From tournament to cash

connie147

O.K folks,Connie here.Im predominately a tournament player but have been itching for a while to start playing cash games on line.I dont have much experience at cash games although the few Ive played,(mostly live) have always seen me come out with a modest profit(probably because I have the patience to wait for the right cards).
Now from reading boards,Ive picked up that there is a huge difference between playing cash and tournament.Your mission is to help me avoid the pitfalls you fell into at the start of your cash game career.I plan at starting at the 50/1 and 1/2 levels,but im in no rush.I'd like to take all advice on board before I start.Im sure starting hands relative to position is one of the most important but anythink you think is important(no matter how trivial),please enlighten me.

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thanks in advance...Connie

brianmc

connie147 wrote:

O.K folks,Connie here.Im predominately a tournament player but have been itching for a while to start playing cash games on line.I dont have much experience at cash games although the few Ive played,(mostly live) have always seen me come out with a modest profit(probably because I have the patience to wait for the right cards).
Now from reading boards,Ive picked up that there is a huge difference between playing cash and tournament.Your mission is to help me avoid the pitfalls you fell into at the start of your cash game career.I plan at starting at the 50/1 and 1/2 levels,but im in no rush.I'd like to take all advice on board before I start.Im sure starting hands relative to position is one of the most important but anythink you think is important(no matter how trivial),please enlighten me.

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thanks in advance...Connie

I was close to posting more or less the same thing within the last month.

My new wisdom so far...

1. If you take a hit and are short - Stop looking for a double up and just buy more chips.

2. Love those sets.

Hectorjelly

What site are you planning on playing? Are you going to play 6max or 9seated?

connie147

Hectorjelly wrote:

What site are you planning on playing? Are you going to play 6max or 9seated?

I will be playing on IrishEyes HJ,B2B network.6 handed cash games,lots of scandies.Your advice would be appreciated.

Lafortezza

connie147 wrote:

I plan at starting at the 50/1 and 1/2 levels,

Bankroll, bankroll, bankroll. 30 buy-ins in the norm for comfort, if you're playing in 6max or particularly aggressive games then budget for more.

connie147 wrote:

I will be playing on IrishEyes HJ,B2B network.6 handed cash games,lots of scandies.

stay away from the omaha tables plz

ocallagh

I made the exact same transition a few months ago. I started off at 0.50/1 to get a feel for cash games, but the standard was so bad I didn't really learn much. I ended up playing incredibly loose because it was more fun...

1) If you're a good poker player (and from what I hear you are) try to move up to 1/2 or better yet 2/4. You'll learn a lot more at that level.

2) Just play tight aggressive poker. No need to start bluffing as soon as you sit down! If you play solid you will get paid off when you hit. Don't play marginal hands like QT, KT by limping out of position. Always try to get into the pot with a raise. (and i'm not suggesting you raise with QT out of position either;) ).

3) Pay attention to your opponents. You'll end up playing against a lot of the same players. Some are natural losers and you should try and get into pots with these guys. You'll notice the winning players pretty quick. Stay out of their way and they will probably stay out of yours... You will encounter more of these players the higher you move up.. take notes on everything!

4) Table selection. Don't just sit into the first table you come across. Look out for the losing players. If you find everyone at your table is solid enough, play a few hands and find a better table.

5) Always topup if there is value at the table. Don't play with a tiny stack.

6) Don't multi table until you have played for a while (about 10k hands). Multi tabling is not as easy as its made out to be.

7) Install Poker Tracker!!

8) Log onto boards every day and read Fuzzbox, Bozzer and HJs advice (seriously)

9) Sit down and work out your bankroll before you start to play.

In general, cash players seem to be better than tournament players (in relative terms of course) so just keep that in mind..

ps: also, I find certain hours of the day attract more fish. For example, at 3am on a Friday night you should play on Tribeca. At 11am on a Sunday morning I'm sure Party would be good! Also, sort out a rake back deal b4 you start

Hectorjelly

The golden rule of 6max play, IMO anyway, is to play in as profitable manner as possible. That means the following

Never open limping. There are some exceptions, but basically if noone has entered the pot yet either your hand is good enough to play or it isnt, if its good enough to play the limping is just giving the blinds an free chance to beat you. 67s should either be raised or folded first into the pot.

