Cash Games More Profitable? Or Are They?

[Ronaldadio]

I find some of the comments very amusing here!!!

MTT - "Even poor players can win" - lol
SNG - "Somewhere in between" - obvious
Ring games - "Quicker return" - lol

Get to grips with this. It takes a different strategy to win the different forms of poker as above.

I`m guessing the people who say the above are doing OK with SNGs but not with MTT`s.

I would say the above for the different kinds of poker

MTT - a lot of patience is needed along with being very brave. You will be playing for hours and you might need the bottle to put you tourny on the line with very little.

SNG - Need to be aggressive in the late stages. Bottle needed on the bubble.

Ring games - you can be more of a limper here. Your bank roll management needs to be good. Self control needed.

This is just general. However, notice how I don`t do down one form of the game?

It bores me when people say this form of poker is more lucky than the other. Bores me because I can almost guess 100% that the game they think is `lucky` is the game they can`t win

I`m a winning MTT player, winning ring game player and I`m fighting back with my SNG`s after being silly by playing at too high a stake a few months back.

 

[Jurn8]

I find some of the comments very amusing here!!!

MTT - "Even poor players can win" - lol
SNG - "Somewhere in between" - obvious
Ring games - "Quicker return" - lol

Get to grips with this. It takes a different strategy to win the different forms of poker as above.

I`m guessing the people who say the above are doing OK with SNGs but not with MTT`s.

I would say the above for the different kinds of poker

MTT - a lot of patience is needed along with being very brave. You will be playing for hours and you might need the bottle to put you tourny on the line with very little.

SNG - Need to be aggressive in the late stages. Bottle needed on the bubble.

Ring games - you can be more of a limper here. Your bank roll management needs to be good. Self control needed.

This is just general. However, notice how I don`t do down one form of the game?

It bores me when people say this form of poker is more lucky than the other. Bores me because I can almost guess 100% that the game they think is `lucky` is the game they can`t win

I`m a winning MTT player, winning ring game player and I`m fighting back with my SNG`s after being silly by playing at too high a stake a few months back.

Wasnt asking about the strategys to win thats completely irrelevant, talking about different forms of the game being more profitable which i know has something to do with the strategy on how to do this but im just talking about the profit factor here and is ring games most profitable or have people got another form they find more profitable. There is obviously going to be individual differences but im looking for a general response.

By the sounds of it you must be a very successful player and play full time, hopefully you can provide tips to players like myself

 

[Dwilius]

MTT tournaments just have too much variance. Most players will never reach the long run when it comes to MTTs (in fact, if you don't play MTTs pretty much 24/7 for years and years you'll probably be stuck in the short run). This can be a blessing or a curse. For a WSOP main event winner it's a blessing

I don't see anyone saying one form of poker is luckier than another, Ronald. Better players will still come out ahead in the long run, it just takes much longer to constitute the long run in MTTS.

 

[BelgoSuisse]

It bores me when people say this form of poker is more lucky than the other. Bores me because I can almost guess 100% that the game they think is `lucky` is the game they can`t win

Never said anything about luck. I said SNGs were harder to beat for a high $/hour because it's relatively easy to play nearly perfectly in the latest stages with push/fold decisions based on ICM, and since most higher stakes players are aware of that, you can't have a big edge over your opponents.

Cash doesn't have that problem because it's significantly harder to get close to an hypotethic perfect strategy (in terms of game theory), so even as somewhat high stakes you can have significant differences in skills.

 

[Monoxide]

Cash game are indeed more profitable. They also require more skill and less luck.

I mean, unless you have $1000+ to drop on the EPT WPT and wsop every year, I just dont see the point in playing them. Thats just my opinion though - if you have alot of money you can play more MTT's. I see them more as a perk to playing cash games, if you have extra money you can sattalite into them and possibly get an amazing return.

SNG pros all follow the same winning "style" so to speak, so I guess there is alot of variance with it, I used to be a low stakes sng player before I moved to cash and I was breakeven/losing sng player. I still kinda suck.

Rarely do I manage to go robusto from cash games though, its easier to play with real $$ and each decision is more crucial... I dont know but I like how each choice I make affects my bankroll instantly. Whereas in mtt or sng, you can make 4-5 great winning choices and then get absolutely nothing for your work.

 

[PokerVic]

And I in no way meant to imply that there is less skill involved in MTTs. Merely, that one exceptionally well-played (or lucky) MTT can fund playing like a donk for the rest of the year. You simply cannot earn enough in one sitting of a cash table to do that.

 

[WVHillbilly]

Cash game are indeed more profitable. They also require more skill and less luck.

I mean, unless you have $1000+ to drop on the EPT WPT and WSOP every year, I just dont see the point in playing them. Thats just my opinion though - if you have alot of money you can play more MTT's. I see them more as a perk to playing cash games, if you have extra money you can sattalite into them and possibly get an amazing return.

SNG pros all follow the same winning "style" so to speak, so I guess there is alot of variance with it, I used to be a low stakes sng player before I moved to cash and I was breakeven/losing sng player. I still kinda suck.

Rarely do I manage to go robusto from cash games though, its easier to play with real $$ and each decision is more crucial... I dont know but I like how each choice I make affects my bankroll instantly. Whereas in mtt or sng, you can make 4-5 great winning choices and then get absolutely nothing for your work.

Tourneys and ring games require different skills, not more or less. There is a reason why people like Irexes, aliengenius, and bob_tiger (just 3 off the top of my head) consistently win $$ from big MTT, because they're REALLY good at them. You've admitted that you lost money playing tourneys, because you're NOT very good at them. So obviously there is skill involved in tournament poker, it's just a different skill that cash games.

