Hey everyone,

I'm pretty new to R&C (10nl), made the switch from MTT as a slight winner at low stakes since I have a new job and no time to play big MTT Sessions.

I'm far from a good player, sorry if it's a super fish question, but there is something bugging my mind.

As anyone who is new to something I watch a couple training videos, mostly free YouTube stuff for now.

One thing that I'm having trouble with is how contradictory the different strategies are sometimes, and even coming from the same people.

Basically it's pretty much the same tips for Micro/Low Cash as micro/low MTT, play tight, play for value, don't bluff catch, don't bluff, ABC poker, the fish will give you money.

In MTTs this works extremely well since the players are capable of 4b/5b jamming very very bad hands, even in the later stage of the tournament. And they never fold TPTK.

In Cash tho, I feel like it's the opposite, the players are complete nits. I see tons of players that I have 1k+ hands on them and their stats are like 16/12/4. And it's so hard to value rivers, these nits always fold unless they got like an extremely good hand. It's always super strong ranges battling and I find it hard to have an edge.

I feel like some tips apply to micro cash, especially stuff like bluff catching, people don't bluff much.

But since no one is bluffing, and everyone are nits waiting for 2nd nuts +, shouldn't I adapt my playstyle to be more on the aggressive side?

And what I find crazy is that the same guy who are making videos about playing tight and waiting for value spots, are also saying that the population in zoom/r&c are nits, I don't really understand.

help

Most poker players disagree with themselves depending on what time of the day you ask. }

Poker is full of contradictions. Aim is to learn how to lose, cheer on the fish, and die smiling. But nothing really clicked for me until I learnt GTO/solver basics ultimately. Then at least you have a way of checking some of these contradictions for yourself, and seeing how EV functions throughout your range and strategy. With that core understanding it gets easier to lose closer pots because you know it has some basis in math/logic. We're trying to understand indifference and EV well enough to make playing painless ultimately I think. And then we can harness all that innate pain and complexity against our opponents. But sometimes the margins are so thin that one slight deviation can radically alter how we generate EV with our hand. This whole beast is constantly in flux and burning through innocent recs like a meat grinder... poker is tough, no question.

...I think the fact you're noticing and asking these questions is good and shows you have the active learning skills required if you chose to commit further to study. Active learning being the key ime. Figuring out how to solve problems for yourself and how to get roasted for bad play or commentary because at least you learnt what not to do.

It's all just a giant study project though. If you're any good at learning you have edge.

You're generally not going to make a whole pile of money from nits outside of coolering them. Instead you can win lots of small pots off of them and steal their blinds.

Don't bluff catch against them on the river because they'll generally have > TPTK. They don't tend to bluff nor do they bet for thin value. I also find that they rarely check-raise as they're afraid of you checking behind.

The upshot of that is that if you're in position on the river and they check to you then their range tends to be extremely capped. You can often get them to fold by betting large enough although you may need to experiment with different sizings. Some of them may fold a 70% PSB with TPWK. Others may call that but fold to a PSB.

There's been a long-standing joke in the poker community... let the MTT players grind the long big tourney's and win, and then quickly take their winnings from them in cash games.

Cash game players have always been the strongest poker players, and it should be pretty obvious why. They play in deeper stack situations more often than MTT players, so the hands are more complicated than pre-flop or one street poker. So what you're experiencing in cash games is just that players tend to be better on the whole. That being said, MTT players are WAY better than they used to be simply because of solvers, and when you have to apply solutions mainly to just one or two decisions, you can play really good poker from a GTO tree perspective.

I'm not 100% sure how that all holds at micro or small stakes, but it's always been this way.

This post reminded me of a section of a Dara O'Kearney book on ICM that I was reading the other day:

I won't pretend I know, but I think you might be very wrong. ICM and small stacks play seems hard to learn. Cash game players only have to learn 100 BB stack strategy (yes it's a simplification)

OP your money should not come from 16/14 players. If really your pool has a majority of those players, you should play elsewhere in my opinion. Their style is suboptimal but they lose money *slowly*.

Yeah, not trying to offend any MTT players. This was just always the saying. I've not seen many primarily MTT players transition and win at cash games at a high level, but there's been tons of cash game players that have transitioned and done well at MTT's.

That's not why big stack players on day 1 usually don't end up making it far. It's mainly because they are just overly aggressive doofs. They will get chips early by running dumb bluff after dumb bluff when players are over folding, but they'll eventually go bust running into a big hand and a good player.

I'll just speak from my personal experience and having had these conversations w/ many of the best players over the years. When I first started playing high stakes MTT's, I couldn't believe how bad the players were. I mean, it was crazy how bad they played, especially deep. I never had this same kind of feeling in HS cash games. I know guys like Doug Polk who have expressed the exact same things. These guys were primarily over folding, and not running any good bluffs. And as I said, this has changed over the last 5+ years, as solvers have improved the games of players across the board.

What that quote from that book misses is that if you do know what you're doing, you can build a stack pretty easily so that you can avoid getting short stacked, and you can apply pressure through the middle and later stages of the tournament. That's typically how I've won or cashed when I've played HS MTT's.

Any ways, was just trying to shed light to OP on why going from MTT's to cash seems so different.