Dont call raises, especially out of position. If you have AT in the blinds you should really be reraising or folding a late position raiser. Again there are exceptions, the most important of which is when your against a really poor player, or its a multiway pot. When you do call raises, call from a position of strength, that means that your hand on average stands to be stronger than your opponents (so basically high PP or AK). Calling with small pocket pairs to hit a set is overrated in cash games, only call if the opponent is terrible or its a multiway pot.

Never check a hand where you intend to call a bet. If you are in mp in a pot and you have a nice draw, dont check and call the buttons bet. Bet it yourself. The same goes for strong hands. When you have the betting lead it gives you all sorts of advantages, no matter what type of hand you have. If you flop quads and the pot is quite small you should bet, more on this later.

Dont defend your blinds unless against very weak players. The best way to counter your blinds being stolen is to focus on stealing other peoples blinds and occasionaly reraising people preflop.

Take down as many small pots as possible. If it looks like noone wants a pot, take a stab at it. If you bet a little less than the pot it only needs to work 50% of the time to be profitable. And that doesnt take into account the times that you go on to win the hand anyway. Again you need to use your judgement. If your at a table of people who love to check call their stacks off then only do this if you have hit some part of the flop. Winning small pots makes a breakeven session into a profitable one. Get in the habit of betting scare cards. Ie you are on the sb, just the button limps and the flop is a high no draws. Bet here, as you should only be called if the button has an ace which is unlikely.

Fold top pair. You limp JTo, the flop is 9T2 and someone bets. It doesnt matter whether you have the best hand or not, just fold. A good rule of thumb is that if you are able to take the betting lead then you can play the hand (ie if its checked to you), if not dont. There are exceptions, but they require a read on your part. No read no play! (For example you limp AQ and the flop is A hi, a muppet bets. You put him on Ax)

Position. You should play a tiny amount of hands utg. KQ is marginal and should really be folded. Id raise it from time to time here, but in general im folding. Utg + 1 you can open up a tiny bit. (not much though, about 5% of hands). In the cutoff you can open up even more, im raising KJ KQ here nearly all the time. On the button you should be playing more than twice the amount of hands you are playing utg. If theres a few limpers im limping any cards here that can make either a straight or a flush. (In the cutoff id be a little more conservative).

Blind stealing. What hands you are raising from the last 2 positions really depends on what type of players are in the blnids. If they are tight then any 2 will do really, as you are just hoping to take it down preflop. If they are loose then you want hands that can make big hands, so 9Ts 44 and so on, and also hands that can win u****roved, k2o A2, 77 and so on. This is a very important area

Betting - Bet your own hands, and bet them big. If you think you have the best hand then bet, and constanly aim for people stacks. If I have AA and I think someone has top pair I am going to try and get their entire stack if possible. If they are decent then im going to tone down my ambition a bit. If you flop quads think about how you are going to get your opponents whole stack. If the pot is already quite large in comparison to the stacks then slowplaying is ok. If its small then its not. Think about what hand your opponent is likey to have and what the best way to get his stack into the middle is. In general people find it easier to commit themselves in installments, so bet 20 on flop, 35 turn push river etc (100bb stack). An important part of this is NEVER check raising. Check raising really really sucks, and is only really for very specific times. Check raising basically lets your oppponent away very cheaply; its good when you have a reason to end a hand quicky, or if your oppoennts bet is likely to commit him. As you move up in stakes you need to chk raise for balancing/game theory reasons, but I wouldnt worry about that until you hit 5/10.

Theres plenty more but its my last day on holiday and im going for a swim!

Drakar

Excellent info. I too am moving to cash games and making way more than I was on STTs (small sample size yet, and also I do enjoy STTs more, but money is money!).

The bankroll bit us tough. If you use the 30 times buyin rule, at 2/4 that means a bankroll of 12000. I need more grinding!

ollyk1

Hectorjelly wrote:

The golden rule of 6max play, IMO anyway, is to play in as profitable manner as possible. That means the following

Never open limping. There are some exceptions, but basically if noone has entered the pot yet either your hand is good enough to play or it isnt, if its good enough to play the limping is just giving the blinds an free chance to beat you. 67s should either be raised or folded first into the pot.

Dont call raises, especially out of position. If you have AT in the blinds you should really be reraising or folding a late position raiser. Again there are exceptions, the most important of which is when your against a really poor player, or its a multiway pot. When you do call raises, call from a position of strength, that means that your hand on average stands to be stronger than your opponents (so basically high PP or AK). Calling with small pocket pairs to hit a set is overrated in cash games, only call if the opponent is terrible or its a multiway pot.

