jjd323's blog

I used to play a lot of SnGs, and I did reasonably well from them. However, despite getting a good feel for “good” and “bad” plays, I was never able to perform really solid quantitative analysis at the table (especially as I would often be 20-tabling). Most people consider ICM to be the gold-standard of small-field tournament equity models, and for the most part it is. You can analyse your play using various tools, such as the excellent SitNGoWizard . However, the maths required to evaluate your equity via ICM is too complex to be done by hand in a reasonable timeframe, let alone in your head at the table in under 5 seconds.

The equitable chip model (ECM) is an approximation of ICM; actually it is the lower bound of your equity for a given stack size, payout structure and total chips in play. You can read about it at the excellent pokernerdz website. For 9-man SnGs with very sharp payout structures, the difference between ECM and ICM can be outrageously large to the point that ECM is virtually useless as a quantitative tool. However, in 45-man SnGs I found that using ECM to estimate my equity, and how it could change, I could make adjustments around the final two tables stage that were notably different from those the other regs were making. I believe I gained a large edge because of this. If there is any interest, I may neaten up my spreadsheet and make a post with some of the conclusions I drew from this analysis. In the meantime, I encourage you to play around for yourselves and see what conclusions you can draw for yourself.