The Difference Between Cash Games and Tournaments

ok I see WAY too many posts about how tournaments and cash differ, and about 99% of them are dead wrong. First off let me start off by saying that I am by no means a tournament expert but I have read the work of many who are and I'm going to try to stay within what I'm absolutely sure is right:

Misconceptions:

1. tourneys are different than cash games because you cannot rebuy (in non-rebuys obviously)

Now if this doesn't just seem extremely silly to you that means you really haven't thought it through. Especially online, there are tourneys all the time that you can jump into instantly. But beyond that even the entire goal of poker is about the long run. The reason we can take 55-45 flips in a cash game have nothing to do with the ability to rebuy. If we played in a cash game and had a chance to get your money all-in with a 55-45 advantage where if you lost you had to leave you'd likely still take it. Now one exception would be if you have a huge skill edge over the opposition. Now unless any of you are full-time MTT pros I doubt you have that kind of edge. In fact I wonder if real pros have that kind of edge. Edges in mtts are pretty small and a lot of times there won't even come a time where the skill difference will play a huge part. There are of course times where you would pass up flips like this and other times where you'd actively seek out a flip or even a 55-45 underdog spot, but I'll cover that in a later topic. But basically the statement that you should be more conservative in tourneys because you cannot rebuy is a myth and although the first part of the statement may indeed be correct (this is an area I do not have enough knowledge to comment on), it definitely is NOT because of the latter part.

2. You shouldn't steal in the early stages of a tourney because the blinds are small in relationship to the stack sizes

I hear this time and time again in cash and it translates perfectly into deep mtt settings. Now note that it is perfectly possible that the smaller stacks cause other players to play looser, call a lot more from the blinds, and give up less than with shorter stacks, but then the opponents are the reason to not steal as much, not the blind structure. Most good mtt players that I have watched steal a good amount in the early stages from the button, just as any good cash player steals a good deal from the button. Why is that? It's quite simply going to yield an expected positive gain in chips, whether they are real money or tourney chips. You also set yourself up to allow people to defend too wide and play a big pot with position if you do have a hand.

3. In a tournament, you want to play to survive and not take too many risks

ok I just opened up last Sunday's Sunday Million. 1st place was just over 196k. 1170th place, the first that is paid, is just over $320. Note that 1st place pays 612.5 times that of someone who scrapes in after the bubble.

Now let's take it a step further. There are 1170 people left so the average player has a 1 in 1170 chance of winning the tourney. This means that even if the tourney only paid 1st place the 196k and 1170th place the $320, if you could get into a flip situation, with 50% of the time you win nothing and half the time you have twice as big a shot of winning 1st (which is how it works out when you have 2x chips with only that one paying spot), it would be almost worth it. That flip would give you $655 when you win and $0 as opposed to the 320+167 when you just sit back. But the difference is in an mtt if you double your stack you also greatly improve your chances of taking 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. all of which in this particular tourney pay over 70k. So basically we put you in a bubble spot and found out flipping may be correct, so you can imagine how correct it is to take marginal edges to greatly increase your chip stack when you are not 100% at getting a free $320 if you fold. If say you're halfway to the bubble and in good shape it is often a good spot to take small edges or even pure flips.

4. Knocking out a player helps everyone in the tournament

This is usually mostly applicable to sngs where someone complains that someone bet when there was an all-in and it caused the guy who would have bubbled to still be alive and win the hand. I'm not saying that they're not usually right, but I'm saying the thought process is incorrect. The goal in any tournament is to maximize your $ expectency. For some people, notably the big stack, having a shortstack with scared medium stacks is much more beneficial than simply knocking the shortstack out. Say there are 4 left one being short. The immediate knock out will do almost no good to him anyway because he's so likely to be top 3 anyway while the knock out will hinder him from basically stealing the mid stacks at will.


Which brings me to the biggest difference, not really a misconception, but something people don't really understand too well, and that is payout structure. This is where the biggest difference in chipEV and $ev are. For example in this situation if you are a few from the bubble with a short chip stack, you are usually correct to just fold to the money. The logic behind it is that if you double up you can not expect to average twice the free money you'd get from folding. There are certain spots where it can even be correct to fold KK or AA. How about a few examples from the same tourney I've been using from before, last week's million:

1170th is $320.04. It's not until 450th that you get $640.08. Many structures are not as flat but for this one it definitely encourages playing very tight on the edge of the first bubble, especially if you are short on chips. Say there are 1200 people left and you are like 1100th and sitting with a short stack. If you just keep folding you can virtually guarantee the free $320 but if you get into a coin flip situation and win you are still going to need some help to get past 450th.

