Can a weak tournament player make a good cash game player?

This is probably a stupid question, but I'm not only going to ask it anyway, I'm also going to try to explain why I am asking it. It's not a rhetorical question, and I really am interested to know what you guys (and gals!) think, even though you might think that the answer is obvious.

This is a bit embarrassing, but I have to admit that BelgoSuisse is a bit of a hero of mine. I rarely have men as heroes, it just feels a little too gay for my liking. However, first of all he actually achieved something that a lot of people try to do, and most fail:

$0 - $10 000

Secondly I was expecting him to be a really smug smart-alec when I met him, but despite living in France he still somehow manages to be a really nice guy, and you shouldn't under-estimate how much of an achievement that is for somebody that is surrounded by French people all day!

Now in another thread Stu Ungar made a comment that surprised me somewhat, when he suggested that tournaments are not more complicated than cash games, in post 35 of this thread:

Poker Bots

So far all I've ever really done is play tournaments, I enjoy playing tournaments although I'm not particularly good at them, and most of the time I play freerolls anyway so the standards are pretty appalling anyway.

Now I've found out that I'm not tied to an affiliate and RBP have opened a FT account for me, and I'm looking at the options (if any) that are open to me.

Various threads here have said that tournament play and cash games are very different, and do what you enjoy or are good at. I might be mistaken, but the impression I have received here over the last couple of years is that the cash game regs love tournament players coming over to the cash tables, usually to clear a sign-up bonus, because they tend to be easy money.

So these are some options open to me:

1) Carry on playing freerolls and ignore the fact that I have a RBP account until my game is much better and I am winning regularly.

2) Shell out for HEM or PT and try to multitable on a break-even basis, then theoretically take the RB as profit assuming that I am actually capable of playing break-even poker.

Presumably RB accumulates much more quickly on multi-tabled cash games rather than multi-tabled SNGs, for example, but I also assume that it requires more skill?

I'm also assuming that it would not work to have a mixture of cash tables and SNG tables, especially for somebody new to multi-tabling?

I did do some multi-tabling of DoN tournaments when I was clearing my PS deposit bonus, but obviously DoNs have a much more simplistic structure so that didn't require too much skill or strategy.

Sorry for the wall of text, but there's just such a mish-mash of different thoughts in my head at the moment. Also I'm not sure whether this is the best place to post this, so please feel free to move it elsewhere.

Please discuss!

I'm pretty good at lower buy in tourneys and SnGs, I suck at cash games, I'm sure you can be good at cash and suck at tourneys... I'm good at tourneys and suck at cash ^_^ lol.

Tourneys are definitely easier than cash in my opinion, but you can make more money in cash definitely... and on a more frequent basis.

I up too now have played sngs almost all of them at pokerstars and right now I am pretty much sick of playing them so find myself in the same place that you are in. Getting rb from FT made me withdraw most my pokerstars money and move to full tilt where I now have a 100$ bonus to unlock and thanks to 1st deposit fr cash have 190$ for the the purpose of learning cash games.

Today was my first session and I really enjoyed it, your not locked into the same table, if you want to move then you can. There is no ICM consderations or reason to not play a hand if you think its good enough. I also have to say I am playing 2/5c and not at the 1/2c just because my roll allows it and I have no software for two reasons, my roll is all I have right now and I would like to understand how to play without one, but if I do well enough I would buy software.

The question is what do want to do? I have been a freeroll player when I first started and the novelty wore off fast but if your just wanting fun and you enjoy them then thats great. Playing cash is good because you can choose when to stop and you are not playing for hours to try earn a small cash, I think its well worth it to try and learn cash poker then you will know how you feel about it either way.

First of all, about HEM/PT3 - you can get these for free for a year if you sign up to full tilt with using the codes on their websites I think, check it out.