 

[dsvw56]

I think without question cash games have a higher hourly rate than SnG's given a similar bankroll. I'll go through some math here off the top of my head.

$500 Bankroll, so we will be playing :
25NL Cash
$10 SnG's

We'll say this is a good winning player with winrates in the games at
5PTBB/100@25NL
10%@$10SnG's


We'll assume he is just an average player, capable of playing 4 tables at a time so :

320h/hr @ 25NL
8 games played/hr @$10SnG's



Cash Games
5PTBB/100@320h/hr = $8/hr

SnG's
10%ROI@8 games per hour = $8/hr


Well son of a bitch if that isnt a coincidence. Whatever, it all comes down whichever you are better at I guess then.

 

[Monoxide]

Tourneys and ring games require different skills, not more or less. There is a reason why people like Irexes, aliengenius, and bob_tiger (just 3 off the top of my head) consistently win $$ from big MTT, because they're REALLY good at them. You've admitted that you lost money playing tourneys, because you're NOT very good at them. So obviously there is skill involved in tournament poker, it's just a different skill that cash games.

Hmmmm yeah, you are right in a sense. Tournament poker and Cash game poker are entirely different games with different styles suited to achieving victory.

But why is it that all the top pros phil ivey, patrik antonius, just to name a few.. think that cash games require the most skill? In the TV cash games they repeatedly say all the *best* players in the world, their words exactly, are cash game professionals. I agree with them fully.

 

[Egon Towst]

Sorry, I am going to disagree with most of you.

MTTs are where the money is. MTTs are the most difficult discipline (as compared to STTs and Cash Games) because they demand wide strategic grasp and the ability to switch gears etc. as well as to play individual hands effectively.

It follows that, if you are good, your edge over the poor players is greater.

A word of caution - because variance is high in MTTs, you have to be really good to make consistent profit in a reasonable length of time. It`s not enough to just be above average.

I make the FT once in every 9-10 tournies I enter, and I guess if you were to ask Rex (for example) you would find he was around the same success rate. That`s where you need to be.

 

[baby kahuna]

The ratio of investment versus profit in MTT's is of course higher. But the odds of winning one is also higher. For those who like to control their investments to a minimum this is an easy choice. But it is a long term investment. Getting to a final table 1 in 10 attempts is a lot of hours of work. In a cash game the results are faster yet more volatile. It takes a lot of discipline to control your investment here and it can go out the window in a matter of minutes.
See the cash game on PAD. Where Peat goes from 100K loser to 135K winner in a matter of minutes.
As someone who work all his life to build his BR up I like to take the more long term approach and play MTT's. Certainly the wins are just as satisfactory.

 

[feitr]

I think without question cash games have a higher hourly rate than SnG's given a similar bankroll. I'll go through some math here off the top of my head.

$500 Bankroll, so we will be playing :
25NL Cash
$10 SnG's

We'll say this is a good winning player with winrates in the games at
5PTBB/100@25NL
10%@$10SnG's


We'll assume he is just an average player, capable of playing 4 tables at a time so :

320h/hr @ 25NL
8 games played/hr @$10SnG's



Cash Games
5PTBB/100@320h/hr = $8/hr

SnG's
10%ROI@8 games per hour = $8/hr


Well son of a bitch if that isnt a coincidence. Whatever, it all comes down whichever you are better at I guess then.

except that you can play more tables at cash than in sngs, because once sngs become short handed and the blinds increase you have to be paying alot more attention than a full cash table.

i really don't think that sngs havce a good $$/hr unless you are playing quite high stakes and are really really good. And then there is the sick variance and the *greater* tendency to tilt and move up stakes. I know i honestly cannot handle the swings and variance of sngs. Placing in 8 straight then losing 10 straight is VERY hard to deal with. i also despise how robotic it becomes at the end with shoving to steal blinds etc

 

[feitr]

oh, and another thing is that the rake in sngs becomes a serious bitch as you increase stakes. When you have like 30% roi in micro stakes the rake doesn't matter as much, but when you have maybe 10% roi or less at higher stakes, the rake you pay is close to your profit, and more than in many cases.

Granted, you can have a much higher BB/100 in micro cash games than in higher stakes, but the higher stakes you play the lower the relative rake you are paying seeing as it is capped at 1/2/3$$ depending on wether your are hu/6max/fr for most sites. You aren't paying as much relative rake if you are playing 6 max NL400, where the rake is capped for all decent pots than in a 215$ sng etc, where you may only have a $10/game average profit.

Taken to an extreme, if you are playing NL5k, and only paying $2 rake/hand, then the rake really isn't that big of a deal. Playing 2k sngs and paying $100? a game, when your edge is extremely small and your ROI is very low, is, i suspect, alot harder to grind out a good profit.

 

[Munchrs]

my hourly rate at at 25nl cash is >$20.

On the same BR i can play $5 MTT's.
My roi is MTT for MTTs $5> is around $4 and on average each MTT takes 1.5 hours, and i can only 6 table MTT effectively leaving my MTT hourly rate at 6*$4/.66= $16/hr

On the other hand i can play SNG's 8 tabling the $6 on the same BR for a roi of 30% or $2 profit/SNG and average 10/hr which equates to $20/hr playing SNGs while i average slightly more in CG and there is better prospects for greater profits as the game is harder to master in CG and therefore will always be more fish there.

 

[Jurn8]

nice stats there munchers thats the sort of stats i was looking for with people backing up their actions mate !

 

[Munchrs]

nice stats there munchers thats the sort of stats i was looking for with people backing up their actions mate !

funnily enough im playing SNGs and tourneys atm