Switching between Cash Games and Tournaments

Of all the ways that players get classified within the poker world, one way stands out above all others: is a person a tournament player or a cash game player? Sure, there are other important things within the classification system, such as whether a person plays tight or aggressive, what variation of poker they specialize in, whether they are a high stakes or low stakes player, etc. But once again, the biggest division comes in finding out if a person is more adept at playing in tournaments or if they are better off with cash games.

However, not all poker players have had enough time in the game to determine what their specialty is. What’s more, maybe they are a tournament player that hasn’t even had time to play in a cash game or vice versa. If you’re in the second category of people, then you are definitely going to need to know some of the differences between cash games and tournaments when you are making the transition from one to the other.

Before getting into any kind of strategy, it’s certainly a good idea to go over a few of the basic things that a person will encounter when switching between cash games and tournaments. One of the first things to note is that a person can play cash games (a.k.a. ring games) as long as they want provided they always have enough money to bet with, while a tournament sees people get knocked out as soon as their chip stack is gone.

Another important basic about the differences is that cash games feature limits such as $3/$6; tournaments, on the other hand, only have an initial buy-in that is determined before the tourney ever starts. Only people who finish high enough in tournaments will make money based on the amount of buy-ins collected while ring games have no limit to the amount of cash that a person can win or lose. Also, ring games don’t really differ from one another - aside from the limits - while tournaments can come in the form of multi-table tourneys, sit & gos, six-handed tournaments, and a host of other divisions.

A lot of the strategy within any cash game will revolve around the concept of using statistics and poker odds so that one can try and make the correct play over and over again - this is especially true with Limit poker. If you’re a ring game player, you have probably either heard of, or used certain concepts such as pot odds and implied odds in order to make sound decisions. Using these types of odds means applying a decent amount of mathematics to situations; some people swear by the results of their math and won’t deviate from it when making a move at the table.

The value of using odds and math in tournament poker diminishes somewhat because sometimes the correct play is not always the right play in a given situation. This is due to the fact that, once a person loses all of their chips in a tourney, they are done for the day; in cash games, people can lose a big hand after making the “correct play” based on math and then buy right back into the action again when their chips are gone. Because of the difference, players often have to make plays based on situations in a tournament: betting against tight or aggressive players, the size of a person’s chip stack, and the amount in the pot are just a few of the things that people will have to take into account in tourneys. Some of this definitely comes into play in ring games - especially No Limit ones - but mathematics come into play a lot more too.

One thing people always have to be mindful of in tournament poker is that there are different stages that they must survive through. For instance, the first stage of a poker tourney is often the most hectic since lots of bad players are mixed in with quite a few good players. And with the luck factor that comes into play in any form of poker, good players will go down along with the bad players in this stage. That’s why a lot of veteran tournament players will try to play conservatively in the first stage of a poker tourney so that they can avoid all of the crazy bets made by bad - yet sometimes lucky - players.

Once a person makes it into the middle and later stages of a tournament, they usually get more aggressive to try and build a chip stack capable of at least cashing, or even winning, the tourney. Sometimes people will play tight before the bubble (point right before people are guaranteed tournament money based on their finish) in order to avoid being knocked out before the money.

A big difference in ring games is that there won’t really be any stages; only people rotating in and out of the game. No one gets knocked out of a cash game unless they are totally out of money since the choice is theirs alone to decide when to leave. You won’t really catch cash game players working in phases at the table like you will with seasoned tournament players. The goal of a ring game player is simply to make as much money as possible within a given session before leaving the table.

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