tourney poker much more skillful than cash poker

[sammysusar]

the variety of skills and differences of decisions makes tourney poker a much more intriguing game. importance of blind stealing being able to play different styles etc. granted short term results may not reflect skill levels but in long run is much much better game

[flawless_victory]

RIDICULOUS.

[Paul Phillips]

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the variety of skills and differences of decisions makes tourney poker a much more intriguing game. importance of blind stealing being able to play different styles etc. granted short term results may not reflect skill levels but in long run is much much better game

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I suck at cash games and I'm good at tournaments, but even in my moments of maximum self-delusion I can't convince myself that tournaments require more skill than cash games.

In a sense there are more factors that go into decisions during tournaments, but there are also many more automatic or nearly automatic decisions in tournaments than there are in cash games. It's a little bit like comparing holdem to omaha/8. In a sense omaha/8 gives you more to think about, but it's also vastly more straightforward to play well than holdem is.

[Michael Davis]

In your post, you say that tournament poker is more intriguing, but in the title you say more skillful.

Tournament poker is much more intriguing; watching cash games is watching paint dry. If there were less luck involved, tournaments would be less fun to watch.

-Michael

[sdplayerb]

Tourney poker being more skillful is just not true.
You are almost always playing with 60x the BB in cash games (really if you have less you should reload or leave). And decisions to be made take far more skill than those which are made at the usual smaller stack to BB ratio in tourneys. As Paul points out, many decisions are automatic in tourneys, you just about never have this in a cash game (unless somebody pushes in and you have the nuts).
Except for the early stages of tourneys, the money is almost always in before the river, if not the turn.
There is also more playable hands when playing with deep stacks, which again makes it more skillful.

Terrible players also get punished more when there are deep stacks, since their mistakes are that much more costly. Therefore, there is more skill.

[2005]

luck is involved equally as much in cash games as it is in tournaments, it's just that luck plays a bigger role in the short term and tournaments are a model for short term luck contributing to success. While in both forms of poker the long run will reward the person who makes better decisions, tournaments have a much more spectacular result for some who have a great amount of short term luck.

[sammysusar]

i agree in limit games cash games require more skill than tournaments. However i think in no limit the structure of the tournament forces you to have a couple skills not necessarily required in cash games.
a. being able to play both agressively and conservatively dictated by stack size (i.e. bluffing without any hand at all seems like a more profitable strategy in a tournament than in a cash game)
b. blind and ante stealing is much more important in tournaments.

i think you are required to make a bigger variety of plays in tourney than in cash games but i could be wrong.

[Bigwig]

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the variety of skills and differences of decisions makes tourney poker a much more intriguing game. importance of blind stealing being able to play different styles etc. granted short term results may not reflect skill levels but in long run is much much better game

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I suck at cash games and I'm good at tournaments, but even in my moments of maximum self-delusion I can't convince myself that tournaments require more skill than cash games.

In a sense there are more factors that go into decisions during tournaments, but there are also many more automatic or nearly automatic decisions in tournaments than there are in cash games. It's a little bit like comparing holdem to omaha/8. In a sense omaha/8 gives you more to think about, but it's also vastly more straightforward to play well than holdem is.

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I used to play a lot of limit omaha/8. I don't as much anymore, because I found myself on autopilot. The right decision always seems so obvious -- like playing euchre. I realized that if that was the case for me, it must be the same for others, and how do you get a big edge in a game like that?

[CrisBrown]

Hi Paul,

Would it be fair to say that the difference isn't so much between tournaments and cash games as between deep money and shallow money situations?

Cris

[sdplayerb]

I think O8 is profitable since most people are completely clueless on how to play. Many play any four cards, or chase non nut flushes, even for half the pot. There starting hand requirements (A4 they think is a great low) and bad postflop play make it quite profitable.

I don't think LHE can plausibly bring much of a profit til you are playing 10-20, due to the rake. But O8 is beatable at much lower buyins.