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Cash game vs Tournament players Cash game vs Tournament players

04-26-2008 , 04:49 AM
This has probably been talked about before, but I heard Barry Greenstein say cash game players (CGP) were generally better poker players than tourney players (TP).

I know that CGP have to make more decisions after the flop. They play deeper stack than tourney players most of the time. They have to mentally deal with greater swings on a hand to hand basis than a TP.

TPs don't play deep stack for as long as CGPs. But TPs have to make decisions at different stages of a tournament, something that CGPs don't have to do. TPs have to make decisions not only based on EV, but based on elimination, and the threat of elimination to others. They have to weigh the cost of moving up, with gaining chips, and with saving chips. It is clear there are different skills and factors involved.

So is it really a consensus that cash game players are better players overall? Or is there still room for debate?
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04-26-2008 , 05:34 AM
obviously a regular (winning) TP will perform better in a tournament than a (winning)deep stack cash game player who rarely plays tournaments. Providing the tournament has a structure the TP is used too.

shortstack play is probably easier to learn than deepstack play though, so you would expect a CGP to adapt faster to playing tournaments well, than a TP will adjust to playing a deepstacked cashgame well.
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04-26-2008 , 07:37 AM
Truly deep stack NL holdem is far more difficult than adjusting for short stacks, and adjusting for pirze pool payouts. Lets say we have two players: One is a SNG wizard that has all the shortstack game and ICM calculations down, and plays nearly perfect pushbot, but doesnt play many speculative hands like 6s5s from the button super deep He wins SNGs at 17%ROI up to 200$. The other is a 8BB/100 cash game winner at 3/6 online. Put both of them in a super fast structure 2k chips at 25/25, 25/50, 50/100, and my money is on the SNG wizard. Put both of them in the WSOP ME, and you would be a FOOL not to take the cash game guy.

Personally, I am trying to learn many different forms of poker, under many different structures. Adjusting to deep stack play by learning cash has dramatically improved my beginning stage tournament play. Playing thousands and thousands of short stack buyin cash has improved my mid and late game tournament play. Playing hundreds of Sit and Gos has improved my final table play.

In general, most people overestimate the value of "making decisions... based on elimination and threat of elimination...cost of moving up...and saving chips". I too thought this effect was much larger than it really is. In MOST MTT formats, chipEV and $EV are very very close in most decisions. Seat satellites would be a huge exception, and I would generally take a pony that had familiarity with that type of format (top 20% qualify) over a cash game player, since $EV and cEV diverge so much at a monster bubble like where the top 20% clear to the next level.

I think its kinda like this... the triathalon vs a marathon swimmer. Swimming is arguably the hardest section of the triathalon, and if you are a great triathalete, you will do just fine in a pure swimming event. If you have a marathon runner who can only marginally swim, and you have a pure breed distance swimmer that simply has never competed on foot or bike, and put them in a triathalon together, the swimmer will win. Its fairly easy for a swimmer to just run or bike (hes not that far out of water), where the marathon runner who cant swim well is simply doomed in the triathalon. Much like a SNG or short-medium game tournament player in a monster deep event like the wsop main vs a CGP that doesnt play much short.

Its far easier for a CGP to "adjust down" for smaller and smaller stacks, than it is for a short game TP to "adjust up" to deep stacks and learn how to properly play implied odds and the multi-street game that is deep stack.
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04-26-2008 , 07:45 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by 4CardStraight
Its far easier for a CGP to "adjust down" for smaller and smaller stacks, than it is for a short game TP to "adjust up" to deep stacks and learn how to properly play implied odds and the multi-street game that is deep stack.
I totally agree with this. That is why I speculated that overall CGPs were better players than TPs.

Is this why you think some choose to shortstack at cash games? It gives them less decisions to make post flop, and is more similar to tournament poker where players only have a stack of 20, 30, 40 big blinds? Could these guys be people who are more comfortable playing tournament poker?
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04-26-2008 , 07:52 AM
Perhaps they shortstack because they like tournaments.

Perhaps they shortstack because the decisions are so much easier that they can play A LOT more tables. Maybe because they are getting rakeback and just need to grind out volume. Maybe they have found players that are insanely loose and dont adjust properly to having a shortstacker at their table, and continue to play speculative hands preflop that will almost always be way behind the shortstackers range when they enter. Maybe they are LOSING PLAYERS, and simply want to lose money slower than deep stack while they watch the game and learn.