Now let's look at the opposite spot, and ironically it comes probably within 10 minutes of our last situation. Now there are 1150 people left and you are still in 1100th. You have the $320 in the bank and if you want to get up to $480 you'll have to be in the top 567. You need some help to get up there and if you can double up it more than doubles your chances of getting there and higher. So obviously it's great to shove and pick up the blinds, but if you have a spot where someone else shoves and you are likely flipping against their range (say they shove and you pick up 44. You're rarely ahead but against most hands you're a coin flip). This should be a pretty easy call in this spot, because a coin flip helps us a lot while folding brings us one step closer to a spot where we need to shove in desperation and likely will be worse than a coin flip.

There are a ton more complex situations and to be honest I haven't studied mtts all that hard, but these are some of the common situations I've found myself in when playing mtts, and some of the comments I hear about them that just show a lack of thinking and an approach not based on maximizing your expectancy but maximizing the chances of winning just something. Every tourney player should be doing their best to maximize roi, not itm% (possible exception of large live tourney but basically that's an example of bad brm if you want to be a winning tourney player in the long run). All the good tourney players wouldn't be very good if you took the big scores out but the several huge mtt scores are what provide the money for the big mtt players. They give themselves the best shot they can to go deep and when they win the flips and spots where they put themselves in marginal edges they end up going deep.

Any comments welcome especially from people who actually play mtts on a consistent basis. Definitely open to discussion if you disagree with this as well. Like I said I'm pretty sure this is all correct, but I'm not perfect.

Brilliant

Particularly like your expression of number 3 which is what lies at the heart of successful MTT play.

Regarding benefitting people by knocking players out, I think this only has relevance either in SnGs or the final 20 of MTTs. My view is that SnGs and MTTs are completly different beasts and most MTT play isn't in the last 20. As a result I don't think "knocking someone out" should normally factor into thinking at all when compared to chip and $EV considerations.

I think what you are addressing here is the strategic differences between MTTs and Ring (and I agree entirely). These in turn affect the value of hands and the tactics that should be applied in specific situations. I've been working on something which examines these "tactical"? differences for months and haven't nailed it yet. When I do post I'll definitely be looking for your views Zach from the other side of the MTT/Ring fence.

Nice post, Zach.

Concerning #1, does the tournament situation and the value of your time have a bearing on this ?

Let me try to explain what I mean. In the early levels of a tournament, I agree that I can "rebuy" by simply entering the next similar tournament, and this is, in effect, no different from my thought process in a ring game.

However, if I have played for many hours to get deep in a major tourney, I might think twice about (for example) taking a thin draw for my stack even though I have the correct pot odds to do so. It would be mathemetically correct to take that draw and should pay off for me over the long run, but the long run in this instance may be so long that the prospect is very unattractive to me (may even be longer than my poker career).

I concur

As an example if I get a marginal situation in the $22 rebuy I play most nights I have no trouble shoving/calling at any stage right up to the FT. I play it five or six times a week and the long run isn't that long (at least I figure).

In the warm-up however I'm possibly inclined to decline some situations as the long-run is a lot longer for me with $215 buy-in tournaments. I play only 1 a week and maybe 45-50 a year (on average). Perhaps I am reducing my $EV slightly in order to reduce variance (postive and negative?). I'm less concerned about the time spent on the particular tournament (which Egon mentioned) than the relative infrequency of situations deep in tournaments which I play infrequently.

I would note that this isn't a bankroll issue rather a product of the few $215 tournies available to play* for either mine or the sites scheduling reasons.

I really need to stress that this doesn't imply a weaktight approach to play, rather an assessment of certain (usually deepstack) situations that involve stacks to include the likely frequency of the same situation occurring again in order for it to be an EV based decision rather than a gamble.

To contrast with Ring games, where the same situations normally occur with a far greater frequency.

Rambling there, but I think I made the point..



*admittedly I'm not in a position to play many more $215 tournies with sixfigure prize pools than I do, but as they aren't available every day anyway it's not a factor in my decision making

I definitely agree with Rex. This is one of the reasons I like cash much better than mtts (but on the other hand if you run good you like mtts a lot more ). Basically the principle behind brm is that you play for an amount where you won't really worry a ton if you lose. But in a tourney you are often put in situations where the difference between winning and losing can be like 20+ times the buy-in. As an extreme example let's use the warmup. Rex can easily afford paying the $215 entry fee (or fpps, or however the hell he decides to do it) and is not worried in the slightest at losing that. However say he gets HU. Even the best pros don't make it HU in a Sunday major often, most actually are lucky to do it once. So here he is sitting HU, and going by last week's warmup 1st pays 111k and 2nd pays 77k. Yep, if he and the opponent are equal skill he is essentially flipping for 34k. I don't know about him but for me that's a ton of money and I'd be extremely nervous about it. That's why chops are so common at the end of these big tourneys, just because the variance is so huge for what the players are used to.

