Tournament to Cash game? What changes?

[Lucky]

Play in cash games is slightly looser than you'd play at beginning of tourney, although much tighter than you'll play at later stages.

Basically, most tourney players are fish in cash games cuz they play like gus hansen at final table. Cash players cant wait for some tourney clown to jam JJ preflop with 200 bb stacks and then curse his luck when shown AA.

[boose_bagina]

Take into cash games nothing you have learned from tourny's.

I play SNG's almost exclusively now instead of my previous 100NL/200NL days and I am now borderline retarded because them.

[orange]

Overplaying TPTK. I read posts all the time from SnG-ers who overplay TPTK, and lose their stack. I'm sure this applies to tourney playing as well.

Generally, TPTK wins smaller pots and lose big ones.

PPs in cash games are usually limped in full games while raised in 6-max. I suggest playing a bit of full-ring before you go 6-max to feel the difference.

As stated before, implied odds go up with the 100xBB stacks.

Can't think of much now. Maybe I'll add more later. GL.

Two differences:

1. If you bust out in a tournament, you have to wait for the next one. And this is also related to payout. You could have busted 30 people yourself in a tournament, and still get 0 dollars. In a cashgame, you can rebuy, and winning pots instantly pays off. So there's a psychological (..and bankroll) difference of dealing with this difference.

2. In terms of game-play, the encompassing difference is stack sizes. TOP tells you how this should affect your play: "All poker starts as a struggle for the antes. If there were no ante, there would be no reason to play." (chapter four)

This ofcourse has many many side-effects on becoming a winning cash game player, but you should understand the fundamentals.

Difference 1 is why I switched from sng to cashgames: I'd double/triple up untill 4 or 5 players left, and then it's basically a crap shoot with enormous variance. And the bad players don't realize this (or even profit from this), so play in the first half is very slow and the variance is even higher overall. That's the beauty of cashgames: you can play actual poker. You don't think squeezing out 5500 players in a week results in the best players do you?

[ QUOTE ]
By "quite aggressive post flop" what do you mean? Can you give me some examples?

[/ QUOTE ]

I mean I am always willing to bet to take pots that no one seems interested in. If a flop comes down that doesn't seem as if it could have helped my opponent, I will bet to take it. If I have a solid read on my opponent (i.e. I've been at the table with him for a while) and sense weakness, I will raise him off the pot.

On occasion I will be wrong, and will pay the price of the bet or the raise. This is more than offset by the number of times I am right, and take countless unclaimed pots.

I play my strong hands this same way. Because I am very active, I do not get credit for such a powerful hand, and I may get all of my opponent's chips.


One of the things you should always look for in an opponent is an announcement of a high pair. Players do this, though they may not realize it. If that is the case, and you have a small pair or an excellent drawing hand, get in there with him.

It's worth noting that if a player has made this announcement and I don't hit, I'm not going to try to make him fold. He won't. I'm not going to waste chips trying to bluff him off KK or AA.

I will warn, this is a difficult style to learn. To an inexperienced player it often results in overplaying hands. It is higher variance than other styles, particularly when your timing is off for a week at a time (it happens). However, when properly executed, it works wonderfully.