Surely it's much easier to play robotically and follow a formula playing SnGs than in cash games. It'll be difficult to be prorfitable at the higher levels, but at the lower levels, it's not difficult to stick to a recipe and win. Hell I can see bots raping low level SnGs. I guess you can do that playing weak tight in cash games too, but it seems much easier in SnGs, especially turbos. From my experience in turbo 9 or 10 handed SnGs it gets to shove/fold too fast for you to do much more than math based decisions.

edit: okay, I realized that almost all poker decisions are math based, but what I mean is following a sort of strict formula that isn't very creative or difficult.

This is just not true.

Think about it like this: you have two players - Player A is a cash game player who for the sake of argument has NEVER played a tournament and Player B is a tournament player who has NEVER played in a cash game.

Player B would equate the cash game to his experiences, namely the ealry stages of a MTT when you are deeper stacked, and if he was a solid player, could certainly hold his own.

Player A however would have ZERO experiences to equate certain tournamnent factors to - increasing blinds, antes, and how their relation to stack size dictates optimal play. Obviously certain things would come intuitively, like knowing to shove instead of standard raising when you're the shorty. But there's so many other subtleties when it comes to stack sizes, M, etc, that just wouldnt dawn on a cash player if he had NEVER played a tournament.

What I'm trying to say is, yes Player A could become a good tournament player eventually - but in his first MTT ever without any tournament-related training whatsoever, he would be absolutely dead money without any question. Player B on the other hand, if thrown into his first cash game with other players of comparable general poker skill, would more than likely fare a little better IMO

Hi Ro, I would argue that it would be much easier to write a bot program for low level cash rather than low level sng's simply because the dynamics of a sng are constantly changing.

I agree that turbos and super turbos get you to the shove/fold scenario quicker.

He would if he has played against short stackers before, or played as a short stacker.

I also think most cash games know a thing or two about tournaments because some tournies are so +EV. MTT concepts are also simpler than cash ones, imo. It took my a much shorter time to be a winner at tournaments, and much more at cash.

TBH, just tell him the basic shove/fold range, and how to adjust to tight/loose players (shove Kxs with 8 blinds or less from the BTN), and tell him to use common sense. Bam, done. Bubble abuse in SnGs also really just common sense, imo.

I am a computer programmer by training. The easiest bot to write is a shortstack NL bot. After that it would be an SNG bot. SNGs are very mathematical and the tendencies of your opponents rarely matter (especially because all the regulars play almost identically in the late game).

SNGs are easier for technically-minded people to play because all the important situations can be analysed mathematically. The problem of incomplete information is minimised. This is also why it's (relatively) easy to program a bot for them. The technical knowledge for beating SNGs is a skillset, but it isn't really a poker skillset. Players who can beat cash games can translate their skills over to SNGs quite easily; the reverse is not true for SNG players. SNGs play out more like a complicated game of solitaire than a poker game.

??

I'm all in favor of gathering more data so that we may come to an informed conclusion.

By the way, I offer examples as an illustration, not as statistical proof.

If you have such proof, I would like to hear it. Until then, I wouldn't mind hearing some examples.



What post-boom internet player wasn't a tournament player at some point?

DUCY you cannot therefore conclude that top cash players got their great skills from sng's?



I'm assuming you're intelligent enough to distinguish fact from opinion. If you feel anything I've said is factually incorrect, I would like to be corrected.


But you haven't really produced an argument. You haven't said "X therefore Y" or anything similar. You're just angry over what some cash players said.


If you want to make an argument addressing specifics, such as stack-to-pot ratios, diminishing value of chips, bubble play, etc., then that would be great. You could be right, be you haven't put forth an argument.

Nicomanus made a decent argument, but it centered on the assumption that there is more leveling in tournament play, and that such increased leveling raises the complexity more than the shorter stacks reduces the complexity. Both cases are highly suspect, as I mentioned above.

Perhaps you agree with the argument that he produced.



Of course. Don't lump me in with some other players who said tournaments have no skill. I never said nor believed such a thing.

I'm just saying they have less skill than a medium-stacked cash game.

I'll also say that Go has more complexity than Chess. But that doesn't mean that chess is idiotic or dumb, and chess players should feel bad.


Aren't you telling people to be "closed minded" by telling them to not listen to these cash pros?

People should listen to the arguments from both sides and come to their own conclusion based on those argument.



Aren't you making a sweeping generalization such as what you accused me of? Don't worry, I don't mind. It's unavoidable.


Perhaps we can have a constructive conversation by asking the following questions:

1. What problems do cash players typically have when switching to sng's.

2. What problems to sng players typically have when switching to cash.

Once we come up with that list of problems, we can begin discussing which problems are harder to fix.



"Pointless" is incorrect. Obviously, many people are interested in this question. And certainly you and I are, or we wouldn't be posting here. Arguing can be constructive if people listen and respond to each other.

For example, even though I disagreed with Nicomachus, I thought he made a few good points that I learned from him and conceded to in my last reply.

Not only is this topic interesting from a purely intellectual viewpoint, but has some practical use, such as deciding where your edge might be bigger, devising strategies, finding a fish, etc.


"impossible to prove" is a bad attitude to have, and is often used to avoid having to make a good argument.

A lot of things are "impossible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt", including such things as "what's the best line to take here?"

But that does not mean we shouldn't make an effort to find an answer.

It's a preflop game.

The deeper you are the more postflop comes into play.

I find cash easier, but then again, I'm playing strictly micro limit. I play both, with varying success.

If I play cash, I can sort that percentage of players seeing the flop stat and hop onto however many soft tables, wait for great hands, not worry about blinds going up, and unless I'm getting coolered left and right, I will average out ahead, mainly just waiting for trips and such.

Can't do that in an SnG, I just don't get to see enough hands before the blinds chew me up. Even in the 1.20 SnGs, I have to think about what I'm doing more, I have to think about what my opponent has done.

On the other hand, I'm fairly new at this, so I can't say for sure whether I will still think this way even a month from now.