Now Live: Preflop ICM Solving

Busted a tournament and still thinking about that one hand?

Getting a real answer to that spot used to mean powerful hardware and a lot of patience. For most tournament players, the question simply went unanswered.

Now, with Preflop ICM Solving, you can recreate that spot and solve it in seconds. Even on your phone.

Customize the stacks, antes, payouts, and bounties. Rebuild a bubble, a final table, a satellite, or any tournament hand with either chip EV or ICM strategies. Solve preflop with 9 players up to 250bb deep, with fields as large as 4,096 runners. Nodelock the strategies, customize the raise sizes, and seamlessly transition from preflop to postflop.

We didn't stop there. We also added 3-way postflop ICM solving, hand history imports that set up the spot for you, and turbocharged GTO Wizard AI for faster, more accurate solutions.

A tool this powerful comes with responsibility, so the Fair Play Check now covers Preflop ICM Solving too.

Early Bird pricing on Ultra is available until October 15, 2026 at 1:00 PM CEST. Full pricing details below.

Preflop ICM Solving

ICM is where tournaments are won and lost, and it is the part of the game the field has studied least. Solving 1 preflop ICM spot used to mean painful data entry followed by a long wait. Change a stack or test another assumption, and the wait starts again. At 30 minutes a question, you stop asking questions. You review the hands that hurt and skip the exploration that actually makes you better.

Our state-of-the-art GTO Wizard AI solves these spots in seconds.

What happens if there's a micro stack at the table? What if the payouts are flatter? How does your strategy change on a satellite bubble? What if the chip leader is on your left? Change an assumption, solve again, and see what changes. Let your curiosity drive you, quickly work through different examples, and learn how to generate real edge in this game.

{{grid: 1fr 4fr}}

{{/grid}}

Study the Games You Actually Play

We cover every major tournament format. Standard MTTs, satellites, and the full bounty family: Knockout, Progressive Knockout, and Total Knockout. Even Mystery Bounties can be modelled. Payout structures are fully customizable.

We support solving up to 9 players and 250bb deep, with customized stacks and antes. Preflop ICM Solving is supported in fields as large as 4,096 runners. Run the same spot under ICM and chip EV to see exactly how payout pressure changes the best move.

Set the opening, 3-bet, 4-bet and jam sizes you actually faced instead of the ones a chart assumes. Most spots solve in 1 second.

Presets cover the majority of popular sites and tournament series, including GGPoker and CoinPoker's latest GOPC series. Load payouts, entrants and blinds in 1 click. Let us know which tournaments we should add to presets next.

Hand Upload Integration

Now you can import stacks, bounties, and antes from your hand history. This makes it easier than ever to solve spots you played online. Just upload the hand, import the details, set the payouts and field remaining slider, and solve in seconds.

{{grid: 130fr 30fr}}

{{/grid}}

Nodelocking & Exploits

A balanced solution answers 1 specific question: what is optimal against 8 opponents who all understand ICM perfectly?

You have never sat at that table.

Real tables have chip leaders who bully too much because they can or short stacks who fold too much because they cannot stand to bubble. Modeling table dynamics is where the biggest edge in tournament poker lives.

So don't stop at equilibrium. Nodelock any player's strategy or apply exploitable Player Profiles, then solve the counter-strategy. If you'd rather adjust the frequency directly and have the solver figure out the range for you, Frequency Locking lets you do that with a single slider.

How much wider can you open when the players behind you overfold? What does your reshove range look like against a chip leader who 3-bets too often? Lock it in and find out.

{{grid: 1fr 4fr}}

{{/grid}}

Roadmap & Current Limitations

Preflop trees currently allow up to 3 players to reach the flop, the same rule as Multiway Preflop Solving for cash. Spots where a 4th player over-calls or over-limps aren't supported yet. Supporting more over-callers and over-limpers is one of the next things we will ship.

{{grid: 1fr 4fr}}

{{/grid}}

Keeping the Game Fair

Building the most advanced poker AI in the world means we also carry the biggest responsibility for how it's used, and we take that seriously. Since 2023, the Fair Play Check has let anyone verify whether a postflop board was solved in GTO Wizard. Starting today, it covers Preflop ICM Solving as well. Enter a date and time, and you'll see every preflop ICM spot solved in GTO Wizard within 5 minutes either side: the spot ID, the exact time, every player's stack, and the full tournament setup including payouts.

That's the part you can see. Behind the scenes, we work directly with poker operators, including GGPoker, WPN and iPoker, and with many more who prefer not to disclose the cooperation publicly. We wrote about this work in Supporting Operators in Protecting Online Poker, and that cooperation has only deepened since, with more operators on board and better detection with every release of GTO Wizard AI. If you run a poker site and want to work with us, reach out at [email protected].