Secondly, anyone with half a brain can make a decent cash game OR tournament player I think. All you gotta do is put the work in to learning and practising and actually doing it. The resources are all here. Bear in mind tournaments come with +variance, so you might not actually be that bad at tournaments, you might just have been unlucky. By the same token if you get a win or two you might not be that great either. Regarding this, I think it's easier to actually assess your capabilities at poker in cash games, since if you play a few tens of thousands of hands and you're doing alright, then you can pretty much say you've got it half cracked. Dunno if the same applies to tournaments.

I would strongly recommend Dusty Schmidt's book (Treat Your Poker Like a Business, or somethin') to OP. It explains these topics perfectly.

They supposed to be total different games. Cash games ,tourneys and one table SnG. Strategy is a lot different. Basics are the same. At least That is what books said .
One thing that i read in Little green book by Gordon is that good cash players are a lot mor carrefull with their chips than tournament players. And the reason is simple. At cash games u loose a lot of chips u loose a lot of money, in a tournament u loose your chips u only loose your buy-in. In cash games u are not pressured by the blinds. In tournaments strategy is begin with tight agressive and loosen up in time, playing big stack, medium stack and short stack as the game dictates. At cash tables u addapt your strategy to the table and mix it up without being pressured by the BB.


But the pros are good at both cose the mathematics are the same.

Wouldnt the opposite be true? Some people here have said that cash is about exploiting any small edge you can find where as if you want to run deep in tourneys you have to be more carefull with your chips and find situations where your not risking it all just to go out with a min cash.

With all due respect to Stu in the other thread and to Salim (above), I disagree strongly. Tournaments are very much more subtle and complex than ring games. During the course of a tournament, one must constantly adjust one`s game to allow for changes in blinds and in effective stack sizes. The field of play is moving and shifting all the time. Ring games are very static and (dare I say) dull by comparison.

In fairness, I am thinking here of MTTs at mid-stakes. You won`t find subtlety in a freeroll.

personally i am pretty good at cash games and i suck badly at MTTs and SNGs.

Although I did deliberately make it quite discreet, I guess that bit went over your head I was surprised when Stu said it but his comments often surprise me, in all fairness. I thought he had invented a new position called "the hijack" the other day, but I have subsequently found reputable people that use the term too, so I grudgingly had to let him off

You gotta go with what's right for you. For me I get depressed real easily when I lose a tourney. I mean, you can't money in all of em, but if I don't money in every 2nd or 3rd one, I am beside myself. To deal with the frustration I play cash games. I make enough to enter any $3 tourney I feel like playing. I could probably play $5 or $10 tourneys, but I have plenty of time to play higher stakes as time goes by.

The time issue is also a huge factor. Most of the time, to money in a tourney you have to play for 3 hours. Many people have time commitments, so that is where cash games can make up for the lack of 3 hours of uninterrupted time.

Rakeback is huge. I have been playing three years, I have been fortunately able to push the bankroll slowly to $1200 not counting the $600 in withdrawals I made. I do not get rakeback on most of my play. That is a leak that one should cover if they can. It can be a swing of $300 to $600 in a year easily.

The fluidity of a cash game usually does not swing around as wildly as a tourney can. At a tourney you can be at 25 to 30 tables in the course of 1 game which takes a lot more adapting than a ring game. But the adapting does not frighten me in the least, as it gives my opponent less knowledge of what to expect from me.

I think a person not good at tourneys might find cash games a joy to play.

Cash games are typically regarded as requiring more skill because they are played deeper stacked, which means there can be more decisions in the hand. Not saying cash game decisions are harder, but at least there's more of them.

Typically, its easier to transition from cash to tournaments, because you play with a short stack playing cash (grrr hate short stackers), but its really rare for a tournament player to experience playing 200bb's deep.

Can a bad tourney player be a good cash player? It depends what your leaks are that are causing you to lose as a tourney player. But if you're thinking of making the transition, you should brush up on your deep stacked game & implied odds preflop strategy.

This argument holds if we are discussing standard freezeout MTTs only. However, yesterday (for example), I played three tourneys of which one was a standard freezeout, one was a rebuy, and one was a deepstack. In the latter two, there were phases where we were playing 200bb`s deep.

