Hey Apotheosis, cool video. I've been getting in a lot of spots late in tournaments where I'll find myself in many marginally beneficial +ICM plays (against range) against spewy (and generally poor) opponents late where I have the risk of elimination, or crippling my stack to a point that prevents me from having the utility to push my edge over other opponents I can comfortably exploit. While I feel bad sometimes making the "nittier" and less ICM positive play, as I'm getting exploited in sorts, the hearts example actually kind of made me feel more comfortable. I am getting exploited, but this player eventually equilibriums themselves against the whole field, as someone will be able to cripple him (and benefit the field) with their premiums at a high frequency, as the player is just non-stop spew and won't adjust to player specific ranges. I thought "well, it seems like I'm letting them win", but this made me think about how "letting them win" isn't actually a win. The rate they disperse equity by bad play to field, and the chunk I receive from that, is higher than the marginal equity they gain in plays where I might make the nitty, -EV play, and that according equity I lose out on.

Moral of the story is - you're not "giving up an edge" if the person you're giving it to is just giving it back :)

Glad you found that useful. I was a bit concerned it might seem irrelevant/not interesting to some but I thought it was kind of funny that something completely unrelated and random actually tied in to one of the things I've been thinking about a lot lately.

And yeah, I agree with all your analysis.

Him not folding vs you, hurts you. It hurts him too. However, in the long run everyone is faced with this situation vs this opponent (theoretically). If you punt it to him, you take more EV from the two of you and distribute it to the field than if you don't. If you just grit ur teeth and cut your losses, chances are others will fail to do so and punt. I.e. Its unfortunate you're in a losing situation but you have to remember that in this case the goal is to lose less than the field will lose in this spot.

I found the video quite helpful, and it would be cool to see future videos like this were we can look at practical applications of perhaps more complex concepts to use "in the moment" when we are playing (since we can't pull out an icm calculator while we're at a FT in a live tournament, and there are too many spots to memorize like you mentioned, etc). It's things like this that will really help me make better decisions when I'm playing that I wouldn't have been able to figure out on my own, and helps better my approach to certain situations involving icm. Thanks for the vid!

I can certainly try to do something like this though it's a bit tough for me to think about how to do it.

Off the top of my head what I may try to do is pull up a few final tables with chip distributions and people and try to see if we can all work at determining how risk averse everyone needs to be.

I'm not sure if I can do this though (as RIO may run into copyright problems or w/e) and I also don't want to specifically put people on blast. (Like if you think of that famous hand between Dan Shak and Vanessa Selbst in the PCA high roller a few years ago where they got in AJ vs Pair+Fd I suspect neither of them should have been putting that much money in). That hand is somewhat predictable in that both those people are somewhat well known for putting in absurd amounts of $ light (so if I'm at that FT I'm factoring that into my decisions and assuming they bust more often than if someone like Jason Koon and Dan Smith are replacing them). That being said, it's a bit tough to communicate that in a video without putting those two on blast and that's not really the goal of the videos.

Moral of the Story: I'm happy to try and do something, but I'm a bit stuck when it comes to ideas so I'll think it through. I've got a 5 part series of the entire FT of my Super Tuesday coming up so there's some time but if you've got any suggestions about how I could approach the topic ur looking for please feel free to pm them to.

Just my opinion, but i think you spend too much time talking about hearts. I see the relation you make, but it didn't really have much value in terms of helping me understand the concepts of ICM you are talking about. I learned a lot more about hearts then anything else.

Secondly, IMO it was pretty boring listening to you explain the rules of hearts, im probably never going to play that game in my whole life and i wanted to shut this video off like 10 minutes into the wholes hearts spiel.

Sorry if this sounds rude, its just my honest opinion anyways.

Yea, I mean the strictly ICM stuff in the second half won't go away, but perhaps trying to approach ICM from a point of view other than "This is ICM, learn it" is not the best
(which is what I was trying to do in part 1)

I really loved the video, loved the topic, great work in an area where so many people misplayed; i'd absolutely love to see more on the topic be it your suggestion above Shak vs Selbst hand / or analysis of some FT chip distribution and how it affects every one

Just one comment on my side, at 42:30 you said that with less chips (300k)) we should fold even more. I agree that having less chips 300k (3bb) does not change our probability of winning a potential heads-up match should we call and win. But folding actually decreases substantially our chance of finishing 2nd and if 3rd place then doubles up next hand, we will be in tough place so we should loose up just a little bit our calling range to guarantee 2nd prize here and put some distance with the 3rd place stack. With more distance to 3rd place stack, then it becomes right again to fold tighter

Maybe a little late to comment in this video, but I really love this theoretical content, and I like the way you teach it.

About the steeper or flatter payouts questions (43:00), I had the opposite opinion about going wider in the first case. In my vision, since the payouts are steeper, the EV of call is very afected by the times we got 3rd position, which has a way worse payout than the 2nd one.

In the other hand, when we have flatter payouts, we have the atenuation of the ICM effect, so we can go wider. (Think the "flatterest" case where the payouts are all the same, i.e, we're playing chip ev, and then we can call so much wider).

Is that thought correct? What am I misunderstanding?

Loved it! Definitely down to see more.