Tourney to Ring game transition

No particular hand histories to analyse here, just a general question.

What makes a semi-decent MTT player utterly suck in ring games? Everytime I sit down I'm losing (playing the smallest NL games available on the site) yet I can regularly finish ITM in MTTs and my SNG record is also pretty good.

Is there some fundamental switch in strategy I am missing?

Help!

In ring games, the emphasis tends to be more about postflop skills than preflop skills since the stacks are way deeper: you see more flops before the money is in the middle and you can get outplayed. The transition is hard one too because of other skills that aren't present in MTT's and SNG's are crucial to ring games (table and seat selection namely).

I'd suggest reading some books on cash games (TOP is crucial, SSH if you're a limit player) and posting hands to be analyzed. You'd be surprised at how much mistakes a tournament player makes at cash games early on (I am a perfect example of this).

Also, take up limit HE. Way easier on the bankroll and the fish are as, if not more, plentiful than at 5 and 10$ NLHE tables.

Strangely enough I have the reverse problem. I make good money at ring games but can't win hardly at all in a SnG. :banghead:

Hi all, 1st time poster here, thought I'd share my thoughts on this topic as I am currently making the same transition fro SnG's to cash. I was a relatively successful SnG player with an roi of 10%. SnG's for me is all about, playing tight in early rounds then later on it's very much a push/fold type of game (very simplistic I know but you get my point). Also your pushing TPTK on most flops.

Cash is a very differant ball game altogether, in my limited experience up to now (25,000 hands). TPTK just doesn't cut the mustard in cash and if you find yourself going to showdown with TPTK you can find yourself reloading a lot with this type of mentality. Cash games is a lot about post flop play, and your ability of reads and putting your opponents on hand ranges (something I struggle with at the moment).
You really need to become a student of the game and read up a lot on the nuances and intricacies of cash game play. It really is worth it because its so much more interesting and technical than SnG's, IMHO. GL

I totally agree with the posts above. Tourneys are a lot about knowing when to take coinflips and getting lucky, whereas (so long as you can avoid those pesky shortstackers), cash games take a lot more skill and manoeuvring post-flop. People also tend to play tighter in cash games since there's no rush to beat the escalating blinds.

Playing cash games will definitely help your all-round poker skills and your tournament play. Losing hard cash on a hand brings home the mistakes you made and shows you the price of chasing. The best advice I could give would be to play a lot of hands, get hold of Poker Tracker if you don't have it already so you can analyse all the big hands from each session and identify mistakes you made, then post hands you're having problems with in this forum.

The more you fold in ring games the more you'll win. Wait for beast hands and push them hard.