Why Late-Stage Decisions Matter

Most MTT regs study chip EV strategies which are designed to accumulate chips rather than maximize $EV. In a previous exploration, we showed that chip EV strategies lose a significant amount of money in late stages, especially near the bubble and final table.

But why does that matter if late-stage tournament spots are less common?

As Andrew Brokos explains in Tournament Poker's Hidden Stakes, your buy-in tells you what's at stake at the start, but that can grow enormously as you progress. By the final table, a single decision can involve tournament equity worth many times your original investment. That's why late-stage skill can have such an outsized impact on your results. You reach those spots less often, but once you do, o decision can be worth more than a month of regular grinding.

{{grid: 1fr 4fr}}

{{/grid}}

2026 Main Event Example

Picture this. You're a midstack on the biggest final table of your life. The short-stacked HJ opens 2bb, the BTN raises almost all of their chips, effectively all-in. You look down at pocket Jacks in the BB.

What's your play?

That was Greg Mueller's decision at the 2026 WSOP Main Event, with $2.25 million already locked and $10 million up top.

Han Feng, the shortest stack, min-opens HJ with A♦A♣. In chip EV that's just an open-jam at 8bb. Under ICM, aces prefer the small raise, splitting off from the rest of the range.

Saaskilahti 3-bets 9♠9♥, leaving about 3bb behind. That "almost all in" sizing is a real ICM tactic: it keeps a fold available if a covering stack jams behind him. The problem is his hand. Feng's min-open has already polarized his range, so in theory 99 is too thin to 3-bet.

Then it's on Mueller in BB with Jacks. He's got 22bb and $2.25 million already in his pocket. Tough spot.

He tank-folds. PokerNews called it a brilliant fold. Let's check.

According to GTO, folding is the correct play, although it’s right on the cusp. Pocket jacks sit at the very edge of a narrow optimal shoving range, so both shoving and folding are viable options.

Here's the part worth thinking about. How much tighter should you play in this spot with ICM pressure?

How much does the payout pressure affect this decision? In chip EV, jacks facing a min-open and a short 3-bet are a snap jam, the kind of decision that's so easy you have to remind yourself to fake hesitation. ICM took a rather easy spot and made it hard. Mueller was right to recognize that it was a close decision.

And then, in a twist of fate, Feng called all in for his 25M, and the nines made a straight on the river to crack the aces.

Ultra Early Bird Available Until October 15

When we introduced Ultra, we announced that Early Bird pricing would end with the release of Preflop ICM Solving. That milestone is here. Early Bird pricing ends October 15, 2026 at 1:00 PM CEST.

There is no price change today. Standard Ultra rates apply to new subscriptions and renewals after the cutoff.

Locking an annual plan now saves at least $720 over the year. If you're on monthly and switch to annual before the cutoff, you save $1,560 over the next 12 months compared with staying monthly at the standard rate.

If you already subscribe, your Early Bird rate continues until your first monthly or annual renewal after the cutoff, and your current paid billing period is unchanged. Annual subscribers can lock in even more: until October 15 at 1:00 PM CEST you can prepay 1 more year at your Early Bird rate of $229/mo directly in the app. The extra 12 months are added on top of your current subscription.

Lock in your Early Bird rate now: an annual Ultra plan locked before October 15 is the cheapest Ultra will ever be.

Preflop ICM Solving requires Ultra on the Tournament plan. Anyone can try preflop solving (including ICM & Rake) for free up to 10bb effective.

3-Way Postflop ICM Solving

Once your preflop spot is solved, GTO Wizard AI carries the ranges, stacks, and payouts straight into postflop, so the flop strategy you study is built on the exact preflop ranges you just solved.

A chip leader, a middle stack, and a short stack see a flop. The same bet puts each player under a different kind of pressure. Now you can solve the whole interaction with ICM and bounties built in.

A middle stack can face a difficult decision when losing the pot means busting before a shorter stack. A valuable bounty can make fighting for that same pot more attractive. And the player behind you can change which bets, calls, and raises are profitable before they've even acted. Understanding those competing incentives is a huge opportunity to separate yourself from players relying on chip EV intuition.

Now you can test the details that decide these pots. Compare the same flop under ICM and chip EV. Change who covers whom. Increase a bounty. Nodelock an opponent who calls too loosely and see how both remaining players should adjust. Each comparison helps you understand which part of the tournament setup is driving the strategy.

• Ultra builds fully custom 3-way ICM solutions: your own bet sizes, ranges, stacks, payouts, bounties, nodelocks, and Player Profiles.
• Elite browses ready-made 3-way ICM Single Size solutions in Study and Practice. This is the same split that already applies to our chip EV 3-way solutions.

