Cash Game Vs Tournament

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Cash games vs tournaments: Should I play cash games or tournaments poker strategy? That’s the question you have been probably asking after realizing that it’s the ideal time to specialize in one. It’s understandable that each of them is unique and requires its own set of skills. Variable number of opponents: in Cash Games, you play against a constant number of opponents. Full-ring tables have nine or ten seats, and short-hand tables have five or six seats. At single table tournaments, you must be able to adapt your strategy to a changing number of players. You start with nine opponents and end the game heads-up. Using a real hand from Day 3 of the European Poker Tour in Monaco, I explain the differences in strategy between cash games and tournaments. Take your poker. “Tournament poker’s a lot more mechanical,” he says, while cash games are more complex, offering more opportunities to exploit your opponents’ weaknesses. Ultimately, cash games will probably earn you the most, but you’ll never get the glory of turning a little into a lot with a tournament if you exclusively play cash.

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Why Tourneys are Better than Ca$h Games

Although this is perhaps bias central when it comes to rating tournaments over cash games, the following article will tell you why playing tournaments trumps cash games.

Tournaments are the Most Popular Form of Poker

Firstly, let’s look at the history of online poker to begin with. The Moneymaker effect of 2003 is heavily regarded to have given birth to online poker as we know it today. Chris Moneymaker’s hero to zero display of American nostalgia, where he went from cheap-ass online qualifier to 7 million dollar WSOP winner, gave much-needed exposure to poker in the medium of titanic proportions. Proliferating the rules and excitement of poker across the world, so many people were talking about the victory. It brought so many newbies into the game, and enhanced speculation about poker so much that it arguably did for online poker what Newton did for science. It can be argued then that gaudy live tournament such as the WSOP and WPT, with all the massive attraction, media exposure and exciting personalities they eschew, is what’s spreading the online poker bug today.

Tournaments and Added-Value

Next, for the player, we have the massive fortunes a single tourney pay day can give you. At Ultimate Bet you can enter online tournaments every day for just $1 that yield a total prizepool worth over $1,000. If you manage to get a decent finish you can earn hundreds of dollars.

Let’s look at Peter Eastgate and Joe Cada for a second. Both these guys took down the WSOP before they even turned 23. And since then, their victories have propelled them into the lucrative world of magazine exposure and media sponsorships – Joe Cada currently plays for Team PokerStars, and even briefly appeared on an episode of David Letterman. In both their respective wins they won just less under $10 million each.

Now down to the fundamentals. In many online poker sites (and you won’t have to look far to find them), guaranteed poker tournaments give entrants much greater value of money for playing than cash games. Think about it, in a cash game, your value comes from being better than your opponent, and being able to exploit that difference in skill through thousands of hands worth of time. In guaranteed prizepool tournaments with a killer overlay, however, the value from these tourneys comes immediately after registering. If a $10 tournament only has 100 players, and the guaranteed prizepool is worth $2000, you’re effectively entering a $20 buy-in value tournament for half the prize! Theoretically you’ve made yourself $10 just by registering.

Nowadays, most online poker rooms make their biggest and most expensive tournament available to players too – through satellites. Party Poker for example, runs Satellites for as little as $1 to new players, in order to grind themselves a seat to the $1 Million Monthly. Playing in these kinds of giant tournaments also gives short-changed players the chance to play opposite their favorite poker pros. In no way, shape or form can you get a cheap seat to sit across Ivey, Dwan or Patrik Antonius on the Full Tilt’s $100/$200 cash tables. Through satellite MTTs and special promotional tournaments, at some rooms however you can!

My last point builds around the value of freerolls. Online poker rooms allow you to enter tournaments for free with real money prizes in the region of $50 – $1000. To find the best of these, go to where to find freeroll tournaments.

Which Poker Tournament Sites do we Recommend?

Go to Best Poker Tournament Sites to read our reviews of the best rooms for tournaments.


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Gaming tournaments for money

A common question that you see asked in forums by newer players is advice for what game they should play. Should they play cash games or should they play tournaments (or sit and goes)?

It’s a reasonable question, but not an easy one to answer. At the end of the day, the game you should play is the one that you enjoy the most. If you’re a professional player the game you should play is the one you’re most profitable at; the game that you can play and generate the highest hourly rate. It’s really as simple as that.

But you came here for specific answers, didn’t you?

Well, there isn’t a one size fits all answer, but what I can do is compare cash games to tournaments over a few different factors and give you my opinion on the type of game that is better. Then it’ll be up to you to decide which factor is most important to you.

Note: I’m going to separate sit and goes from tournaments in my comparisons because, even though they are similar, they’re different enough that you’ll want to choose one or the other to start.

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Cash Game, Tournament and Sit and Go Comparisons

Here are 4 factors that I thought were worth comparing cash games, tournaments and sit and goes over.

1. Building Your Poker Bankroll

In regards to building your bankroll, tournaments beat cash games hands down. The primary reason is that with tournaments, the only money you stand to lose is your buy-in. In a live tournament your bankroll can last quite a while since you can only play one table at a time, whereas online you can play several at once. Even with that said, I still choose tournaments over cash games because playing cash games you can lose full stacks of your money at any given time, and then you can reload and try again.

If you wanted to break tournaments down further, sit and goes are better for your bankroll than larger MTTs. If you’re a SNG player going more than 10 or 15 games without a cash isn’t common, but it’s more than common with MTTs. In fact, with MTTs you can go a long time without making money at all.

So, for building a bankroll I think that sit and goes are the best way to go.

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2. Overall Earnings Ceiling

We all see it on ESPN; guys and girls competing for millions of dollars playing the WPT or the WSOP Main Event. The winner of those tournaments usually make $250k to $1 million dollars, if not as much as $5-$10 (for the main event). So you’d think that you can win more money playing tournaments.

That’s not the case though.

Cash games have the highest ceiling for the amount of money that you can make. You can make hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per day playing sit and goes and tournaments.

You can make that in one hand playing cash.

Keep in mind, too, that when you see tournament players make that much money after one tournament, that they lost or min-cashed 10s of tournaments before they cashed big (or won) that one tournament.

3. Convenience

Cash games are more convenient than tournaments, hands down. That would have to be one of my biggest gripes at being a sit and go player.

With sit and goes you need to set aside so much time to play them, usually 30-60 minutes at the very least, and as much as 2.5 hours for the 90 to 180 man sit and goes. That’s a lot of time to block out of your day.

Tournaments are worse. Tournaments can take hours, if not days to complete.

Cash games are simple. You can come and go as you please. If you need to go to the bathroom, run to the store or take care of an emergency, all you need to do is hit the sit out button (or get up from the table) and leave.

Cash Game Vs Tournament Poker Strategy

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4. Skill and Strategy Improvement

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As much as I hate to admit it, tournaments have nothing on cash games when it comes to skill and strategy development. In other words, improving as a poker player overall.

Now, don’t get me wrong. You need to understand certain strategies such as push/fold and when to pass on slightly +EV spots for bigger +EV spots in the future. And comparing tournament strategy to cash game strategy is comparing apples to oranges. They really are two different games.

Cash Game Vs Tournament

But overall, if you want to be a great, well rounded poker player, cash games are the way to go. In cash games you get the opportunity to play with the same players over and over again, learning how to develop reads and when to use them. You can learn how to take advantage of thin +EV spots and play with deep stacks. Cash games are just more complex.