Personally, after shortstacking something like 50k hands, I would say that its just a really thin winning game, and if you can only make a couple pennies a hand, that several million hands until retirement is just too foreboding to continue with. Yes, you can 18table short stack and play almost as well at any table as you would with only one open, but it is not exactly tons of fun. And no matter what anyone says, anyone with over a 1-2BB/100 winrate shortstacking is just experiencing the positive side of variance in the short run
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04-26-2008 , 05:01 PM
NH,4Cardstrght,That's a pretty sharp anaogy with the marathon runner vs distance swimmer.
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04-26-2008 , 06:11 PM
Every time I'm watching the final few tables of a tournament (or playing in one) I think to myself "my god, there is so little talent being utilized at this point". Watching poker "superstars" coin flipping each other for an hour. It takes skill to build the chip stack to get to the coin flipping stage but after that it's just getting your money in when you're 60% favoured AT over KQ. Personally I love the middle stages of a tournament. Plenty of post flop play but the blinds are high enough to give you something to fight over.
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04-29-2008 , 06:23 PM
I started out playing tournaments, and have experienced some decent success over the years. I also heard that the best players were cash players, so I decided to give it a try. After about 3 months, I have been very marginal at cash games and basically break-even.

I find that it's easy to play tight early in tourneys, and then picking your spots and pushing when the blinds get very high. My pokertracker stats indicate TAG play, so I suspect the problem is poor post-flop play. Does anyone have advice on the biggest blunders of tournament players when they move to deep stack cash games? Should I just buy-in for 50bb instead of 100bb? That may be a short-term fix, but I probably wouldn't learn anything.
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04-29-2008 , 06:36 PM
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Originally Posted by aw1978
I started out playing tournaments, and have experienced some decent success over the years. I also heard that the best players were cash players, so I decided to give it a try. After about 3 months, I have been very marginal at cash games and basically break-even.

I find that it's easy to play tight early in tourneys, and then picking your spots and pushing when the blinds get very high. My pokertracker stats indicate TAG play, so I suspect the problem is poor post-flop play. Does anyone have advice on the biggest blunders of tournament players when they move to deep stack cash games? Should I just buy-in for 50bb instead of 100bb? That may be a short-term fix, but I probably wouldn't learn anything.
I'm basically in the same spot as you right now man. Playing the tourneys has really made me inexperienced at playing the later stages of hands with deep stacks behind me and my opponent.
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04-30-2008 , 04:38 AM
Well, I am not going to go against what Barry has said because the legend has obviously lived through poker. Your question was, are CGP better poker players than TP?

Well I dont like comparing it that way, and I dont think it's comparable IMO. I mean there are plenty of players who are SUPER at tournaments and are SH*T at cash games, can we really say this TP is not as good as someone who is SUPER at cash games? Gus Hansen might not be the best example, but he has won some big tournaments and we all know he doesn't do well in cash. Is he a fish? or lesser-skilled than those cash game winners? Well get the cash players to play tournaments and see if they can match his records.

Look at TP that are profiting mostly from tournaments, timex, annette, rkruok, etc. Are they crappier than cash game players. Again I might not have the strongest example, but its "2 different game" IMO if you know what mean.

Peace.
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04-30-2008 , 05:29 AM
online tournaments come down to pretty much one decision most the time, am i all in? or not. You have 2 choices. A good cash game player is a far superior all round poker player in compared to a good tourney player, obviously with some exceptions
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04-30-2008 , 06:58 AM
Its a consensus that the two games are very different from each other and require different poker skills.

Given that, which transition is easier/harder to make? Cash to tournaments, or vice versa. For the purpose of this question, lets assume we are talking about playing one game or the other, exclusively.
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04-30-2008 , 08:15 AM
i think adaption to tournament play also requires adapting to a certain playing style. Some good cashgame players, may never become good at tournaments, because they can't bring themselves too reraising allin preflop with suited connectors, and other dicey moves, that are required to be a (fast structure) tournament player with a good ROI.

also there is some 'art' to the preflop pushgame, that some cashgame players might fail to regconize (sp?) and that comes with some natural feel and experience. Altough the preflop equity is almost always a smaller then postflop equity, it still takes intelligent decisions to exloit (or exploit the opponents unawareness of) those small edges.

Also, though the edges in late tournament play maybe smaller, the money the chips represent is usually bigger compared to cashgame. So the smaller (preflop) edges actually present bigger $ edges.

p.s. i started out a cashgame player, and altough i was beating 100NL easy I switched exclusively to tournament play some months ago. The reason was that I didn't enjoy playing cashgames, after beating up 50NL and then 100NL for about half a year.
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04-30-2008 , 04:09 PM
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Originally Posted by MrMudd76

p.s. i started out a cashgame player, and altough i was beating 100NL easy I switched exclusively to tournament play some months ago. The reason was that I didn't enjoy playing cashgames, after beating up 50NL and then 100NL for about half a year.
So MrMudd76, where are you now with your tourney progress? Do you play STTs or MTTs? What buyins are you at? I wish I could win at 50 and 100 NL, but I can't. I've got a 21% ROI on $22 STTs though.

By the way, what ratio of BB/100 qualifies as being a good player at cash games?
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04-30-2008 , 04:39 PM
I play MTT's buyin between 26-75$.

making a decent hourly rate. But I don't play enough (hours per week) to build a big bankroll. So for now I'm content to play those mtt's.

when i played cash i made about 6 big bets per 100 hands. But I played cash on (probably a little weaker) european sites.

i don't have illusions about becoming a high stakes pro, or tournament pro. I'm content to play for some food, rent & entertainment money.
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