Poker tournaments are like wars made up of many battles. Independent Chip Model (ICM) analyses one battle at a time, while Future Game Simulation (FGS) treats the tournament as an evolving war campaign – considering long-term positioning, attrition, and momentum, not just the outcome of a single clash.
That captures exactly why FGS is the future of tournament analysis – it elevates thinking from hand-by-hand tactics to multi-hand strategy, which is much closer to how poker actually plays out.
For years, players relied on the ICM to guide decisions. ICM evaluates chip stacks in terms of payout equity, but only within the narrow frame of a single hand. Enter the FGS: a model that transforms poker from a series of isolated skirmishes into a grand strategic war game.
- Read more: Board Texture Mastery – The Missing Edge for Pro-Level Play
- Read more: Eldarova’s Dynamic Exploit Equilibrium (DEE) Theory
Poker as a War Campaign
If like chess, poker tournaments are wars, then:
- Chip stacks are your armies.
- Blinds and antes are the relentless supply drains that wear armies down.
- Table position is the terrain – high ground in late position, vulnerability in early.
- Future hands are the coming battles in the campaign.
- Opponents are rival generals with their own resources, strategies, and weaknesses.
In this framing, success is not about winning one fight. It’s about navigating the whole campaign – conserving strength where needed, pressing attacks when the terrain favours you, and surviving long enough to claim victory.
The Tactical Lens: ICM
The Independent Chip Model (ICM) is like a battlefield scout:
- It tells you what your army is worth if the war ended right now.
- ICM assumes the tournament stops after the current hand, so your decision is judged only in the immediate payout equity context.
This makes ICM excellent for tactical advice – should you shove, fold, or call in this moment? But it misses the larger dynamics of the campaign.
The Strategic Lens: FGS
Future Game Simulation (FGS) is a war room simulator:
- It projects how the war unfolds across future battles (hands).
- It rotates armies (stacks) through positions (terrain), recalculates resources (equity), and simulates how each decision today shapes tomorrow’s battlefields.
- The model accounts for attrition (blinds eating your stack), momentum (accumulating chips now gives more leverage later), and positional rotation (being in the blinds soon makes folding less attractive now).
Where ICM is about the snapshot, FGS is about the movie reel of the campaign.
Why FGS is the Future of Poker
Realistic Decision-Making – Tournaments don’t end after one hand. FGS reflects this truth, making its advice more aligned with reality.
Strategic Depth – It teaches players to think like generals: sometimes sacrifice now (losing a few chips) to secure future positional advantage.
Edge Over the Field – Many players still rely on ICM. Using FGS uncovers spots where ICM makes opponents fold too tightly or shove too loosely.
Solver Integration – Modern tools (ICMIZER 3, HRC, GTO Wizard) are already embedding FGS. As computing power grows, with ever-growing presence and capabilities of AI, we may see tournament solvers simulating not just 1–6 hands ahead, but hundreds – creating near-perfect campaign maps.
Shaping the Meta – Just as generals refine their doctrines after each war, poker’s meta evolves. FGS is pushing the game toward a deeper, more strategic future where survival, timing, and foresight matter as much as technical hand ranges.
Poker is not just a game of cards; in tournaments, it is a war of attrition, manoeuvre, and timing.
- ICM is the field manual for a single battle.
- FGS is the campaign strategy – a simulation of the war to come.
As players and tools embrace FGS, the gap between tactical poker and strategic poker widens. Those who continue to see the game as hand-by-hand fights will inevitably fall behind. Those who adopt the war general’s perspective will lead the campaigns of tomorrow.
In the future of poker, victory will belong to the players who can think not only about the hand in front of them but the war unfolding beyond it.
