I'm giving up on ring games.

I've always considered myself a tournament specialist player but lately I've been trying out more ring games and I'm just awful at it. I'm losing my whole stack on one hand a lot more often than I'm stacking someone, I just can't seem to make big laydowns when I'm deepstacked like I probably should be doing. I think I'm too loose to be playing ring games, I'm too used to tournaments where the proper strategy is aggressive and loose in the middle to late stages. Is the correct ring game strategy to play super tight, only play the premium hands and rarely bluff?

cash games you can play just as loose and be succesful sometimes

why dont you post some HH's and see if we can help you with any spots that you feel you could improve in

sounds like you might want to try limit games. I can not play no limit for just the reasons you mention, so I play limit and at least hold my own, often make a little.

Bentheman87 said:

Is the correct ring game strategy to play super tight, only play the premium hands and rarely bluff?

Click to expand...

No, I don't think so . . . the biggest difference between cash games and tournaments is not how you play the game, but how the blinds influence the action at the table. In tournaments there are only so many chips to go around (even in a rebuy, the rebuys end at some point), and the ever-increasing blinds put constant pressure on everyone to get as many of those chips as possible before the blinds catch up. In a cash game, however, rebuys are unlimited and the blinds never go up, so the "blind pressure" component of tournament play is non-existent. So, while there are times when you HAVE to gamble in tournaments just to stay alive, you never have that same problem in a cash game -- you can always get up and leave and take whatever you have left, or you can always buy more chips. The way I see it, this eliminates many of the AIPF situations you might be happy to get into during a tournament, but should avoid in cash games; I see people get in trouble that way quite a bit, maybe that's where you're losing some of your money, too? Of course, in cash games a lot also depends on what limits you play, the depth of your stack (and everyone else's), and the overall feel of the table. Depending on those circumstances, a tight style or a loose style or something in-between might all work; also, the longer you play with the same players at the same table, the more you'll need to vary your style to keep from getting predictable.

As jewboy said, start by analyzing some of your HHs to try and identify mistakes; using a program like PokerTracker might also be useful to spot trends or leaks in your game, but you'd have to have at least a few thousand hands in the database to come up with anything meaningful there, and it sounds like you might not have that much live play yet.

Hope this helps a little . . . post some HHs here and we'll try to help you analyze them, ok?!

LeanAndMean said:

sounds like you might want to try limit games. I can not play no limit for just the reasons you mention, so I play limit and at least hold my own, often make a little.

Click to expand...

Hmm . . . interesting thought, although I'm not sure that's good advice. LHE is a completely different game from NLHE, and considering that the OP is currently struggling with adjusting from tournament play to live play, throwing in another huge variable might not be such a great idea. . . . Just because you can't lose your whole stack in one hand in LHE doesn't mean that you can't easily lose your stack in one session -- over, say 4-6 big pots (unfortunately I speak from experience here ) -- and it's much, much harder to come back from a hole in LHE than it is in NLHE. The terms "tight" and "loose" also relate quite differently to LHE than they do to NLHE; I've played a lot of both kinds of cash games at varying limits, and I've started to prefer NLHE online, mainly because I find it much easier to multi-table effectively, and also because one or two mistakes or instances of bad luck in NLHE don't necessarily make a session unprofitable, while they will almost always ruin a LHE session, from my experience.

Ring games take a different attitude.
Like BillyTheBull said, stack management is different. There are times in tournament where you should shove even though you know you're chances of winning aren't good, simply because otherwise you're left short stacked and thereby nearly powerless. Whereas in ring games you can always rebuy when you're down on chips, so folding those big hands falls into the realm of "loss management" rather than towards increasing your odds of a bigger payoff down the road. That is, your decisions in ring games are for the most part, about short term/immediate results, not a winners-take-all sort of prize down the road. You don't need to stack *anybody* to be profitable. Nibbling here and there is fine.

I feel the big advantage to ring games is that you get to pick your opposition. You get to see who is at what table and where you'd be sitting before deciding on a table.

