[Closed] About ICM Manager and actual table play

Originally posted by Atoks
My question are these:
a) is there any formula that helps decide if I should push or fold? I can and have learn the starting hands for varius situations by heart but should I always push J9s UTG with 4 left and I got 10BB left (of course it depends on other players on the table but I multitable without stats so with a few exceptions most are unknown to me)?

There isn't a real formula, only the ICM calculation. Way to complex to do yourself though. Personaly I do it on instinct, look at the risk/reward ratio etc..

Originally posted by Atoks
b) how much do stats affect these decisions? Can one make significantly better decisions against other players if he has stuff like VPIP, PFR, AF, ATTSteal, any other stats to look at?

These are usualy not relevant.. although players who are loose in the early stages will call more often in the push/fold stage. Push tighter against loose players, push looser against tight players. Most of those stats don't mean much in sng's, since they are almost completely situation dependant (good players are tight early and loose in late stage, no real "ideal" stat)
You can easily spot the real donks stat though.. high WTSD, high VPIP, ...

Originally posted by Atoks
c) how do you decide what range to go with on any given orbit? if u push lose on one orbit do u go for a tighter push next time u are in the same spot in the orbit and the blinds didn't change or vice-versa?

I don't really pay attention to it.. only in SB vs BB I usualy try not to push into villain a thousand times in a row
You will often get "spite calls", where villain does not understand your constant pushes, gets fed up and decides to call you with J5 suited
Give villain a brake once in a while, and use the marginal +$EV spots for it.
If I pushed into villain 4 orbits in a row I still wont fold my AJ suited though ♦

Originally posted by Atoks
d) how do u figure out what to go with? just follow the ICM programs guidlines or try other stuff that aren't always +EV (SnGW for example sometimes suggest we fold cards that are marginally +EV in some situations)

It's impossible to say something in general about this, since it is hugely situation dependant. Post loads of hands and get a feel for it

Originally posted by Atoks
And to wrap it up, I feel I usually go for the tighter version. I've been shoving it in with marginal hands often and so far I just got burned badly. Most of the times I face a flip (pocket pairs from MP get called by QJ or slightly better crap than that by the BB who doesn't hold more then 20BBs...), or the other player has me dominated (too often my K8s from UTG gets called by A8o on the BB), even crushed (my low end pockets vs. mid-high pockets, Ax called by A9+, ...) It seems as a waste of chips to me and from what I can deduct from my analysis of my game the loose pushes are costing me a pretty penny. It just looks like waiting for a better opportunity is more viable (I play on the OnGame network). I guess I can also ask if that means my adjusting to other's ranges isn't good enough?
Thanks for looking this over!

You have to adjust yes... push tight into loose players, push looser into tight players. You can adjust the calling ranges in the SNG wizard, play around with it a little bit
Super loose pushes do not always work, if I know the bigstack in the BB calls superloose I fold the J5 suited.

Well ICM takes dedication to learn... I could do 85% in the icm trainer before I had any idea of how it worked lol

But now I pretty much finally know what I'm doing and thats after like 10k hands in icm trainer few runs in ICM trainer light and asking viewer and chenny about every spot I wasn't sure what I was doing

Lol best thing to do is to post hands in the sample hands and ask for shoving ranges from the judges and us the people that like to make our guesses also

For a beginner using stats during ICM ain't too good... I don't use it atleast.. I just shove like everyone on the table is around average ... cept for I don't shove into AnyTwoCards (ATC) guys and I shove loose into extremely tight guys... but like viewer said before me you never get too good reads in sng's...

Just to summarize my post you should review every ICM spot where you wasn't sure about what range you should shove...
-You can't really calculate ICM while your playing because it's pretty complicated and it would take a little bit more than your timebank I believe

-But after you get pretty confident on ICM situation you start to make most moves by a feeling and your pretty much sure about what range to shove...

So it's just learning by heart (brain could be useful also ) lol...

Kinda my weaknesses learning the ICM was that I didn't really understand shoving pocket pairs... I had a hard time shoving 22 33 and stuff like that... After few posts in the Sample hands I've now made that leak into an edge and I'm feeling pretty good about shoving pocket pairs in ICM

Kinda the leak I'm fighting right now is when to shove any two... And from time to time I find myself folding 34o tho I know I should've shoved any two cards... I just can't push the shove button with that hand lol... I've been working on this leak tho and I now know pretty much when it's almost any two and when it is any two....

Well my short post ended up as a big ass post... lol

The shoving ATC is kinda easy, but when you have to fold like QQ, despite knowing villain pushes almost all hands, thats the tough part imo. Typical situation of this is big stack pushing, you are 2nd in chips and there are two ministacks who already folded.

Yesterday I tried something different to what I normaly do playing SnGs. Instead of blindly following the ICM recommendations I thought about every hand that u are advised to shov either according to ICMPS or SnGW. I sometimes folded, sometimes pushed, depending on what kind of a player was toward the end of the orbit. It worked nicely and I came ITM and even won more then the past few days but still it was only 1 day. Gonna try the same today.

What I learned from the experience was this: ICM managers recommend the hand, but u should decide according to opponent characteristics wether u wanna push or fold. Sounds so simple but I never said I'm not dense sometimes

Also I feel I played a lot better and had a better result because I'm at my GFs and she has a bigger screen then I do. That helps me see a lot more action then on my measly 17" 1024*768 screen. Another lesson learned.

I think experience is key to successful SnG play. I've played 2k 11$ SnGs and have an ROI of 5%. The more I play the more I realize that seeing the action is almost as important as knowing the ranges is. How can u assign a range to someone if u don't see them play?

The issue I have with posting hands is that I play on the OnGame network and it's a pain to get the HH format suitable for forums. Does the Elephant support SnG analysis already? And the OnGame network? I wanted to get me HE Manager but my ROI is a bit shy so I'm not having it yet... need that bigger screen and PC to support it first.

To typohh: how would u act in the situation u mentioned? I'd prolly go for a fold on the bubble, but earlier or later I'd go for a call, if I didn't have a read that he's a very solid player of course.