hi all, my 1st post here.

was playing 180 sng and mtt, but since 3 months don't have those 6+ hrs windows to play them and started to play cash games. went busto, then read all COTW and rebuilding atm - thnx to all OPs there.

imho - avg villain is much better at cash games, as you end up with at least 3 regs at a table (more if deep tables), but the most important bit is adjusting to the type of game you play. for me the worst part in mtt is people that just won't fold to cbet and than take the pot with 4th pair - do it twice, 2 blind increases and your ex good looking stack now allows you to AI/fold. yeah, you know he is a fish and in the long run you will win his wife and camels, but no reloads here. and the next time you sit at same table is next year.

i try to mix mtt with cash, time permitting. one thing to discuss - i try to estimate prizes before i register for mtt and decide if it's worth it. it may be against BRM, but i don't want to waste my time. ok, maybe i don't have 25/50/100 buyins on my poker account, but it's still micro monies. one year ago i got to FT of 3k+ mtt for 1$ and realised that the prize for 9th place is around 10$. it was 7 am already and i wanted to cry

Thank you. This makes me feel so much better



Do you guys think its easier to be a cash game player and pick up tourneys later on, or be a tourney player and pick up cash games later on. Also, do any of you hardcore NLHE grinders allow yourself any time to study tourney play, or do you kind of just wing it?

I think having a cash game backround is waybetter than going from donkment to cash games. Ive had decent success last year in mtt 3000+ people. I somtimes play on sundays or saterdays but after uved played for 6 hrs have like 20 vpp's. (pstars rakeback) and no money to show for it. Its like...wtf?

And imo if you have a cash game backround. No tourny training needed.

grunch!

absolutely ****ing not. first play an mtt, then ask this question again.

ok just read through the posts. it is easier to be a cash game player imo. that's because we simply have better hand reading skills in general. however, there are a bunch of differences such as no tknowing how to propely utilize 35bb stacks or proper shoving ranges (i guess you need ICM calcs?)

i will say this. a cash game player could go play in a deep stacked mtt against good mtt players and be absolutely fine and do well. an online mtt player going to play 200nl not so much. have you seen the level of play in the sunday million? AWFUL. thats why many small stakes guys actually play this tourney. of course the sunday million is the king of donkfests. i played it last week along with my cash tables. busted AA<TT<AK. awesome.

I think the type of tournament matters as well. I remember Jeff Schulman was talking about how people have no idea how to play deep stacked. That's definitely an advantage for cash players. A turbo might work in the opposite, though since you've got to be looking to get your chips in a lot more often.

I played lots of MTTs before I started playing cash. As Bond18, a very good tourney player says, tournament poker can be a soul-crushing experience. I think it's a lot easier in cash games to put the bad beats behind you, because you just reload and it's on to the next hand. You can play a tourney for 5 hours and take a vicious beat and end up with nothing . . . all the good plays you made earlier are for naught. It's over. And now it's 3 in the morning and I have to get up in 4 hours and just can't sleep because the dumbass shoved his J3 and hit 2pr against my KK. Soul-crushing.

My only deep run in a big tourney was getting 5th in the daily 80k on Stars for $6k, by far my biggest payday, and winning more in that one tourney than I had ever managed to win even in a whole month of cash play.

What was the one thought in my head after taking down this big score?

Was it: "Oh wow I'm so happy, look at all this money I've just won"?

No, it was....

"I can't believe I crashed out in 5th, OMG I played that last hand so badly, I can't believe I didn't outlast these 4 fish and take home $20k."

F playing donkaments for a living.

Frist, let me rhuminate on my tourneyplay for a minute. I know basic odds, so I am a good pushbot. And I know how to play a hand of poker. So when m<10 I do OK, and when m>30 I do OK. but when M is 15-25 I am F bad.

Because of this, I can make a basic flowchart of how every tournament goes.



To answer your question, I think its easier to learn cash first and then tournaments. I fing that the structure put another layer of abstaction on top of the game ($EV vs cEV, basically) and already knowing odds and how to play a hand of poker let's you deal with that. Whereas going from tournaments to cash you kinda gotta start over, imo.

This is the biased opinion of someone who learned cash first.

This was stolen from a epic post . . .

3. 22-30 BB’s (M=14-20). With this kind of stack you have more room for open raising, but for the most part restealing all in has become a bit to large in most (again, not all) circumstances. Also, when I say restealing I mean shoving hands that don’t really want calls. However, with this stack you should be restricting your open raising range a little bit more than 30+, moreso in early position. With this kind of stack though, I would still be highly aggressive in opening pots in late position as long as the players behind me aren’t huge risks to resteal. In the low 30 BB’s a go and go is very often the best option when thinking of how to play a big unpaired hand pre OOP. Say you have 32 BB’s and a villain in LP makes it 3X. If you have AQ you should be going to like 9-12X and shoving most flops, although if you really hit it hard and think villain will bet you should check shove instead.

4. 30-40 BB’s (m=20-27). The important part about this stack size is that a lot of people try to resteal with it pre. For the most part, especially in out of position spots, 3 betting this stack intending to fold to a 4 bet shove is pretty bad. This can be done in the upper 30’s in a few spots (and I would vastly prefer to do this in position than out with this stack) but for the most part if you 3 bet a stack of 35 BB’s or less you are putting to much of your stack to justify a fold pre flop unless villain flips up his hand and shows you that you’re 2 outing or something. At this stack size you can open raise a ton, especially If you’re playing at lower stakes where people won’t resteal on you even after the antes kick in.

