fundamental style/strategy differences between tourney's & ring

[elmitchbo]

i've become fascinated by this as of late. here's why... i'm a pretty good tourney player, and a pretty crappy ring game player. i can't really figure out why. what are the differences between succesful ring game strategy/style of play and succesful tournament play?

three scenario's for you to consider.... my home games, my online games, and my rare casino trips.

1. home game: i play a weekly ring style home game, and a monthly tournament with the same group of people. typical loose passive(bad) play with guys and wives, etc. i'd say two other guys in the game could give you a definition of pot odds, but thats about it. over the course of a year i'm slightly ahead in the ring game, but i dominate the tourneys. going in to the tournaments i feel i'm the overwhelming favorite, and i've never finished out of the money. in the ring game i feel like i tread water at best.

2. online: i've almost completely given up on ring games online. i tried playing micro stakes and was never able to build a bank roll. i always came in at aabout break even. on the other hand, i had immediate success playing small stakes SnG's. i'm averaging around 4th place finishes, which rarely sees me finish out of the money. that's plenty good enough to steadily grow a roll.

3. casino: very few hands to draw from, but the pattern seems to hold. basically break even in ring games, and show more success in tournaments. i've only played 4 actual casino tourney's, but made the final table and the money in two of them. small sample i know, but it seemed representative when compared to the other examples.

i'd like to improve both sides of my game, but i'm having a hard time analyzing my play. i feel like i play the same way in both situations, so i think there is something inherent to my style/strategy that lends itself to the tourney format. i'd say that i'm on the loose end of TAG play, but not quite a LAG either... about 20% vp$p. i like to get tricky a little more often than i should, which seems to back fire much more often in the ring games than in tournaments.

this seems to happen to some extent in the pro's too... guys like barry greenstein and chip reese showing more success in ring games, while howard lederer or phil hellmuth show more tourney success. some guys seem to do well in both situations. what are the theoretical/fundamental differences between the two types of play?