Never check a hand where you intend to call a bet. If you are in mp in a pot and you have a nice draw, dont check and call the buttons bet. Bet it yourself. The same goes for strong hands. When you have the betting lead it gives you all sorts of advantages, no matter what type of hand you have. If you flop quads and the pot is quite small you should bet, more on this later.

Dont defend your blinds unless against very weak players. The best way to counter your blinds being stolen is to focus on stealing other peoples blinds and occasionaly reraising people preflop.

Take down as many small pots as possible. If it looks like noone wants a pot, take a stab at it. If you bet a little less than the pot it only needs to work 50% of the time to be profitable. And that doesnt take into account the times that you go on to win the hand anyway. Again you need to use your judgement. If your at a table of people who love to check call their stacks off then only do this if you have hit some part of the flop. Winning small pots makes a breakeven session into a profitable one. Get in the habit of betting scare cards. Ie you are on the sb, just the button limps and the flop is a high no draws. Bet here, as you should only be called if the button has an ace which is unlikely.

Fold top pair. You limp JTo, the flop is 9T2 and someone bets. It doesnt matter whether you have the best hand or not, just fold. A good rule of thumb is that if you are able to take the betting lead then you can play the hand (ie if its checked to you), if not dont. There are exceptions, but they require a read on your part. No read no play! (For example you limp AQ and the flop is A hi, a muppet bets. You put him on Ax)

Position. You should play a tiny amount of hands utg. KQ is marginal and should really be folded. Id raise it from time to time here, but in general im folding. Utg + 1 you can open up a tiny bit. (not much though, about 5% of hands). In the cutoff you can open up even more, im raising KJ KQ here nearly all the time. On the button you should be playing more than twice the amount of hands you are playing utg. If theres a few limpers im limping any cards here that can make either a straight or a flush. (In the cutoff id be a little more conservative).

Blind stealing. What hands you are raising from the last 2 positions really depends on what type of players are in the blnids. If they are tight then any 2 will do really, as you are just hoping to take it down preflop. If they are loose then you want hands that can make big hands, so 9Ts 44 and so on, and also hands that can win u****roved, k2o A2, 77 and so on. This is a very important area

Betting - Bet your own hands, and bet them big. If you think you have the best hand then bet, and constanly aim for people stacks. If I have AA and I think someone has top pair I am going to try and get their entire stack if possible. If they are decent then im going to tone down my ambition a bit. If you flop quads think about how you are going to get your opponents whole stack. If the pot is already quite large in comparison to the stacks then slowplaying is ok. If its small then its not. Think about what hand your opponent is likey to have and what the best way to get his stack into the middle is. In general people find it easier to commit themselves in installments, so bet 20 on flop, 35 turn push river etc (100bb stack). An important part of this is NEVER check raising. Check raising really really sucks, and is only really for very specific times. Check raising basically lets your oppponent away very cheaply; its good when you have a reason to end a hand quicky, or if your oppoennts bet is likely to commit him. As you move up in stakes you need to chk raise for balancing/game theory reasons, but I wouldnt worry about that until you hit 5/10.

Theres plenty more but its my last day on holiday and im going for a swim!

More please. ty

Lafortezza

Drakar wrote:

Excellent info. I too am moving to cash games and making way more than I was on STTs (small sample size yet, and also I do enjoy STTs more, but money is money!).

The bankroll bit us tough. If you use the 30 times buyin rule, at 2/4 that means a bankroll of 12000. I need more grinding!

30 buyins is for comfort mostly. If you have $3k and play the $0.50/$1 NL tables it's pretty easy to lose several buy-ins by either being outdrawn, running into bigger hands or just plain playing badly. Even if you lose 5 buy-ins on the trot you still have a healthy $2.5k to keep playing with and hopefully you'll still be able to play your best game without the fear of going BUSTO!

El Stuntman

lafortezza wrote:

30 buyins is for comfort mostly. If you have $3k and play the $0.50/$1 NL tables it's pretty easy to lose several buy-ins by either being outdrawn, running into bigger hands or just plain playing badly. Even if you lose 5 buy-ins on the trot you still have a healthy $2.5k to keep playing with and hopefully you'll still be able to play your best game without the fear of going BUSTO!

greatly agree with this.

bankroll is 3k-ish now, multitabled some 200NL tables last night and was very sweaty at one stage!! Bankroll management is the most overlooked and yet most critical aspect of becoming a winning player IMHO.