5. Over 40 BB’s (M>27). At this stack you mostly have the full arsenal available to you. You can resteal with the intention of folding, you can raise pre, get 3 bet, and 4 bet hoping to cause a fold, you can flat call in position, and you can open you’re full range.

There is nothing in this world like a poker that can make you feel so bad for winning.

MTTs are fun IMO, but only when things go well. Hate them most the time.

I used to be a SNG/MTT player before starting into cash. Took a break from cash over the summer and played MTTs. All it took was playing 40 4/180s at -25 BI to make me go back to cash.

I like MTTs and if I didn't have a FT job I'd be playing them instead of cash. MTTs are more fun and more rewarding but they definitely suck away your day.

It's a great feeling playing until 5 in the morning and winning 5k on $50 or 7k on a $6 satellite. As others have mentioned it is also heart wrenching to play until 4am and bust 14th and get 1% of what 1st would have gotten you. This isn't always the case -- I felt pretty good taking $50k for a 6th place finish in a liveament. Sure I wish I would have gotten the 300k for first but I was pretty happy w/ 50k as well.

The grass is always going to be greener (unless you're looking at sngs lol), so you might as well try to balance and play some of both. This past saturday I just played all MTTs to meet my 200 iron man points and it was nice to do something different.

I played SnG/MTT although before I started cash which is way more complicated then tournament poker. The simple reason is there are not that many tough decision to make with a stack around 5-30bb.

I switched to cash last summer because I became a bankroll nit (which is good) and tournament poker have just sick sick variance. I like cash a lot (even it gives me sometimes still a hard time) because I have more freedom. I can sit down and play when I want and can leave the tables when I just do not feel anymore like playing. For me cash game is the bread and butter game of a poker player.

That said I still love to play MTT. They are fun for me and like others said here already there is some kind of thrill to play the hole night to score big. I made two 2nd places so far in my "poker career" and they both thrilled me a lot more then a winning streak at the cash tables.

I want the best from both worlds. I want to play cash games to have a somewhat stable basis moneywise and on the top of that I want to play tournaments with a deep structure for fun and for the shot at the really big money. I think it can simply not hurt to have a wider skill set then "just" NLHE cash.

Summed up pretty much WP

This is very, very accurate.

I just gotta say that I have tons of respect for all the heavy MTT grinders out there...the variance for MTT grinders is so sick and you can go sooo long without hitting a big score. Like I said before, I tried the MTT grind and couldent handle the soul crushing variance involved in it, so anyone able to deal with those kind of swings has my utmost respect. For cash grinders, the large field big payout tournaments can be very fun and its kind of like a break from the normal grind, a change of pace. I would recommend everyone to go out and get their feet wet in some of the the sunday majors and the good guarantee MTTs that are out there every now and then.

As stated in the OP, I am a winning cash game player. However, I have ZERO tourney knowledge. Like literally the ONLY thing I know is when M<10, all in or fold. Thats it. How -EV is it to play in a MTT donkament?

wow, this is great lol

+1, I came 2nd once and was so pissed off I had to leave the house and take a walk, pretty sure that was just a 180 too.

Don't mean to undermine you and take away the only thing you know but my understanding of it was it was push/fold when m<5 (from Harrington on Hold 'em) or when you have <10 bb (this is mentioned in Colin Moshman's book).

most of my big scores are from MTT (one FT at a 300 and 5 FT's at 1,000 ish persons) and I have to say, although the rush from a big score is great, the disappointment that comes from playing 4 hours and bubbling/ FT bubbling/ missing 1st place by a lucky card is also pretty awful. I actually wish the opposite of you... I'm great at MTT work but wish I had better luck with STT and cash games since they allow much more schedule flexibility and more reliable bankroll increases.

Interesting perspective. I only play SNGs/tourneys. The allure of the big score is big. The 3 dollar rebuy tourneys get about 4-6k players but if you win, it's like 12k; If you are in the teens it's like 50 bucks and minus 5-6 hours. There are tons of donks. One one side your hands get paid off, but on the other they call with crap and suckout. I'm ITM about 20% and have an ROI of about 30%. When I am running bad, I go to small 1-2 table SNGs win money back, and then back to the 3-8k field size. Once I one one big one, my plan is to keep my same strategy but just move up in buyins. Hasn't happened yet.

If anyone remember me i used to grind 10nl / 25nl at FTP and post alot here.
I moved to stars before few months and started with mtts and sngs, thats my graph:



Its true the variance at mtts is sick, and u have to make backup plan with sng grind for half of the week to make up for the costs of mtt buyins equity, or u will go busto very quick. I believe anyone here who is able to beat 25nl, can beat any mtt field up to 22$ BI at least.

Best advice for guys who want to get on a rush and hit big, without volume this will never happen, Volume is the key - you just have to play tone of them and never give up.

I agree with flushthunder - the variance is sick, but you will be +EV.

I will kill you if you complain about MTT's!!!

lolz I want your scores from Nov-Dec 2009