Do you play tighter, bluff less at MTT or Cash?

I always find myself tightening up and more reluctant to bluff at cash games while at MTT I'm pretty loose. Do most of you change your game style between these formats or tightening up?

I think you need to play looser in MTT's because of the rising blinds..

In cashgames your aim should be to make a decent winning rate, so get paid pretty good for your good hands etc.. bluffing and playing to loose is just not needed when you always have same blinds and can wait for your opportunities to get the money in as favourite.

In MTT's (especially when antes come into play, in later stages) you need to play more hands, steal blinds, and so on.. You wont win one, ever, without that!

Well I usually play tighter in cash games.
In tourneys I tend to tighten up when the blinds increase.
If I am playing in a limit game I play really tight.

I guess I tend to play tighter in a cash game. When I play MTT I don't play tight unless I am short on chips, on the bubble or the blinds are large.

i catch myself doing the same... loose in MTTs and tighter at ring games... ive also noticed that i am much tighter when playing in real life rather than online, and notice that i also read players at the tables, and feel much better about throwing a big bluff out... i seem to play better in real life than on the net... anyone else feel this way??...

People seem to have a misconception of cash games.

Think of it this way, if there were no blinds at all, would there be any reason to play any hand other than AA? The goal of the blinds is to create action, the primary reason we raise preflop is to steal the blinds. Obviously some people adjust to that by defending too lightly and we can counter-adjust by not stealing as much, but the primary purpose of the blinds is to give something to steal. Just because you can win big pots is irrelevant to the stealing of blinds. If you are playing good opponents they will not pay you off a ton when you hit huge hands, because all your raises are with good hands. Stealing more not only makes you more likely to steal blinds but also makes it more likely that players will pay you off more. Obviously if you're playing against players who never fold it's fine to just not steal a ton, but against decent players you should make a lot of your money in cash games from stealing.

I'm not qualified to comment on tourneys.

i like to only play good hands in cash game, so im tight unless im on fire.
an in tourneys or mtts i play more loose.

in cash games you can sit and be patient and wait for good hands, in mtt's with blinds going up every 10 to 15 minutes you cant just sit back and wait for AA or KK, you have to make youself bet involved at some point or you will blind yourself out. its hard to play LAG when you first start doing it but when you start doing so you actually gain in the long run by being able to chip up early and not put so much pressure on yourself later in the tourney when the blinds and antes get larger.

I play tight in both forms of the game i think ,but as everyone else said in MTT's you have to play alittle more loose because of the blinds going up every 10minutes.

this is a very explanatoin of the diffence between the 2 nice reply couldn't have said it better

I play tighter in cash games and looser in mtts. Cash games I like to see more flops and with mtts I like to bluff a bit more in certain spots.

I change gears alot in MTTs but cash games its just Simple TAG poker.

But small ball and long ball are both important in MTTs

DonkeySmash

I actually play looser in cash games, since blinds don't hurt my stack and i can just rebuy if im short. I tend to get involved in many pots and i attempt to steal allot, so I get this kinda maniac image and i usually get paid off when i really have something.
In MTT's I tend to play tighter, unless i get some good run of cards and I have a big stack, then i bully the other players around.

i dont play cash games.
i only play mtt.i think the key to tightnese or bluff is you ought to know when to use under various condition.so i use them both.

Sorry o great one, but I dont agree. Another primary reason is to isolate and take a big pot later on, IMHO. Another reason could be simple camouflage (always raise when entering a pot).

meh, it's the same. Limpers are just more dead money, imo. Same with blinds that defend by flatting too much. All dead money asking to come into my pockets...

Besides, zach is always right when he talks about cash games.

I'm sorry, but what do you call a bluff? Unless you have the absolute nuts, the absolute worst hand or you've seen villain's cards, whenever you bet you are value betting part of villain's range and bluffing against the rest.