Why Fold EV Isn't Always Zero

In a simple chip EV spot, if you fold, you win no chips, so we measure the value of other decisions relative to that option. But tournament utility is measured in tournament equity (ICM value), not chips. Survival is what matters.

When you fold in a multiway spot, it can change the strategies of the players behind you, which in turn affects your tournament equity. Those players can clash, knock each other out, or make mistakes that leak tournament equity to you. You can ladder without winning another chip. For example, say you are 1 of 3 players remaining, but the last 2 are maniacs in the blinds. You might be more willing to fold on the BTN to let them clash. Setting fold EV to 0 would hide that information.

On a more cerebral point, folding generates a card removal effect that can theoretically alter optimal strategy among the remaining active players, which in turn affects your tournament equity. This means that some hands actually generate more EV than others when folding, and again, setting that to some flat number like 0 is misleading.

After speaking to several pros, we settled on a fixed reference payoff: the tournament equity you'd have if you lost the pot and the remaining players split it. Every action gets measured against that same number, including folding.

Insider Program

Want to get your hands on what's coming next? Join the Insider Program for early access to upcoming features and a direct say in how they develop. Test features are enabled automatically, and you can turn individual features off in (Settings → Individual Features) without leaving the program. Anyone can join the Insider Program for free! Each feature's subscription requirements still apply.

GTO Wizard AI Upgrades

We've advanced GTO Wizard AI on both speed and accuracy, with improvements that benefit everyone from cash-game grinders to tournament pros to PLO specialists.

A technological breakthrough has allowed us to solve much more efficiently. Many larger solves now finish 3–6x faster. The boost is most strongly felt in spots when the tree is large. For example, a standard heads-up 100bb single-raised pot with automatic sizing dropped from 4.2 to 1.2 seconds. A 3-way 100bb single-raised pot with 3 bet sizes and 2 raise sizes dropped from 21 to 5 seconds. These improvements also speed up Single Size Solutions and practice mode, especially when training with custom solutions.

Our latest flop model delivers an average Nash distance of 0.108% of the pot, down from 0.121% in April 2025: a further 10% reduction in exploitability across 900 heads-up chip EV flop tests. Lower is better.

For a closer look at how we measure exploitability, read our full GTO Wizard AI Benchmarks.

{{grid: 100fr 10fr}}

{{/grid}}

Thank You

We're proud of what this release makes possible for tournament players. Thank you to our community, our Insiders, and everyone who joined Ultra early. Your support and feedback made this release possible.

Tell us what you solve first on our Discord in the #ultra-only channel.

Here's to deeper runs and making them count 👊

FAQ

{{toggle:Which subscription do I need?}}

Ultra on the Tournament plan. Custom ICM solving, preflop and multiway postflop, is a Tournament Ultra feature.{{/toggle}}

{{toggle:Can I try it before I subscribe?}}

Yes. You can solve custom preflop ICM spots up to 10bb effective without a subscription, so you can get a feel for the interface before committing.{{/toggle}}

{{toggle:Does it cost Power Credits?}}

No. Power Credits are only consumed by Custom Aggregated Reports.{{/toggle}}

{{toggle:I'm on Elite. Do I lose anything?}}

Nothing. Elite keeps custom heads-up solving, as it always has, and Elite subscribers will continue to get nearly every new capability we add. Ultra is the home for custom multiway solving, and this release completes that offering with ICM.{{/toggle}}

{{toggle:Which formats are supported?}}

Standard MTTs, satellites, and the full bounty family: Knockout, Progressive Knockout and Total Knockout. Even Mystery Bounties can be modelled. Payout structures are fully customizable, so you can build a structure we don't ship as a preset.{{/toggle}}

{{toggle:When exactly does Early Bird end?}}

October 15, 2026 at 1:00 PM CEST.{{/toggle}}

{{toggle:I'm on Ultra monthly. What happens to me?}}

Your price holds until the cutoff, and the standard rate applies from your next billing cycle after it. To keep a lower rate for a full year, switch to annual before October 15.{{/toggle}}

{{toggle:I'm on Ultra annual. Can I extend at the Early Bird price?}}

Yes. You can prepay 1 more year at $229/mo directly in the app until the cutoff, and the extra 12 months are added on top of your current subscription.{{/toggle}}

{{toggle:Can I still buy Ultra after Early Bird ends?}}

Yes. Only the price changes.{{/toggle}}

{{toggle:What's the refund and cancellation policy?}}

The 7-day cancellation window is unchanged.{{/toggle}}

{{toggle:Where do I ask something else?}}

Wherever is easiest for you. Join our Discord and ask the community and the team, mail us at [email protected], or use the in-app chat. We're happy to help.{{/toggle}}