One other thing I wanted to talk about is a poker concept called ICM, which stands for independent chip modeling.

So imagine I put you to the test in a poker hand, you are getting 2:1 odds to call and are trying to calculate what % your hand is against my range of hands. If you are > 1/3 to win you call and if you are less you fold. To illustrate this, imagine you are getting 2:1 and are 35% to win. when you lose you go -1 for calling the bet off. When you win, you gain the 2 out there. 35%2 +65%(-1) = .7-.65=.05, a positive overall gain.

But in poker tournaments, we can't do that. Since the payouts increase exponentially, players who are shorter stacked towards the end of a tournament have incentive to be more conservative when running into the big stack. So with 3 players left, say I have the chiplead, you are in 2nd place, and someone is in distant 3rd. Same scenario, I go all in and give you 2:1 odds to call. In this situation you probably have to be something like 55-60% to win rather than >33.3%.

But when players get down to HU there is no more ICM. Players revert back to making the standard best poker play and there is no worry about laddering up as other players bust out. So despite lots of conservative play before, once we got to HU our aggression levels went through the roof