Just as an aside sort of in response to Egon in my personal philosophy, is that especially early in a tournament if there is a spot where I think it's about even money or even slightly unprofitable, I may just take the higher-variance play, because then if I bust I do have the rest of the time to be playing for example cash where my expectation in that time is more than the slight amount of ev my incorrect decision costs.

I concur.

If one is comfortably rolled for the buyin being played, the time taken to play a tournament has as much (more ?) value than the buyin. Therefore, there is no great disincentive for high variance plays early in the game, but they are less attractive later.

It occurs to me that we have perhaps identified a key difference between MTTs and cash games: If I play in a cash game, I risk my buyin and a modest amount of time in hopes of a modest profit. If I play in a tournament, I risk my buyin and a larger investment of time in hopes of a large profit.

Very solid post, Zach.

About the time issue. You can also make the opposite argument for the casual player who considers poker an enjoyable entertainement but has a somewhat -EV overall. Then it's correct to pass on slightly +cEV opportunities to maximise the time he spends enjoying poker per $ invested.

Zach vary good post. I am sure you will become a sucessful pro. But as Belgo said there are many of us who consider poker an enjoyable entertainment. So we may play a little less agressive.
DuaneK

1. If you jump into another tournament, it will be with different players , so it is a completely different game unlike if you just rebuy at the same cash table with same players.
2. This is a situational thing here, but if you steal too often early, you can reduce or eliminate your ability/option to bluff and steal later when blinds represent a larger portion of everyone's stack, exactly for the reason you stated, people will call you with a greater range of hands. So If you can't bluff later in a tournament and go card dead for awhile you are completely screwed.
3. With each coinflip you risk your stack with, the less and less your chances of winning EVERY one of them will be.
4. You are correct here, but most of the time eliminating players is beneficial to everyone.

Can you please elaborate how this changes our ev in each situation? Obviously if we have very good reads and think we have a very big edge (whereas they don't have a read on us at all) this may help our ev at the same table, but I just personally do not believe whether it's the same or different players is relevant. What happens if you move tables in a tourney?

If you are playing good opponents however they're not going to be idiots and think all of a sudden that since you were a nit early on you never steal when you start shoving late. If they are bad players they will just call anyway because they are bad players. I actually prefer the opposite, to get loose when the chips aren't a huge deal, and tighten up late. Obviously I'm far from perfect and I'm actually slightly below break-even for mtts, but I like to think I have a decent grasp of the strategy involved and that I'll eventually hit a big score in one. The point though is that you are only addressing one possible situation, where you are card dead. What happens if you get a rush of hands and everyone thinks you're a nit so they don't pay you off?
But every time you pass up a 60/40 in your favor, it's more likely your next time will be a coin flip or a 40-60 not in your favor. My point is that you should take every small edge you can, and that "wait for a better spot" is not usually a good thing because likely the better spots is when you get your money in good. How could you possibly wait for a better spot? If you spend too much time waiting to get your money in with 100% equity you'll end up getting your money in with 20% equity.
I actually disagree here. And even if it is we need to look at the mentality involved. It may be true in certain spots but certainly not for the reason people think. People like 100% chance of making money. If you gave someone the chance to have $50 or flip a coin and win $110 if they win and nothing if they lose, most would take the free $50. Personally I'd take the flip, and as a poker player you should as well. The difference in poker and the coin flip is that if you pass up an edge and an opponent does not, this actually hurts you in the long run. Poker is about taking advantage of every edge you have. When you pass up an edge and an opponent takes an edge, you lose long-term. This is true in tourneys as well as cash games, and I think a lot of people here just don't understand that. The edges in tourneys are different from the edges in cash games, and that's one thing I really do need to understand better, especially for mid-late game play. But even if I'm not 100% sure on how to take advantage of these edges, I do know that they do exist and that to pass up on them in the name of survival is just plain wrong in most cases. For the same reason sometimes we will have a higher ev with another opponent in, and THAT's what we should be thinking about.