Lafortezza

A while back I took shots at PL$400 (2/4 blinds) when I only had about $3k on Party, luckily for me I ran well and made some profit but even losing two buy-ins at that level when underfunded is bad news.

padraig_f

The biggest difference are the stack depths. In a tournament you're playing with an average of about 20 big blinds. In a cash game you're playing on average with about 100 big blinds. The main implication of this is that play after the flop becomes a lot more important.

Consider playing AA in both cases. In a tournament, you might raise 3 BBs and then bet 4 BBs on the flop. Starting with 20 BBs, you've got a third of your stack in there before it starts to look like you might be beaten. Even if things aren't looking good, there's probably enough doubt that you're behind that if you never folded AA in a tournament, you wouldn't be making much of a mistake.

Now consider the same case in a cash game - raise 3 BBs, bet 4 BBs on the flop. At this point you have 7% of your stack in and 93% behind. So if you never fold AA in a cash game when it starts to look like you might be beaten, you can make some big mistakes.

This is a general point. In tournaments because of the shallow stacks, there's a great emphasis on pre-flop hand selection. Indeed you can do well in tournaments getting by on pre-flop hand selection alone. This was a problem for me when I started playing cash games, I was putting too much emphasis on the strength of my hand pre-flop, and was too often getting married to the hand after the flop. So you just need to shift your emphasis a bit to later streets and appreciate better how much hand values can change after the flop.

A related thing to this is pot size control - playing small pots when you have a weak/mediocre hand and big pots when you have a big hand. You don't get a whole lot of practice at this in tournaments. If two people like their hand in a tournament, it usually doesn't take long for all the chips to end up in the middle. Also in a shallow-stacked game you can get away with slow-playing a big hand more. This is because you can usually get someone's whole stack in on one or two streets. In a cash game this is very hard to do, so be less inclined to slow-play your big hands - you should take the risk of losing someone for the chance of playing a big pot. This is probably the biggest mistake I see in the low limit cash games, people playing small pots with their big hands and big pots with weak hands. There's an article on the subject here: http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue15/miller0306.html

Another big difference I think is reading your opponent and adjusting your play based on how he plays. In tournaments you don't tend to play with the same players for very long, and even when you do, some people change styles based on their stack depths anyway so can be hard to predict.

In a cash game you don't have changing stack depths and play with players for longer so you have a lot more to gain by having a good read on the player. Also in cash games you tend to see more extreme styles. While some tournament players are looser than others I don't think you see quite the same extremes as you do in the cash games. Because of the premium on reading players, when I join a cash game I play extra tight early on and stay out of any marginal situations early on until I feel I have a decent idea how most of the players at the table are playing.

They're my general thoughts but it's a big subject, I think you could probably write a book on it. I notice Barry Tanenbaum is writing a series of articles on limit vs. no-limit, these may be useful as limit poker can be compared to tournament poker:
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/writers/view/name/Barry_Tanenbaum

cooker3

There is some great stuff on this thread, cash games are a weakness for me, think I shall print off some of these points and keep reading them!

connie147

Obviously I've been keeping an eye on the cash games over the past few weeks(see could I spot a couple of fish worth looking out for;) )and one thing I notice about the scandies is they seem to NEVER put down a nut flush draw,no matter how expensive its made to follow it,even prepared to call a huge all-in to catch the nut flush.Whats the plan for this.Is it just grin and bear it or is it better to keep the pot small.This is a definate trend on the site,just wondering whats the plan of attack(or defence)

NickyOD

connie147 wrote:

I will be playing on IrishEyes HJ,B2B network.6 handed cash games,lots of scandies.Your advice would be appreciated.

I highly recommend playing their omaha tables, although their 6max NLHE tables are very soft too, you just have to be mentally well prepared for their craziniess.

ocallagh

connie147 wrote:

Obviously I've been keeping an eye on the cash games over the past few weeks(see could I spot a couple of fish worth looking out for;) )and one thing I notice about the scandies is they seem to NEVER put down a nut flush draw,no matter how expensive its made to follow it,even prepared to call a huge all-in to catch the nut flush.Whats the plan for this.Is it just grin and bear it or is it better to keep the pot small.This is a definate trend on the site,just wondering whats the plan of attack(or defence)

make it expensive. never let them draw for cheap! they have a 35% chance of hitting it (on average.. i think!) so why not make them pay!