Strategy analysis by Dara O’Kearney.
The day before I was due to fly home from this year’s Irish Open — still without a cash, but stubbornly determined not to leave empty-handed — I fired a bullet into the Mini Main.
Calling it a ‘Mini’ doesn’t do it justice. It has a €1 million guaranteed prizepool and an enticing structure: Day 1 would see the top 15% make the money and then play down to the top 5%, who would advance to Day 2. A day which, technically, I already knew I couldn’t play. Or wouldn’t. Well, that was the plan.
And, of course, I started cruising. Chips turned into towers. And suddenly I was staring down a real question: at what point is my stack worth changing my plans and staying for Day 2?
Fortunately, I wasn’t alone in trying to weigh the options.
Monster stack
Midway through play, I got a text from my friend, Irish pro Dara O’Kearney. He’d just busted the JP Masters and wanted to know what I was up to. I told him, straight up, “It’s been 12 mins. Come on over. Play!”
To his credit, he did. (For anyone who doesn’t already know Dara needs a 12 minute cooling-off period after busting a tournament before he will mentally, physically and emotionally engage with any living being.)
As we kept grinding into the night, navigating the Mini, we checked in on each other regularly. At one point, close to the 15% bubble bursting, it was clear that my cash was pretty much guaranteed: I had nearly 10x the starting stack.
Dara (the satellite mastermind, best-selling poker author, math guru, crazy-patterned silk shirt aficionado, and brand-new granddad) and I had already swapped a few quick calculations during the breaks, but the more we talked, the more we realized this scenario deserved a proper breakdown.
And that’s because it’s a spot many players, especially recreational ones, find themselves in: you’ve made the money, are close to making it, or you’re short-stacked, and you're asking yourself, ‘Is it even worth turning up for Day 2?’
In my particular scenario, my decision-making was not helped by an ever-growing stack that had catapulted me into a spot as one of the chip leaders. This was not part of the plan! I checked in on Dara, who was three tables across from me.
Me: Update?
Dara: 125K, you?
Me: 567K. Bloody Sod’s Law. Can you bloody believe it? I am going to go all-in blind. Unless I triple up I don’t want to move my flight.
How much is my stack worth?
We’d made the money, as planned, but now we were edging closer to bagging for Day 2, and with each orbit, my stack kept growing.
The question of whether it was worth coming back for Day 2 evolved into a far more specific one: How many chips would it take for me to change my flight?
To truly understand the added emotional weight behind my decision, it's worth sharing the near-scientific precision it took just to get there — even for only three days.
The Irish Open is one of my favorite stops on the poker calendar; to me, it’s the next best thing to summer camp in Vegas (WSOP), which is why, as long as I’m able, I’ll always try to make it.
This year, yet again, it clashed perfectly with Easter half-term, a long-planned Disney trip, and a stack of looming writing deadlines.
After flying back from New Jersey (post-grandparent visit), I met my husband at Heathrow Terminal 5 for a military-grade handover — child and transatlantic suitcase to him, empty carry-on to me. I stuffed it with hoodies and leggings while sitting on the floor outside Costa Coffee at the Arrivals terminal, then sprinted back through security and caught my flight to Dublin.
I landed just in time to late-reg the Ladies event — outrageously jet-lagged, embarrassingly disheveled, but genuinely thrilled to be there.
For a player who only gets to dabble in live tournaments a few times a year, every bullet hits differently. Each event carries weight — emotionally, strategically, and logistically. Fully aware of tournament ROI, this self-inflicted pressure comes from a deeply competitive place to prove that I am a player to be taken seriously.
My Irish Open dilemma
Now here I was with a huge stack of chips and a flight the next morning. Setting aside the work commitments, I hadn’t budgeted the time for another full day at the poker table, let alone the potential headache of extending my hotel stay and changing flights.
But was I really going to punt off a healthy stack just to avoid the logistics of coming back?
This is where the opportunity cost of live poker gets very real. For many recreational players, especially those who travel for events, the idea of making Day 2 with a short stack doesn’t feel ‘worth it.’ Some even punt deliberately. But is that the smart move?
In the end, I made it to the stone end-of-day bubble: 41 players advanced to Day 2, and with 42 left, the following situation came up: I had pocket tens in the small blind with around 630K, the cutoff shoved for 260K, the button (Soraya Estrada) raised enough to put me all-in, and I called.
