Devoting Time - Cash games and/or Tournaments

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Madsaac

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I would love to hear from people's experiences on how they decided on what form of the game to focus on. I hope its not to self indulgent and I'm hoping other people have already been through this conundrum.

This is not a 'Whats better' thread but the type of criteria that should be considered when choosing where to devot the limited time that we have towards poker. Study and playing.

I work like many on here and I also have a family but I love playing poker.

I would play two to three live tourny games a week and my other opportunities are spent playing cash games 5/10.

This year I have made $2700 on the live games and enjoy them. I have been playing these games for two years

I also enjoy playing the cash games on-line and I feel they really can improve your game like the number of hands and hand reading especially. I have been playing for about six months.

The problem is the amount of time that needs to be spent analysing your game. The study and analysis that HEM brings to the cash game could be endless and I think requires some real dedication to improve, more than I thought.

This is also the case for improving tournemnt play.

Which one....I'm scared that if I stop playing cash games, my overall game would be worse off.

Should you dedicate all of your time - study and playing to the one game?

Can this decision be made later down the track?
 
Arjonius

Arjonius

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I play mainly MTTs for one simple reason that outweighs all the other considerations combined. I enjoy them more. Since I'm a recreational player, that's more important to me than trying to optimize how much I win by playing games I enjoy less.
 
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Big_Rudy

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^^ This is pretty-much my situation , too. I'm actually a better cash game player, but somewhere along the way cash became somewhat boring to me so I switched to MTTs first. Now I have time issues that make playing many MTTs difficult, so I've moved to STTs since they are over much faster.

Standard line of thought is to specialize in just one format and devote the vast majority of your time studying/improving that format, but for recreational players I think that's pretty misleading. There is nothing wrong with with playing anything/everything you like if your main reason for playing is enjoyment.

If you decide to get more serious about the game and really want to put in huge chunks of time to improve, then yeah, you should probably pick one form to work on the most. But, as you mentioned, this can definitely be done later-on down the line.
 
Beanfacekilla

Beanfacekilla

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This is my opinion, from my experience.

You will not cash in tournies very often. There is tons of luck involved. That is why I believe the final table at the wsop is always new faces. Exclusive tournament play is a GRIND.

With cash games, you can leave any time. Hit n run.

I would devote my time to cash, and play n occasional cheap tourney.
 
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