Thanks for the long explanation! I see what you're saying about simplified strategies being easier to play at high volume. At that point, I guess it's also a question of what my goal is, though. I think I would rather play really well at low volume, than make more money at higher volume. At least initially. I can always move to simpler strategies and higher volume later if I play well.
Yep that's a fine way to go imo
When you say that learning ICM takes a long time, do you mean calculating the ICM odds yourself during play, or learning to understand what ICM does?
Learning to understand what it does is relatively easy, i think you are most of the way there already since you seem quite intelligent. What can take a long time is countless review sessions and inefficient training methods. Like, reviewing your past play can be beneficial, but not for learning basic ICM ranges.
If the former, can't you just use an ICM calculator? I do not intend to actually sit and practice mental ICM calculation. I think the import an`t part is understanding what the model does, and its limitations. After that, I'm more than happy to let an online calculator do it for me.
Yes for sure! it's incredibly important to know the ins and outs and limitations of ICM. It's also important to know how to counter some of these limitations. The main thing I am talking about is inefficient use of the ICM calculators, which i'll cover in a little bit.
Unless you're referring to live play, in which case I guess you'd have to learn heuristic ways to do it fast in your head.
So just to make this clear, i am talking about the use of ICM calculators and inefficient study methods or learning methods.
Most people when they use these calculators, will just review a few tournaments or trouble spots, go over the
hands, "good shove, bad shove" etc.
this is not a very good way to study efficiently. This was also the way i went about it, but knowing what i know now, i would do things differently. I'll outline a few ways i would do things now if i were to start learning ICM ranges.
1. Build a SNG shove/fold chart. This is really handy for learning the basic ranges needed. The most important part is that you develop it for your games, as every level has a slightly different population tendency. I'll try and link my own shove/fold chart below, but i'm not on my own computer.
2. Setup a study plan. To do this, i would start at the bubble, as that is where ICM is most extreme. This of course depends on the games you play, however i'd try and keep it as simple as possible. The things i would look at are differing stack sizes, and how the ranges change when you are in differing stack setups. So for example, i play 6 max SNG so i would look at the following to study. These stack setups are just the most common, but the key is that it gives you a great starting ground, then once the stack setup changes slightly, you kind of get a feel for how much you need to adjust your range. It also gives you insight into how important it is to have the big stack and how you can use a slight chip advantage to totally dominate good players who abide strictly to ICM theory.
Equal stacks
Big stack, two small stacks
Two equal stacks one small stack
one big stack, one medium stack, one small stack
If you are playing 9 max sng, this will obviously differ. So when you study a particular stack setup, it's important to switch yourself between these stacks to see what you can shove at differing blind levels. This will take some time obviously, but you will learn far quicker studying these basic setups.
3. Once you have mastered the stack setups above and understand how they relate, you can study spots that confuse you. It could be 3bet shoving. To study this spot effectively, first go into your tracker, filter for these specific situations for certain blind levels. This will give you a bunch of hands, run these hands through an ICM calculator and study 3-5 of them in a row. Once you have a grasp for that spot, you may want to tinker with the blind levels or opponent ranges to see what you can get away with shoving profitably.
That's it really. Those are the 3 things i would focus on in that order to nail down basic ranges that you can use in your head on the fly. No matter what the end goal is to be able to use ranges effectively in game, and not be confused in game or think it's the end of the world if you shove a little bit loose in a particular hand, in reality it doesn't really matter too much.