1. Early in a game whether cash or tournament you are not going to have a read on your opponents unless you have played with them before. So you take what you believe is a coinflip early in a game, but you are wrong because your opponent will only risk his/her stack that early with aa or kk. Now if this situation was in a tournament, you would be either crippled or out. If it is a cash game you can then use that information to your advantage against that player later on.
2. Fine my opponents might believe I'm stealing later in a tourney, but I'm making the same size bets with 85 suited as I am with aa, so it puts a big decision on my opponents whenever I'm in a pot. I dont bluff the calling stations, I value bet the hell out of them. I am a winning mtt player and have hit multiple final tables, top 5s and a couple wins in the last month alone. If I get a rush of hands and don't get paid off, fine I have gotten numerous small pot wins without much risk. I can adjust the way I play in the middle of my rush, based on my image, to pull some more chips from my opponents when I have good cards. And if my image is that of a tag/rock player, I will be stealing a lot of pots later in a tournament.
3. I know the trouble hands, and will not play them as a general rule, unless I'm the captain, so no I won't be on the 40% short end unless I am really short stacked and have to gamble.
4. Your analogy is flawed here, because tournament chips have absolutely no value until the itm bubble breaks. If they are coinflipping right before the bubble for their tourney life, there is no guarantee that they will make any more money than if they just fold into the money.
5. "Tournaments are vastly different from cash games," Doyle Brunson from Super System 2.

And in a cash game he can also take advantage that now you think he's only doing it with AA/KK and do it wider and/or not jam AA/KK in that spot. In fact in this spot in a cash game the AA/KK has an advantage. They get the advantage of knowing how light you will push but you don't know anything about them. Everyone stacks KK+, would they have played the same with JJ? Do they 3-bet light? How light do they stack? The opponent gets more information like that on you (depending on what you shoved with) while you get none. So this example is actually the opposite because in a cash game the opponent gains more information while in a tourney you immediately leave and play with other people. On the other hand if your range estimates are right there is also a chance they do it with hands like 56s and you are much better than a coin flip.
You're just not looking at this from an overall long-term perspective though. I also still stand by the fact that if your opponents are good they won't be fooled by the whole rock early so you can steal late ploy and will notice you stealing more later and adjust, while if your opponents are unobservant they won't care what your image is. And obviously if you get moved that all goes down the drain. I do agree with you however on what adjustments we should make. If we have a rock image we should steal more while if our opponents perceive us as loose we need to tighten up and just let them pay off our good hands.

I flat out do not believe this. Sorry but if you really have the track record you mention you're going to get your money in bad sometimes. It happens to everyone. If you have AJ on the button with 10 BBs are you folding if folded to you? What happens when a blind wakes up with AK/JJ+? I'm just saying that the more opportunities you pass up early the more likely it is that you get to a later spot where you have less chips and are closer to "having to gamble", although I disagree that it's "gambling". You simply are getting better odds to steal and are in a spot where taking a coinflip will increase your ev.

Sorry but this is just downright false. Talk to anyone who seriously plays tourneys or has an understanding of tournament theory. Against a field of equal skill in a $10 tourney, before the tourney begins your chips have $10 in value. If you have a skill edge they are more, and as the tournament progresses you make decisions and each decision impacts the value of the chips in front of you. So like in your example, say you are shortstacked right at the bubble but with enough to fold into the money. Say your chips were worth about $10, while if you doubled up they would only be worth $12. Even though they're worth more if you win, that's certainly not worth coinflipping for because you lose $10 when you lose and only win $2 when you win. I'm just making up numbers but hopefully that illustrates what I'm talking about.

I never denied that they were, in fact I spent an entire OP discussing the differences. The biggest difference is that the value of each chip in the tournament is not equal in value. It's a structure where 2 people flipping a coin against each other could both be +ev in some scenarios (obviously part of field loses that because it's still a 0-sum game) and different scenarios where both could be -ev in terms of money. There are a bunch of tournament scenarios that seem extremely counter-intuitive from a cash background. But the fact that "tourneys are about survival, while cash is about making money" is just downright false.

Excellent post and discussion here zach

thanks!

