I signed on to my secondary account and saw that "I" was online. Rather surreally, when I attempted to engage in chat with "me", "I" responded, first asking if this was my account, and then adding cryptically "u play poker very good". The lack of punctuation was troubling. Was he complimenting my poker skills, or was it abbreviated unpunctuated pidigin for "You play poker. Very good, I can empty your accounts". It took an hour or so to wrest control of the mail account back from him (you can't email Gmail!), and realise he'd also hacked into my Stars account. I contacted Stars and they responded by freezing the account. This morning, I discovered he had set my account up to autoforward all messages I received to him, which means he now has a scan of my passport, which is also somewhat troubling.
Today I was scheduled to do three long runs (2 hours each). In my coach's idealised view, this consists of rolling out of bed at 8AM, doing the first one before breakfast, the second around 2 PM, and the third one in the evening. In the world I live in where I'm normally only rolling into bed not much before 8 AM, it was more like getting up at 2, heading straight out, wolfing breakfast down and heading off 30 minutes later for number two, and less than an hour after that had been completed, heading back out for number three before darkness fell. First one was a bit of a struggle, second one flew along, and the third one felt so good I had to remind myself I'd already done two. My mood was greatly enhanced by the fact that the park was sun drenched and full of pretty young ones, and not ten minutes went by that some brazen young wan either wolf whistled at me and passed loud favourable comment on my legs. I've always felt my legs were my best feature: face like a putrefying turnip, but great legs. The great thing about long runs is you have plenty of time to muse. I mused as to whether this was a symptom of the liberation of Irish woman. Mireille reckoned it's purely a working class girl phenomenon (see used a different term than "working class": rhymes with cracker) and it's true I never got this sort of reaction when we lived in Dun Laoire. Of course, those who stayed in the park for more than a couple of hours gradually came to the realisation that my run was going on much longer than would be sensible, and any admiration for my legs was surely clouded by the obvious doubts over my sanity.
Online tonight was a mixed bag. Down a few hundred in Ipoker STTs (running like a pig: I may have broken the world record for being three outered on the river), but played two more 45 man $75 thingies on Tilt and cashed in both. Second one was a min cash (sixth), but first one I got headsup in (but lost). Unlucky in the both: was allin with AK v K3 for the win on the first, and criplled in the second with A9 v J8. I also got a $69 bounty bonus for knocking out a Full Tilt pro: Fabrice something or other.
Finally, I wish to record that yesterday was the 88th birthday of Charles Schmeltz, esteemed educationalist, unrepentant unreformed Communist, French resistance hero and also my father in law. When we rang to wish him a happy birthday, he was unavailable, having climbed up the cherry tree in his garden to check how this year's crop is shaping up. 88 years old and still climbing trees, I suppose no less should be expected of a descendant of Genghis Khan.

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Q822 = the nuts in PLO

Played the SE IO sat last night. Very high quality field, in fact, most of the best tourney players in Ireland seemed to be there. Great social event too, had good craic with Dagunman at my first table. Best LOL was hearing Bob Battersby explain to us that Q8 was a poxy holdem hand but a great PLO one "but only if you have a pair with it".

I started reasonably well and things got even better when I dogged Adam Fallon. Well, I say things got better but not really. I don't derive much pleasure from dogging people on the few occasions when I do pull it off and there's zero pleasure to be had from dogging a class player like Adam in my book. Hand was he raised in CO, I reraised AT from SB thinking it stood up pretty well against his late position rocks in the blinds raising range, but he actually had the jacks. Ace on flop had O'Shea remonstrating with me for upsetting Adam. Bit of banter with the lads too arising from the fact that myself and Paul Leckey were sat side by side, but Paul was the perfect gentleman he always is before the fourth bottle of wine.

Structure got crapshooty fast and by the final table I had 8 bigs. Average was only 10 (M less than 4), and with 5 tickets it effectively meant flipping at some point for a ticket. That point came fast when I picked up AK first hand and shipped it into jacks. Lost the race and that was that. The joys of flipping for €3500. Still, positive was I think I played a lot better than I have in a while live, probably since I chopped Malahide monthly last month. Hopefully I'm hitting form at the right time.

Still grinding away online, had my best online day in a while on Monday (up $1500). Mainly playing STTs still. Played my first ever $75 45 man STT on Fult Tilt just now and won it, making today another $1K+ day. Had a decent March, up almost €3k live and $10K online.

Plan for rest of week is more online grinding, and Mullingar on Friday. I qualified for a WSOP sat on Ipoker on Sunday so fingers crossed for that.

Back running again after recent illness. I was a late injury replacement callup for the Irish team for Saturday's 100K in Galway but had to drop out due to illness. Well done to the Irish men's team who took third, and to Helena Crossan who won the women's race. Tomorrow, I have to do three long runs in one days (ughski) so I guess I should get a (relativel) early night.

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