tournaments vs. cash games

[ClaudCunningham]

Ok in a nutshell. I've been doing Great in multiplayer NL tourneys, but awful in cash games.

I do allright at like .25/50 online but anytime i move up to .50/100 i get killed and it weems like people at these tables stay on ratty hands no matter what the preflop raise is...

anyone care to share how your strategies differ between tourneys and cash games?
thanks

[swede123]

It's funny you mention this, because I'm in a similar situation. On SNGs ($5, $10, or $20) I finish in the money between 50 and 60% of the time (small sample size though, no more than 50 games total played), but yet in cash games (0.5/1 and 1/2) I seem to break even mostly.

It's the whole thing of betting being capped each round. Even if play perfectly and have a superior hand some clowns will call everything with long-shot draws against your set or whatever, and it seems like you lose inspite of playing properly.

I find this really frustrating, and I find it hard to stay in the mindset that it's all for the long-run, and I really should be happy these calling stations exist.

Perhaps you should consider playing N/L cash games. Even at a .25 game you will be able to protect your strong flop hands and discourage some of these clowns from calling you down.

Cheers,

Swede

[trumpman84]

I am quite the opposite..after playing NL SNG's and Multi's for quite some time, I was just a little above even and was getting frustrated.

I changed to limit cash games...started multi-tabling and am up quite a bit for my limit. The thing about limit is that these guys with long shot draws are sometimes getting odds to draw (not all of them by all means, most are just really, really bad) and will somtimes draw out on you. You gotta remember that when you have a longshot draw in limit (like two overs and a backdoor flush draw) and the pot is already big, you should be drawing as well.

In limit you can't protect your hand hardly at all, so your premiums will be beat more often, but by the same token, you'll be able to see all your draws to the river if you are getting correct odds..so you'll draw out more. It all evens out in the end if everyone plays solid poker, but you know that 75% of online players don't play solid poker which is where the money is made in limit.

[turnipmonster]

in limit poker online, you have anywhere from 1-4 people who will call you down with anything over and over again. in these cases, you are getting 4 to 1 on your money against a bunch of weak draws who will not hit very often. what's not to like?

limit is completely different from NL however. if you don't have a good grasp of what those differences are, you probably won't do very playing limit online.
--turnipmonster

[greg nice]

NL tournaments are a folding contest