I suggest that a well-rounded tournament player must be capable of playing proficiently at 200bbs and at 20bbs and everywhere in between. Cash specialists, on the other hand, tend to be less comfortable with that kind of changing situation and (as you suggest) are displeased by the presence of short stacks at the table.

this is actually A good question..but I think if you are A good mtt player going to sngs ought to be A little easier..but I think if you are primarily A sng player going to mtt playing would be A bit more challenging..I am bad at both so lol..

I hate tournaments. Too much variance and my style doesn't seem to work for it. Cash games are where the money is at as long as you have the time to grind. Of course if you are a lucky SOB, like some people I know, tournaments can work for you

I have a hard time trying to play cash games right after a tourney, I tend to do a lot better if I am just playing cash games from the start. To me there is a difference in the way one should play them. There is some good advice here and maybe I can take some and be able to do both at the same time.

IMO this quote is dead on. In tourneys an opponent may call you down or shove on you just based on their stack size and where the blinds are at. This is especially true in freerolls and micro buy-ins where they have little or nothing to lose. There are a lot of Donkeys in these games that will play any 2 suited cards in the early stages and when they turn or river their flush your T2pair that you've been betting for value is bust.

In cash games you can really punish these types of players, especially if you multi-table. For every 1 that sucks out on you 3 or more will pay you off with a weaker hand or fold to your river bet. In the lower stakes you'll see a lot of people that can't fold top pair or even 2nd pair. But you have to be able to do this. It's not always about winning the pot, sometimes it's about protecting your stack.

Best of luck!

Actually, that style of play is a little out of date. Current thinking is that loose-passive is appropriate in the early blind levels.


Quite correct, but this is not necessarily poor or foolish play. It depends on the context. Judiciously using the leverage of stack size and positional advantage is part of the repertoire of a good MTT player.

Thanks for the advice so far, very useful.

I'll probably be finding out the answer quite soon anyway, because part of the Full Tilt Poker Academy "Chris Ferguson Pre-Flop Play" challenge involves stealing the blinds five times from middle or late position in no-limit Hold'em cash games.

Yeah, cash is easier.

Play extremely tight and make minor adjustments to your game as needed. Start out value betting relentlessly (assuming you start in the micros).
Then start abusing position more than you think you can and learn to be intimidated by weak players who've got position on you.
As you move up, make it your goal to table select better and more frequently than anyone else.

If you play extremely tight, you will not need to adjust a whole lot. Even against good players, who really are the vast minority, the adjustments you'll have to make will be far smaller and more obvious to you than they would be if you were playing looser.

If you were playing tournaments you have to learn to play a dozen different ways just to play one tournament.

That it says "middle or late position" is disgraceful and should be a big hint towards the credibility of the advice coming from there.

Put your money where you profit, but keep up your weaker games at lower stakes so you keep in practice. I'm better at tourneys online but better at cash in person. Also have fun - I still play fake money sometimes, especially games I like but don't know if I want to risk my bankroll on like Omaha hi/lo.

I think you've misinterpretted... it's not necessarily 'more' skills.... it's different skills (btw.. most cash game players who take a shot at MTTs... REALLY SUCK BADLY at them). playing deepstacked cash tables will help out a tourney players game though.

I'd suggest... if you're thinking of playing cash tables... do some research & learn the game prior to making a switch (esp. if it's from freerolls... because personally it's hard to classify those as tournaments imo)

Only just read this. Thanks, I guess.

Concerning cash vs. donkaments, obviously I think cash is much nicer. Also it's much more convenient to adjust to the part of your life where you don't play poker as cash can be played at very flexible hours while tournaments can't, and that's enough of an argument for me never to look back.

But basically what it comes down to in terms of skills is two factors: the depth at which you play (stack size in big blinds) and whether ICM comes into play. To be good at online MTTs, you need to play really good from 5bb to 30bb and not suck too much with deeper stacks, but most structures won't have much play while deep. And good at ICM if your reach final tables. To be good at cash games you need to be really good from 35bb (min buy-in at FTP) up to 200bb or more. To be good at STTs (especially DoNs) you mostly need to master ICM.

