Updated November 2026
ICM, the Independent Chip Model, turns tournament stacks into a share of the prize money. Its main lesson is that the chips you could lose are worth more than the chips you could win, so a play that gains chips on average can still lose money.
Four players left, prizes of $50, $30 and $20.
It assumes your chance of finishing first equals your share of all the chips. Then it works out who might come second if you did win, and so on down the list, and adds up what each finish pays.
That's all it does. It ignores skill, position and the blinds.
Half the chips means a 50% chance of first place.
Take three players with 500, 300 and 200 chips, and prizes of $50, $30 and $20. The 500 stack has half the chips, so it finishes first half the time.
To come second, someone else has to finish first and then this stack has to win the rest. If the 300 stack wins (30%), the 500 stack gets 500 of the remaining 700 chips, or 71%. If the 200 stack wins (20%), it gets 500 of the remaining 800, or 63%.
That adds up to a 33.9% chance of second place, which leaves 16.1% for third. Multiply each by its prize and the 500 stack is worth $38.39. It has 50% of the chips and 38% of the money.
Each of the three stacks is worth $33.33.
You now have two-thirds of the chips and you can't finish third, which makes you worth $43.33.
You finish third and collect $20. That's $13.33 less than you had.
You win $10 or lose $13.33. To break even you have to win this all-in 57% of the time, so a coin flip is a losing play here.
Short stacks are worth more than their chips suggest, because they can still end up with a piece of the prizes. Big stacks are worth less than their chips suggest, because they can't win more than first place.
That's why the chart in the cheat sheet shows the big stack's prize share below its chip share.
Because that's when going broke costs the most. One more elimination and everyone gets paid, so medium stacks should fold hands that would normally be easy calls.
The big stack knows that and can raise a lot of hands, since the others can't call without risking far more than they'd gain.
Players call this a bubble factor: what you stand to lose divided by what you stand to win. In chips it's always 1. Measured in prize money it's bigger, and you can turn it straight into the share of the time you need to win.
Take the four players in the cheat sheet. The 5,000 stack shoves and the 3,000 stack thinks about calling. In chips you'd need to win half the time. In money it's a lot more.
Yes. In a winner-take-all tournament, chips and money are exactly the same, and ICM changes nothing. The flatter the prizes, the more each chip you already have is worth holding on to.
Here's the 5,000 stack from our example, with its 50% of the chips, under three sets of prizes.
Near the end of a tournament, the players left can agree to split the remaining prize money and stop playing, if the room allows it. An ICM deal divides it by the calculator. A chip chop divides it by share of chips.
The big stack always prefers the chip chop, and the short stack always prefers ICM. On $100 of prizes with the stacks from our example, the gap for the leader is more than $12.
Take a good spot before the blinds take you out, and choose a player who can't easily call. A short stack doesn't lose much by shoving, and doubling up changes its share of the money more than any other stack's.
The exception is when another player is shorter still. If that player is about to bust, folding for a hand or two may be worth more than a decent shove.
Twelve spots in three rounds, with the numbers worked out by the calculator.
Independent Chip Model.
No. In a cash game every chip is worth exactly its face value.
From the bubble onward, and most of all at the final table.
You can't, really. Study common spots away from the table so you know when to tighten up.
Because it can't win more than first place, and part of its chips can only ever buy that one prize.
With thousands of players it can't be worked out directly. It's used mainly once the field is down to a table or two.
The calculator uses the Malmuth-Harville method: each player's chance of finishing first is their share of the chips, and each following place is worked out the same way among those left. More background is on Wikipedia's page about the Independent Chip Model.
Send them the calculator.