When I cbet a flop, i don't know if i'm bluffing or not. When I fire a second barrel, i don't know if i'm bluffing or not. I do know that i like the EV of betting given the combination of my estimates of fold equity and the equity of my hand versus villain's range of possible hands.

Pure bluffs where you know you're beat and fire hoping exclusively for fold equity are extremely rare in cash games where you play 100+ bb deep.

A bluff to me is when you pretend to have something you dont have. There's a possible flush on the board and I feel he has top pair but I get the next card cheap and the next card completes the flush. I'll start betting like a flush with nothing.

When, usually the situations are not as clear cut as that. you can't narrow down villain's range enough to know if you're beat or not, and you're rarely drawing dead when called.

Anyway, let's ignore these caveats and focus entirely on fold equity. If you compare cash to MTTs, in cash you have both less and more fold equity, which should entice you to bluff both less and more... In other words, it depends. Let me explain:

Less FE because you cannot threaten villain with elimination, which translates in the fact that the $EV of a big call in MTTs is often less than its cEV. (hope you're familiar with ICM?)

More FE because you typically play a lot deeper and that gives you leverage as a bet on flop threatens to be followed by exponentially bigger bets on turn and river.

It means you should be more willing to "bluff" (even if in most cases that term is not strictly correct) on early streets in cash games and less willing to bluff the last street.

in tourneys, esp. rebuy tourneys, I tend to be very loose at the start. The main objective is to build stack. After rebuy period is over, I would tighten up, but not by much - still some level of bluffing / pr raising is neccessary to stay in the game. Hence luck plays much bigger role here than in cash game, where lots of ppls just wait for their AK+ to come.

i HATE making huge bluffs in a MTT..
spending an hour or two moving up the blinds just to see a huge chunk of your stack thrown away on a stone cold bluff. Nothing worse.

I play a very tight MTT but a very bluffing Cash game, every hand matters in MTT, but to me in Cash you always have a second chance.

Now this is something I don't understand. I always hear people say you have to build a huge stack up front. But in all my experience (just a year hehehe) every time I see a huge stack, It's usually busted before the bubble. The huge stack usually comes from the fool that thinks you need a monster stack so they sit there and bluff left and right, take unnecessary risks going all in or huge on a draw or some crappy hand, against a good player who is not gonna take the risk, then end up getting trapped and then ...DONE. Yeah I'm sure not everyone loses their whole stack, but whenever I'm in a tourney online, I always look whose up front early, and they are usually not there in the end. Then look at the WSOP coverage, at all the guys who "had the tremendous chip lead" especially early...done. I have placed pretty deep in a few tourneys, and I have won some huge donkfest freerolls of 5000+ and only once...in a smaller tourney (150or less players) did I have a large chip lead. Yeah its great to have a chip lead, but when there are still 5000+ people in front of you, it just doesnt matter that much.

It doesnt matter THAT much, THAT early in a tournament. Thats true.

But if you look at the payouts of a normal online MTT. Where is the big money? At the Final Table/In top 3 spots!

So why playing for in the money, playing to survive etc..??

Because of such a structure, you have to play BIG, you have to go for TAKE IT DOWN! ANd that means, at some point in the tourney, you have to accumulkate a LOT of chips, so that your stack is "playable" at the final table.

So, the difference to cashgames is so obvious here, you just have to play looser/bluff more in MTT's.

And playing like that doesnt mean that you have to loose your stack that fast again. If you play it smart, its definately possible to take some risks (to knock shortstacks out) without risking your stack. If you are able to play "bully-style" with your stack, theres no reason to loose it that fast again, only if you "gamble it away"..

The rewards from loose play that you get in a tournament are not present in a ring game. I prefer ring games for making money as I can bide my time endlessly for a favourite hand, but the thrill in an MTT of stealing blinds with a pair of rags or bluffing a huge pot when the flush card comes and everyone checks to me makes tournaments more fun I think.

Chalk me up as one more loose MTT, tight cash game.