These are all very different skill sets. I think you can make a decent argument that the deeper you play the harder things get, so cash is harder as it plays deeper. But the lowest stakes cash is nonetheless really easy to learn how to beat.

shortstack = higher variance = less skill

Tournaments are pure lottery and even solid MTT players expect to be busted out of the tourneys early in more than half of the tourneys which they enter.

I understand the thought, and it is true that tournament players experience high variance. It is an exaggeration, however, to say that "tournaments are pure lottery". In a lottery, no player has a better chance to win than any other, whereas in poker tournaments (as in any form of poker) skilful players have a marked edge and will win consistently over the long term.

For example, 90% of my poker is played in tournaments. It is not unusual for me to have a week in which I lose money. However, I rarely have a losing month and never a losing year. Volume beats variance, whatever form of the game one chooses.

Actually FT have just confirmed that you can't complete any of this CF challenge with tournaments, it has to all be done using cash games, and I'm not prepared to move to cash games yet.

So I've changed to the Jon Turner M Zones challenge for the time being.

Tournaments and cash games are quite different, true. But I don't think anybody discussed something I think is important -

I'll do so with an example hand, and we'll use variables for BBs.

Let's say we're in the BB, and it's checked around to us, in a four-way pot. We have suited connectors, but not big enough for us to raise out of position, we'll go with 8s7s. We decide to check. Remaining players are SB, Hero (BB), MP, and BTN.

The flop hits us big, with 5s6dKs. We've flopped an open ended combo draw. Here are some of the differences in how we might play it.

We flopped a hand with a lot of equity, assuming nobody shares our hole cards, our straight outs, or is on a better flush draw, we have a whopping 15 outs to beat even a flopped monster, which gives us something like a 63% chance to improve to a straight or a flush, and a very small (almost negligible) percentage to improve to two pair or a flush to beat the likes of AK.

In a cash game, we have a few options how to play this, in a limped pot too much aggression isn't going to get paid off, unless somebody played Kx and hit two pair, slowplayed a monster (KK, AA), flopped two pair w/ 65, or a lesser draw, like 34 for instance. We can choose to play the pot slowly and hope to improve and get paid, or play it aggressive and hope somebody gives you some action and you improve, or play it aggressive and hope everybody folds around. From short-stack, you might check w/ the intent to check/raise jam, while you're still looking to your chips in there with a lot of outs. From a middle stack your play might be trickier, you will have a couple actions, and from deep stack you'll have all the options listed and a few more.

I recently had a flop like this in a cash game sitting around 400 BBs effective stacks in a 3-way pot. With a pot of around 20 BBs, I bet out about 15 BBs, villain A raised to 30 BBs, Villain B reraised to 60 BBs, I called, Villain A reraised to 120 BBs, Villain B called, and I jammed for the remainder of my 400 BB stack. Villain A folded, and villain B, after much contemplation, folded. They ran the cards to the turn and river and I was unimproved, but I took down 240 BBs on the flop with a monster combo draw. Also - both of my villains were terrible.

That's just one example of cash game play.

Now, assuming same pot-size, 20 BBs, and I'm at 50 BBs left, there is a lot more reason for me to open-jam that pot, then check/raise, because when my open-jam induces a fold from weak Ks, 2nd Pr, and gutshot draws w/ high card, and less than premium flush draws, I've increased my stack from 50 BBs to 70 BBs, a 40% increase. In the event that I get called, villain is getting bad odds, 50 BBs to win a pot of 70 BBs, and probably won't call me with less than a premium hand, a strong king, two pair, a set, or a bigger flush draw. Were I to open-check here, and there is a bet and a reraise, I have lost all fold equity, and if I decide to jam I can count on going to a showdown, as I can't give people bad enough pot odds to fold. Even if there's no raise, and it's just a 15 BB bet, when villain is getting 85:35, or about 2.45:1, he's much more likely to look me up, and people being calling after his action just sweeten the pot for him, and others in it.