1. I was not advocating shoving early on what you think is a coinflip in a cash game either. What I was trying to say was that if you did take what you think/thought was a coinflip in a cash game, and combine that with your observations of that same player once you rebuy and continue to play, you can draw conclusions as to what types of hands he/she is willing to play in a given situations then adjust. Please read my signature.
2. If I have a tight image, those good players I'm playing against will give me credit for having a hand until I raise multiple hands in a short span. In their minds it is possible I'm stealing, or it is possible I'm just on a rush of cards. I put a big decision on my opponent on how loose of a call he/she wants to make against a player he/she deems to be tight. I pay attention to how much respect my bets are given, so I can adjust to how my opponents are playing me. I don't have to win every pot to maintain a playable stack late in a tournament. I only have to win the blinds and antes 1.2x per round once the blinds begin to approach the level where they are threatening to me maintaining a playable stack.
3. If I have 10 bb with aj on the button, folded to me, that's an instant push. By my push, I am the captain in the hand, I am driving the action. But by this being later in a tourney, I have put an even bigger decision on my opponent, because of the added pressure of it being late in a tournament. Sometimes I am going to run into the jj or ak. Sometimes kk runs into aa. Sometimes you have to lose now matter how well you play.
4. Double your stack in a tournament early, then go try to cash out for double the buy-in and see what they say.
5. The beginning stages of a tournament are about survival, not the entire tournament. It is better,imo, to gain information on your opponents before risking a large portion of your stack on situations where you do not know you have a clear advantage.

agreed, but I'm saying that I believe there is a lot more of that (your signature) in cash games than tourneys. Especially in late game situations there is often one correct play in a tourney given icm. It doesn't matter if you're sitting with Phil Ivey or random freeroll donks. AJ on the button with 10 BBs is a push no matter what. Obviously earlier on when there's more room and especially in the mid stages where you want to determine 3-bet shoving ranges it's very useful, but how often do you get this information by folding to their shove? Also in a cash game against a good player they are adjusting too, and like I said if you run a marginal hand into AA/KK AIPF they gain a ton more information about you than you do about them.
This is no doubt true, but a good player realizes that just because you are tight 50+ BBs deep doesn't mean you'll be tight when you're 25 BBs deep, or 10 BBs deep. Personally in my observations I take note of how people play in those 3 different scenarios as I consider them very different. To get good reads on people the things I'm looking for is shoving range (~10 deep), re-steal range (~25 deep), and raising range preflop when deep. If I do this I know many other players probably do it as well. But they're just 3 completely different spots and obviously given no information about the latter ranges I'll compare the former (ie you're a rock with 50+, rock with 25, I assume you have a fairly tight shoving range and at least on the button have something like Ax/PPs/broadways whereas if you resteal very wide I'm going to be putting you on something like ATC in that spot and especially with a stack be looking you up with hands like A7/55/K9/etc.

But for example if you shove your 2nd opportunity in a row while short, I'm going to assume you have a wide range. Maybe I'm wrong, but there are enough people who shove wider deep to mean on average I'm right. And I can't be the only one who does this.

Agreed. The big thing though is also even if you have a bad image, a lot of people will be scared to call a shove from you especially if they also have a small-medium stack. If you shove from the button with 10 BBs and the BB has 15 BBs, how many of them call with a hand like K8? If you're loose it's probably ahead of your range and a good call, but I doubt many people are good enough to make it even if they have in their notes "super loose, steals every hand", just because they'll tell themselves "ok I'll wait for a better hand to bust them".

ok yeah I guess I misunderstood the word captain. I thought you meant by captain that you had a good chip lead. I just meant the more you avoid pushing early on, the more risk you have of having spots like this, or a spot with like 8 BBs where you have to shove your 78s and if called are almost always an underdog, whereas if you'd pushed the QT from the SB with 12 BBs (pretty sure that's correct with antes at least) you wouldn't have been in that spot.

Thought I was pretty clear that we were talking long-run and not individual tourneys. That's like saying "oh yeah try getting those 160 BBs when you have AA vs. KK for stacks in a cash game". Your ev means that in the long run you will win that, which is what we as poker players should be looking at.
ok I still think the survival thing is a cliche, but I can agree with this statement a bit more. If there's a spot where you're not sure whether it's a good or bad decision to stack, sometimes it may be better to just fold. But I mean if there's a spot where you know you have an edge. Maybe you've played a lot with them, maybe you have KK (as above, where someone was saying folding it would be good early on), whatever the situation may be if you are reasonably sure you are beating their range, you should be getting chips in early on in the tournament imo.

I am also paying attention when I am out of a hand and two or more opponents are going at each other. I gain that valuable information with no risk to my stack. If one of my opponents shoves and another calls, that is huge information there. IMO, it is easier to spot a lag player switching to tag than a tag player switching to lag.
Then of course my strategy changes according to blind structure and prize payout. The faster the blinds and the fewer the places paid, the more I am willing to race for my stack early, compared with slower blinds and more places paid.