Exploiting ICM pressure at the FT

How much should ICM pressure influence your opening and 3-bet ranges at the final table? Is it better to exploit opponents who are over-folding because of pay jumps, or can excessive aggression become a leak when stack preservation is also important?

It boils down to the villans, if you have a great feel for their range then you can just run it through a ICM calc like Icmizer or Sngwiz.

If you don't know their range, then just use the ICM default range.

TeUnit said:

It boils down to the villans, if you have a great feel for their range then you can just run it through a ICM calc like Icmizer or Sngwiz.

If you don't know their range, then just use the ICM default range.

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I agree that having a good read on the villain’s range is probably the biggest factor. But I think the difficult part is that ranges can change a lot under ICM pressure. A player who normally calls 15% might suddenly call much tighter at the final table because of the pay jumps. So do you think it’s better to use the ICM default range as a baseline and then adjust it based on population tendencies and reads?

SergioV said:

How much should ICM pressure influence your opening and 3-bet ranges at the final table? Is it better to exploit opponents who are over-folding because of pay jumps, or can excessive aggression become a leak when stack preservation is also important?

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Population over folds and extra over folds with short stacks. Is Villain population? or is he different?

If I have a bigger stack, I am absolutely bullying the little ones. One thing that I pay special attention to is the dude on our left. It will fold to us on SB fairly often. Is he foldy? Go after him. Is he loose? Tighten up against him. How is our stack compared to his? Can he call us wide? Is he short and shove/folding? Then can we afford the call is he jams us?

I think ICM should influence ranges quite a bit, but I wouldn’t treat every pay jump as a green light to attack. If someone is clearly over-folding, I’ll widen my opens and 3-bets, but stack preservation still matters, especially against players who can actually fight back.

Is it better to exploit players who over fold? Absolutely, this is why we pay attention at the table. Does this make us exploitable? Absolutely. So play smart. Go after the weak player when you can and try not to be the target yourself.