Of course, in the event that you improve and end up having the strongest hand and taking down the pot at showdown, you'll be happy you got some action, putting your stack at 120 BBs instead of the 70 BBs before. However, provided you are short stack in the hand, your tournament life is at risk. If you are better than your opponents, there is a better time to make a move. If the bubble approaches, you can expect folds from less than big hands. And I don't know enough about ICM to make a strong point here other than, but a 70 BB stack isn't as likely to do as well as a 120 BB stack.

Another option when you get the 15 BB bet is to call. But if you don't improve on the turn, not only do you lose half your equity, but you lose a large amount of your fold equity as well (barring a scare card comes out for villain that fits into the story you've told through your actions, assuming your villain operates on that level of thinking and sees more than just his two hole cards and the board, but that's assuming a lot...)

So if I go busto in a cash game in a hand such as the above at a weak table, I've got more cash in my BR so I'm happy to buy back in, and continue forcing the villains to make bad decisions, and reaping the rewards of my efforts. In a tournament, I only get to go busto once, so I can either take a shot early, or wait until my chances are more solidified and get in with a better edge, because once you account for the 16-20 cards dealt as hole cards, provided a FR table (up to 10), you're looking at 3-6 spades, and maybe a couple of your straight outs, if not more, eaten up. I'd probably be looking for better places to make a play, especially if my table was full of weak (but lucky) players. In a cash game, I'd be stacking off against anybody I felt was made without a better flush draw, and being happy about it. (With the occaisonal passive play while I try to connect cheaply, depending on stack size and villain's tendancies.)

Of course, all these are for playing a pot out of position, and I already feel like I've wrote an essay, and the only tournament stack size I've looked at is 50 BBs. And only one type of hand, being an open ended combo draw...

But these are just some examples. As always, there are tons of factors. Villains, your cards, their cards, the gap in skill, the gap in luck, how you do in certain, what leaks you have, what leaks your opponents are able to exploit, etc.

To answer OP's original question, tournaments and cash games are two different beasts. Depending on whether you play live or on-line will make a difference (my live game is much better than my online game, in one I'm a consistant winner and the other a consistant loser), but that's not for me to discuss at the moment.

I've taken enough time writing this overly long and very specific answer to a general question.

Weregoat

Yes, I think it's fair to say that it definitely would be classed as a "quality post"

Thanks!

Your game is probably just as good live or online. It's just that online games are so much tougher that the same game makes you a shark live and a fish online. That's super usual.

Yes, that's part of the reason that the "online poker is rigged" conspiracy theory is so popular. People that can regularly crush live poker games come and play online and lose, and need to find an excuse - sorry, reason - for why they lose online when they do so well at live games.

^^this is a key difference between the two forms, and well explained. In essence, a cash player will consider solely the pot odds when arriving at his decision, whereas the strategic situation in the tournament must also be factored in by the MTT player.

I Love This Thread.

Pity you didn't rate it as five pokerstars then

5 Stars Added

TBH a lot of tournament players over estimate the strategic play required to win.

At the start (for the 20 or so hands you are deep-stacked) you have zero % equity in the tournament. At the start you know exactly how many chips you need to win (its all of them) so you know you need to double up many times.

it's unusual to get the money in an be much more than a 70% favourite.

What happens when you multiply 0.7 by 0.7 a few times? you end up with a very small number. Thats the odds of you winning all of these doubleups!

Now the mid stages where you are close to the bubble or ITM, the ICM starts factoring in and you get these lovely debates about the merits of folding AA preflop.. which of course noone really does.

Then the end stages are where the blinds are so high that play is governed by M and things like the sage system.

It certainly requires skill but most of the tournament you are so far form the end that there is no strategy, you are just playing poker with mid sized stacks which isnt all that skillfull.. you are playing a game where you are pot committed by the turn.. there just aren't the implied odds or remaining stacks to get all that creative.

And by the end its a lottery you are forced to shove things like K7s (I get K7s.. I shove... oohh the skill!)

But yes the mid portion of the tournament dose indeed have quite a bit of strategy in it, but to get there you have to multiply 0.7 by 0.7 by 0.7 a few times