One of the most difficult things that a poker player can learn is how to manage the bubble of a tournament. This is especially true of Sit ‘N Go tournaments, where only a few players make the money in a smaller field. No matter how much reading you do of Doyle Brunson’s Super System, you aren’t going to learn how to handle those tough hands where everything is on the line right around the bubble. The key thing to know is that you have to tread carefully when you near the bubble of a tournament. Your goal is to make money, and you get nothing by finishing as the “Bubble Boy”.

With that in mind, there are some pretty cool strategies and tools that you can use in order to help you make decisions when the bubble gets near. ICM, or the Independent Chip Model, will help you learn about the odds associated with tournament play so that you can have a good idea of the true value of making one decision over another when it comes down to tournament time. The situations where players struggle the most are those when there are maybe four players remaining in a tournament that pays money to only three.

What are you to do when someone puts you to a decision for all of your chips right on the bubble? The ICM can help you figure this out and can help you manage those tough decisions in a profitable way.

The early part of a tournament is a make or break time, but nothing compares to the bubble and the time surrounding it. A mistake then can ruin an hour of good play and it can leave you going home with absolutely nothing, so it is important that you work with the finest knowledge possible before making decisions during that time.

When you make it to the final three at a Sit ‘N Go tournament, you guarantee yourself double what you paid to enter the tournament. More than half of the tournament payout will be awarded when it is down to the final three, with only the final 40% left to be decided by the three players. So what does this all mean in terms of practical application?

Let us take a moment to consider a real life bubble application. With four players left, you are sitting in with 4800 chips, while the guys to your left have, respectively, 4400, 7200, and 3600. You are in decent shape, but you aren’t in a position of power by any means imaginable. The blinds at this point are pretty high, sitting at 400/800. In this instance, let’s say that you are in the SB and all of the action has folded up to you. You are sitting there holding a nice, playable hand of 9-8 suited. This is a good hand, but it is not something you get a lot of value out of playing heads up, so what’s your move?

You only have six big blinds, so your moves are pretty limited. If you have played a lot of poker, then you know that when it comes down to this time, you are probably going to either be pushing it all in the middle or you are going to be folding your hand, especially given the fact that everyone folded in front of you.

If you happen to raise it up to 1600, and the big blind raises on top of you, you are going to have to call because you are getting good odds to do so. So if the odds are in your favor, why not make the firm push to begin with, forcing the big blind to make a decision about just how good their hand looks in that moment. The key here is expected value, which can only be computed using our handy ICM calculator.

Folding is a pretty certain move in terms of what information we will have. You will end up with 4400, while the chip stacks sitting left of you will have 4800, 7200, and 3600 in that order. You know that in that instance, your value is 0.23, roughly.

There are quite a few different things that can happen in the case of you pushing all-in that need to be considered, though. The BB can fold down his hand when you go all-in, the BB can make the call and you take the pot, the BB can make the call and win the pot, or the BB could call and the pot could be split. Because a split pot happens so infrequently in this type of situation, it probably is not worth considering in this instance. In this case, there is a great deal of uncertainty associated with the numbers, because a lot of it works off of assumption. There is some statistical data to play with in order to figure out a little bit of value, though. We really need to have some clue of what the BB is going to do, which will require you to understand their style of play a little bit. After playing with them for a while, this shouldn’t be so tough for you to do. A play who you might call “tight” is going to make a call in this situation with somewhere near 15% of starting hands. A loose competitor might call with double that. This percentage is certainly not very accurate and it will require you to have some knowledge of your opponent. In this case, we are going to work with the assumption that the Big Blind is a relatively tight guy who have played that way all day. We will assume that they are going to make a call with around 15% of the starting hands available.

If this number is correct (and it might be a little bit off), 85% of the time in this instance they are going to fold down their hand. We know that a fold there will leave the stacks as being 5200, 4000, 7200, and 3600. We can conclude rather quickly that our value would then be .2623, give or take a couple of digits. In this instance, we can see that with only one move, we have been able to procure a little bit more of the prize amount according to the averages.

So what happens if he has a decent hand and he calls? You will see this 15 out of every one hundred times, so be ready for it if it happens. Getting called is really not a good result here, because you are going to be behind each and every time, but this doesn’t mean you are completely doomed. According to poker hand odds, you will find that you are going to win this hand around 35% of the time.

So with this knowledge, we can discover that the overall chance of him making a call and then coming up with a winner is just under 10%, at roughly 9.6. We also know that there is a 5.4% chance of him calling your hand and losing. If he calls and wins, you will have chip numbers of 0, 9200, 7200, and 3600. Obviously you have zero chance of making any money in this instance, so you have a value of 0. If this comes a winner, you are going to have a commanding lead at 8800 chips, with 400, 7200, and 3600 being the others. Here, your value is right at .363.

From there you are left only to average the outcomes and figure out your best move. You figure out that making a push gives you a .243 value, while we know that folding will give us a value of .235. The push gives us, on average, one quarter of one percent more in the prize pool. Because the Sit N’ Go tournament world is all about averages and making a little bit of money over time, this addition can mean big things to the bottom line, especially if you play at higher levels.

The good thing about this situation is that you have a couple of different ways to increase your prize pool share. You can win with the other guy folding, or by getting lucky and hitting some cards. All in all, it’s a good move, and more times than not you are going to be able to use this ICM principle to your advantage when it comes bubble time. People will be more likely to fold because they are playing scared during this time, so use that information to your advantage.