What is ICM in poker tournaments
In a cash game, a chip is worth a chip. In a tournament it isn't - you can't cash out your stack at face value, you only have a shot at reaching the payouts and getting your share. ICM (Independent Chip Model) is the standard way to convert a chip stack into the real $ value of your position in the tournament, based on how many players are left and how the payouts are structured.
Why chips aren't dollars
The classic example: you hold half of all the chips in the tournament on the money bubble. That doesn't mean you hold half the prize pool - your real $ equity is noticeably less than half, because busting with half a stack still nets $0, and anyone at the table could still take it down. That's why a call that's profitable in chip terms in a cash game can be a losing call in real money near the bubble or at a final table - that's what people mean by ICM pressure.
M-factor stack zones (Harrington)
Exact $ ICM equity is computed from the payout structure and how many players remain - the hand-history file doesn't carry that, so guessing it after the fact wouldn't be honest. What we CAN compute exactly is your stack zone - how many orbits (SB+BB+ante) you can survive without playing a single hand, and what that means for your decisions:
20+ orbits - green
Deep - full freedom to play post-flop.
10-20 orbits - yellow
Time to tighten ranges and take the pot first more often.
6-10 orbits - orange
Push-fold kicks in: look for a spot to shove first, there's barely any post-flop play left.
1-6 orbits - red
Straight push-fold - all-in or fold by the chart.
under 1 orbit - dead
Shove any reasonable hand - there's nothing left to wait for.
How this works in Whygrid
The hand-history file doesn't show how many players are left in the tournament or how close the money is - that's a limit of the HH format itself, and we don't paper over it with guesses. So the coach doesn't hand you an exact ICM equity in dollars - but it does honestly compute your stack zone on every hand and reminds you: the shorter your stack near the money, the more a risky call actually costs in real money, even when it looks fine in chip terms.
Short stack - see the push-fold chart
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