I usually two-table the 6-max games, and put myself on about 5 waiting lists. When a game opens I'll decline it if I don't like the opposition or position.
Even when I'm sitting at two tables I'll still accept the open tables to see if there is a better spot open for me, in which case I either leave one table and join the new one, or play three tables at a time.

Another advantage of ring games is that if your bountiful table starts to sour you take your chips and leave for more fertile ground. I left a game last night because a couple donks left, then a good player sat down to my left. I didn't need him challenging my continuation bets.

Playing really tight doesn't work at cash games either, because you will never get action when you get a hand, and will be easily bullied off pots when you don't hit hard. Main difference imo, is that because the stacks are so much shallower in tournaments, you can call shoves (or shove yourself) with hands that you would lay down 90% of the time in a cash game. You have to make big laydowns in cash games to protect your stack alot more so than in tournaments, where lets face it you have to get a little lucky to go far (MTTs at least).

Ben,
I think Billy the Bull is spot on when he says - "the biggest difference between cash games and tournaments is....how the blinds influence the action at the table" You're falling into the trap of playing a ring game how you would play a tournament. Most of the time you will come to a spot in tournaments where the blind pressure forces you to make coinflip calls, or to push with marginal hands. This pressure doesn't exist in cash games and I wouldn't advise doing either!

Cash games rely more heavily on knowing the players around you and less on luck or the cards you have in front of you (as a tourney does). The aim is to consistently make money, not to stack your opponent everytime you make a half decent hand. Try concentrating on the players around you and how they bet, then using that to your advantage...

and also remember that you don't necessarily have to be too patient to win in ring games, just be disciplined.. If you sit and wait for premium hands you won't get paid off when you play them.. try to know your opponents and mix up your game so that they can't work out how you play.

The last thing I want to say, is that you usually don't have to be pushing your whole stack into the middle to be putting the odds out of reach for someone in a cash game. This is where you can afford to be patient. In a tourney, pushing your stack frequently is probably solid play in a lot of circumstances. Pushing your stack regularly in ring games is a recipe for disaster and will cost you dearly. Pushing all-in is a very powerful move in a cash game and you should be careful about when and how you use it.

Before you call and all-in raise in a cash game, think about type of opponent you are playing and then the opportunity costs of calling the raise. Could the money be spent better at another time when you're likely to have a more certain advantage? Remember, there is no pressure in a ring game.. so don't rely on luck to win pots for you. Play pots ferociously when you're ahead, and let the other players on the table rely on luck!

Bentheman87 said:

Is the correct ring game strategy to play super tight, only play the premium hands and rarely bluff?

Click to expand...

No. Although you can probably win at the micros that way, you have to bluff as you get higher and you'll never get anything paid off if you only play premium hands. As someone mentioned earlier in the HoH discussion, you can actually play looser in cash games, but you have to pay a lot of attention to pot size. In a tournament much of the time the stacks dictate that it's a good move to stack with TPTK. This is rarely the case in a cash game unless you're up against a maniac.

Controlling the pot size is extremely important in cash games, and the biggest difference between the two imo. Although I can practically only play TAG when I'm 12-tabling, when I play single tables much of the time I'll play a pretty successful LAG game but I got burned when I tried that in a tournament. It'd be raise preflop, get a caller, cbet the flop and villain shoves, and it's not a crazy overbet either. In a tournament, most of the hands you play when the blinds are big compared to the stacks you should be willing to commit most if not all of your stack in. In a cash game you are making a lot more plays preflop and postflop with air and it can be profitable against the right opponents.

Your not alone Ben, I am a horrible cash player as well. I am gonna read up on it and play it some more though after I sell my play chips, so hopefully things go better for me this time around. I also didnt have CC to help me out when I was playing cash games a while back, so that is an added incentive for me to give them another shot. The main thing is just play whatever you are comfortable playing. If its sng's, mtt's, or cash, if you're not happy playing it, chances are you will not make money