ICM Deal Calculator

Deciding whether a final-table deal is fair? Enter each remaining player's chip count and the remaining payouts, and this free calculator computes every player's ICM equity — their real-dollar share of the prize pool under the Independent Chip Model — side by side with a proportional chip-chop split, so you can see exactly who a chip-chop overpays. Up to 9 players, exact Malmuth–Harville math, entirely in your browser.

What is ICM, and why not just split by chips?

Tournament chips aren't dollars. Payouts are awarded by finishing place, not by chip count, and that breaks the one-to-one link between chips and money: your 40th chip is worth less to you than your 4th, because the extra chips mostly pile onto first-place outcomes you were already likely to win. The Independent Chip Model (ICM) restores the link by converting stacks into finish-probability distributions and pricing them against the actual payouts.

The standard way to compute it — and the way this calculator does — is the Malmuth–Harville method: each player's chance of finishing 1st equals their share of the chips in play; their chance of finishing 2nd is computed by removing each possible winner in turn and re-running the same logic on the remaining chips; and so on down the paid places. Multiply each finish probability by its prize, sum across places, and you have each player's real-dollar equity. This page runs that recursion exactly (no approximation) for up to 9 players — the same algorithm as the ICM calculator inside the TableLab app.

Why a chip-chop overpays the big stack

A chip-chop split hands out the entire prize pool in proportion to chips — which quietly assumes every chip is worth the same. But the chip leader can only win first place once. Once their stack is big enough to make them the likely winner, additional chips barely move their equity, while for everyone else those same chips would buy real ladder-survival value. Under top-heavy payouts, the leader's chip share of the pool is therefore always more than their ICM equity — and the shorter stacks' chip shares are always less.

A worked 3-player example

Three players remain. Stacks: 5,000 / 3,000 / 2,000. Remaining payouts: $500 / $300 / $200 ($1,000 total). Here's what each split says:

The chip leader holds 50% of the chips but is entitled to only ~38.4% of the pool under ICM — a chip-chop would overpay them by $116. The short stack's floor does the work: even the last-place prize here is $200, so 2,000 chips are worth $288.57, not $200. Load these numbers into the calculator above and press Calculate to reproduce the table.

When deals come up (and when ICM matters mid-game)

Most deals happen at the final table when stacks are shallow relative to the payout jumps and everyone wants to lock up money. ICM is the neutral arbiter: it rewards chips without pretending they're dollars. The same model matters during play, too — on the money bubble and at pay jumps, a shove that's profitable in chips can be clearly losing in dollars. If you play tournaments seriously, the deal calculator and the discipline of a proper tournament bankroll (variance in MTTs dwarfs cash) are two halves of the same money-management skill — you can quantify the second half with our variance calculator.

ICM is a model, not a rulebook — it assumes equal skill and ignores position, blinds, and who's about to pay the big blind. It's the standard, neutral baseline for deals; negotiate from it, not around it.