I was either going to bag a huge chip lead for Day 2 (and rearrange my flight, plus pay for another night in the hotel) or bust out there and then.
As I explain in the video below, courtesy of David Lappin, The cutoff had pocket sevens, the button had ace-king, and an ace came on the flop to send me out at the very end of Day 1.
Was it the right move? That depends on how you value your time, your stack, and your chances. Something like that couldn’t possibly be expressed in black and white mathematical terms, could it?
Maybe you’re forgetting who I was with! I roped in Dara again, who ran some numbers on what a bagged Day 2 stack might be worth in real terms.
Dara O’Kearney says…
At the end of the final Day 1 of the Mini, when I bagged (and Alex bust), the total prize pool collected stood at €1,343,874. Of this, roughly €1 million remained (the rest having already been paid out to players like Alex who had cashed but not advanced to Day 2). Exactly 315 players advanced to Day 2. I know this off the top of my head because, despite bagging an average stack, I was actually the very first player to bust on Day 2!
Okay, so let’s start with the bad news: it’s impossible to do an exact ICM calculation for how much an average Day 2 stack (or any other stack size) is worth. To see why, let’s go back to basics on how we calculate ICM.
With three players left, we have to consider six possible finishing orders (any of the three remaining players could win, and then any of the other two could be second). With four players left, we have to consider 4 x 3 x 2 outcomes. Those of you who were paying attention in school during mathematics class will recognize we are talking factorials here: the number of computations required to solve the ICM for a tournament is 'n!', where n is the number of players left.
The problem, as you might guess, is that things escalate quickly with factorials: '4!' is only 24 possible outcomes, but '20!' is 2,432,902,008,176,640,000.
Calculating '315!' is beyond not just my capabilities, but beyond those of the world’s most powerful computers. At the time of writing, '170!' is the upper limit for computers.
So how can we best estimate the value of an average Day 2 stack? Well, we could be really lazy and just say, ‘well, there’s a million left, and 315 players, so the average stack must be in or around 1,000,000/315 (which is €3,175).’
The problem with this method is it produces nonsensical results for really short stacks and really big ones. It potentially produces results that are less than the amount everyone is already guaranteed for short stacks (in this case, everyone who bagged was guaranteed at least €970), and results greater than first prize for very big stacks.
A friend of mine bagged up less than a tenth of the average for Day 2, and this method would say his stack was only worth an extra €300 (when it was worth more than €970).
The best quick estimate we can do is a formula I came up with when I was coaching streamer Kevin Martin, and he asked me for a simple approximate method he could use in-game to calculate ICM. It works like this:
- Since everyone is guaranteed (at least) €970, we give that to everyone
- We therefore take 315 times €970 out of the remaining prize pool (which works out as €305,550) leaving €694,450
- We divide that €694,450 in proportion to the chips in each stack, so an average stack such as mine gets 694,450/315 or just under €2,205, someone with double average gets €4,410 extra, and my friend with one tenth average only €220.50)
- Therefore an average Day 2 stack is worth €970 plus €2,205 or €3,175, minus the €570 Alex got for busting late Day 1, for a final total of €2,605
Earlier, Alex quantified what she regarded as the total ‘cost’ of having to show up for Day 2 as around €700, which includes both actual costs and emotional costs (the value she placed on giving up her time). If this was zero, we could just run a sim on the spot, which I did anyway because that’s how I roll.
With tens, Alex’s play is profitable even in a vacuum (to the tune of roughly €17) but let’s say she had 7-2 offsuit and decided to call. In EV terms, that would cost her roughly €309, and if this is less than €700, she has a ‘profitable’ call once we adjust for the actual and emotional cost of having to cancel her flights and play the next day.
The math
If you want to know how Dara worked this all out, here’s the math.
- T = Total prizepool left for Day 2 players = €1,000,000 (rounded for simplicity)
- P = Number of Day 2 players = 315
- G = Minimum guaranteed payout = €970
- R = Remaining prizepool to be distributed based on chips = T−(G×P)
Follow Alex O'Brien and Dara O'Kearney on X.
Images courtesy of Danny Maxwell/Rational Intellectual Holdings Ltd.
