Alex Theologis has released Practical ICM Mastery on Run It Once, and the course is notable less for its size — 41 lessons across more than 30 hours — than for where it points. More than 10 hours of the curriculum covers postflop ICM: how risk premiums change c-betting, check-raising, bluffing and bluff-catching decisions at different stages of a tournament.
That emphasis addresses the largest blind spot in how most tournament players study. ICM is not an unknown concept. Almost every serious player has run a bubble spot through a calculator. Almost none of them have systematically worked through what ICM does to a turn check-raise.
Who Theologis Is
The credentials are relevant here, because tournament training content is a crowded field.
Theologis has more than $30 million in tournament earnings, a WSOP bracelet and an EPT title. He built the Knockout Tournament Mastery course, also on Run It Once, which has been one of the platform's better-regarded releases. His career has been spent in exactly the situations the course covers — major final tables, enormous payout jumps, and decisions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That last point matters. There is a meaningful difference between a coach who has modelled ICM and one who has repeatedly had to apply it with a seven-figure pay jump on the line. The psychological texture of those spots is not fully captured by a solver output.
Why Postflop ICM Is Underserved
Here is the structural reason most players' ICM knowledge stops at preflop.
Preflop ICM problems are computationally tractable. A push-fold chart for a given stack distribution and payout structure can be solved, memorised and applied. Tools like ICMIZER have made this accessible for over a decade, and the outputs are simple enough to internalise: with 12 big blinds on the bubble in this position against these stacks, shove this range.
Postflop ICM is a different order of problem. Every street multiplies the decision tree. Risk premium — the amount by which ICM makes chips risked more costly than chips won — varies not just by stack and payout but by how the hand has developed, who else is in the pot, and what ranges each player is representing.
Solving that properly requires enormous computation, and interpreting the output requires translating solver behaviour into heuristics a human can use at the table. The gap between "the solver check-raises 8% here" and "I know when to check-raise on a bubble" is precisely where a good course earns its price.
What Risk Premium Actually Does
For readers unfamiliar with the concept, the core mechanic is worth stating plainly.
In a cash game, a chip is worth a chip. In a tournament, chips have diminishing marginal value — doubling your stack does not double your equity in the prize pool, because the payout ladder is not linear. This is what ICM measures.
The consequence is that a coinflip which is exactly break-even in chip terms is a losing proposition in prize-pool terms. The amount by which you need to be favoured to make a call correct — above and beyond the pot odds — is the risk premium.
Preflop, this shows up as tighter calling ranges against shoves. Postflop, it shows up in ways that are far less intuitive:
C-betting frequencies change. With significant ICM pressure, the player with the shorter stack cannot profitably continue against aggression, which makes small c-bets more effective and large ones less necessary.
Bluffing becomes more profitable against covered stacks. A player who risks elimination by calling needs a stronger hand than pot odds suggest. That fold equity is worth exploiting — carefully.
Bluff-catching becomes much worse. The hand that is a marginal call in a cash game is often a clear fold under ICM pressure, because the downside is elimination and the upside is chips of reduced marginal value.
Position gains value. Acting last is worth more when the cost of a mistake is elimination rather than a lost pot.
None of these adjustments is captured by a push-fold chart, and all of them apply on every hand played at a final table.
The Cost of Getting It Wrong
The financial case for studying this is unusually easy to make.
Consider a nine-handed final table with a payout structure where first place pays $1 million and ninth pays $80,000. The equity swing between finishing ninth and finishing first is $920,000. Every decision from the moment the final table forms is being made in an environment where a single postflop mistake can cost more than most players' annual income.
Now consider that the average player at that final table has studied preflop bubble ranges thoroughly and postflop ICM barely at all. Final tables are where the largest sums are won and where the least study has been directed.
That asymmetry is the entire commercial logic of a course like this one, and it is a sound one.
What the Course Includes
Through September 8, Run It Once is running a launch discount alongside access to live ICM seminars, a private Discord community with Theologis, and an interactive ICM quiz for members.
The Discord element is arguably the more valuable long-term feature. Recorded content ages; direct access to a coach with $30 million in earnings for hand-history review does not. Interactive quizzing also addresses the recurring failure mode of video-based poker training — passive consumption that produces the feeling of learning without the retention.
What This Means for Players
The honest framing is that this course is not for everyone, and the poker training industry's marketing rarely says so.
Skip it if your tournament volume is low-buy-in and high-variance, or if your preflop game still has clear leaks. ICM refinements are worth very little to a player whose ranges are wrong before the flop. Money spent on fundamentals will return more.
Consider it if you regularly reach final tables in events where the pay jumps are material to your bankroll. That threshold is lower than people assume — a $200 tournament with a $15,000 top prize generates real ICM pressure for a player with a $5,000 bankroll.
Prioritise it if you play tournaments as your primary format and have never systematically studied postflop ICM. This is almost certainly your largest remaining leak, and you probably do not know it, because ICM mistakes do not feel like mistakes. Folding a hand you should have called does not produce a memorable bad beat; it produces nothing at all.
The broader lesson holds regardless of whether you buy anything. The gap between preflop and postflop ICM knowledge is the most exploitable structural weakness in modern tournament fields. Players who close it gain an edge in exactly the spots where the money is.
Free Groundwork First
For players not ready to commit to a paid course, the conceptual foundations are worth building first. Our explainers on ICM, equity and pot odds cover the arithmetic these adjustments are built on, and understanding why a break-even chip-EV call can be a losing prize-pool decision is the prerequisite for everything Theologis teaches.
It is also worth understanding where ICM does not apply. Winner-takes-all formats — including Spin & Gos at most operators — have no payout ladder and therefore no risk premium. Applying ICM logic to a winner-takes-all game is a straightforward error, and a surprisingly common one. The cash games versus tournaments comparison covers where the two mindsets diverge.
The Training Market in 2026
Practical ICM Mastery arrives in a market that has changed considerably. Solver access is now cheap and widespread; GTO Wizard added multiway ICM solving earlier this year, putting computation that was research-grade a few years ago into the hands of anyone with a subscription.
That has shifted the value of training content away from raw solver output and toward interpretation. Anyone can generate a solution. Far fewer can explain which parts of it generalise, which are artefacts of the specific node, and how to compress 10,000 solver outputs into three rules you can actually execute at 2 a.m. on a final table.
That translation work is what a course like this is selling. Whether any given player needs it depends entirely on where they currently are — but the diagnosis behind it, that postflop ICM is where tournament players lose the most money and study the least, is difficult to argue with.