I've been able to be a winning player for over a decade in tournaments(mostly live) and SnGs(online) yet can't seem to turn a profit in cash games.

Is there something I am missing? I've studied the game, great at math, pay attention, ect.. but just can't get ahead in cash games.

Any advice or strategy tips?

what's the cash sample we're talking about?

Probably about 10,000 hands online and maybe 200 hours live over the past 15 years

I can get ahead in 4NL online. I will playing more 10NL online and will be keeping better track for sure.

I do well in some very soft home games(when half the table plays incredibly bad) I've found, I just havent been able to bring that success to live 1/2 at the casino.

10k is a small sample size
to ease your mind, take a look at https://www.primedope.com/poker-variance-calculator/ to understand how much variance can hurt

I'm sure you have leaks, everybody does, but 10k hands isn't sufficient to say for sure you're a losing player. Rake is high for anything under 100nl, this is going to be a major factor in you losing money as well.

So don't give up, study more, post some hands, the better you are the luckier you get

With a question/statement so broad it's going to be nearly impossible for someone to help unless they just guess and happen to get lucky.

Try to get more specific. Write down what facets of cash games cause you the most angst/confusion. Then ask yourself why those things are causing issues. Once you have narrowed down your problem statement come back and we might be in a better place to help with a more specific question.

Sorry to be the bearer of this info, but given the information above any advice someone gives you is basically a blind guess that has a high likelihood of leading you the wrong way. And I'd prefer if that didn't happen to you.

I was looking for some basic fundamental approaches that differentiate a good cash game player vs a good tournament player.

Look at Phil Helmuth for example, cash games are a weakness for him, what does he do wrong in cash games.

Chip Reese was a great cash player but not that well known for tournaments.

Maybe a better question is what are the fundamental different approaches to a cash game vs tournaments?

(Some stuff is intuitively obvious to me..such as going all in with a flush draw with 2 overs in cash game where ICM in a tournament will usually result in folding).

the reality is poker is very hard and there's no quick fix
nobody can do the studying for you
I suggest you invest in Janda's latest book for theory and a solver (gto+ is cheap) for hands on work

I just stumbled across this article: https://redchippoker.com/gto-can-imp...our-live-game/

It was a good read but a little vague. It definitely gives me some things to think about next time I play a live game(or even 4NL online)

That was kind of my point. Your question is so broad and vague at best people can give you vague advice. The issue is vague advice leaves a ton of room for interpretation and can easily be misapplied.

Usually I disagree with the whole "you need 3m hands for an accurate sample." Having said that, 200 hours over 15 years isn't valid. Mainly because everything has changed a ton in that amount of time, so I wouldn't base anything on that sample.

If you primarily play tournaments, when you play cash you're most likely overvaluing tpmk or tpnk hands, not folding to 3! With hands that you'd normally call in tournaments (AQo oop or something like that). Or 3!'ing on the lighter side. Or, ya know, never folding AK.

Cash games are significantly more of a grind. Even if you're awesome at math etc, if you're not folding exponentially more than in a tournament, your probably in for a bad time.

That's due to the blinds increasing. In the cash game, you can just sit there forever, so there's no need to compensate the blinds with aggression. This is actually the biggest problem I see guys have at cash tables. It's pretty easy to see who plays tournaments. Usually because they're willing to go the distance with A9 on an A-hi flop.

I'm not bashing on tournament players. People who play cash most of the time Usually do terrible in tournaments.

Play 1 2 at the casino when people are drinking and there are more bad players around in general (usually Friday/Saturday nights)

Then, write down the questionable hands (you can type them up on your phone) and post them in the forums

Generally in low stakes cash games like 1 2 there's more emphasis on making stronger hands (i.e. picking up pocket pairs, flopping sets, making straights and flushes, etc...)

So, if you find that you win a lot of tourney hands on aggression alone, you need to tighten up in cash

Thank AAlegend and Havick. That was the kind of advice I was looking for.

I have definitely lost money due to being impatient at cash games. Also, I do think collusion is a bigger problem than.many are willing to admit at a lot of card rooms. I've definitely seen hand signals and been told by others that chip placement is a way people working together give each other information. I just try to avoid those games if I spot fishy things. I do know that at the smaller poker rooms in Florida, the house will not do anything about it.

It's probably been well over 1000 hours playing live games now that I think about it. Probably 2000 plus hours, unfortunately I never logged my hours and wins/losses.

Now that I'm older, I will be taking a much more serious and business like approach to my games.

i mean.. i think in a nutshell. winning sng and tourney wont translate at all to winning at cash.. unless you're doing like a shortstack PUSHFOLD strategy. there are so many more situations that you can bleed in cash that you simply will never run into in tourney.

at the risk of sounding like a pretentious cash player, its basically like someone asking if beating their wife qualifies them as a top MMA contender

To be fair they are two different games. Tournaments have a defined beginning and end where as cash games essentially never end.

Also tournaments require a lot less "poker" skill to succeed. Example if you win the wsop main. The longest most drawn out tournament of the yrar. You play what 90ish hours of poker (8 or 9 10 hour days)? That is less than 2500 hands. If you play 20% of hands you are saying that to win the wsop main event you only need to play 500 hands of poker well.

In the grand scheme of things that is a nothing sample. And that is the longest tournament. I would say most mtts you only need to play 50-150 hands well to win them.

That is why there is so much more variance in mtt poker. It's a completely different game than cash.

NLHE online cash, hu, 9m, 6m, live cash, tournaments, sngs, spins, etc. is the exact same game guys
you just need a solid theoretical understanding of the game to map out the nuances in ranges and eff stack sizes
don't make excuses.

i started in cash, transitioned to mtt/sngs and then tried to go back to cash

it was really rough, you pick up so many awful habits in tourney play

the big thing is preflop play in tournies has a lot more to do with stack sizes and blinds than in cash games

my biggest leak was i played way too hands because I would subconsciously think (I have so many binds here) and other bad habits

good luck and maybe think about posting a blog about your transition, even if nobody is reading it, being forced to verbalize your thoughts by writing them down helps you better think it through yourself

I think in tournaments being a little wilder and looser makes sense because you only have so much time to win all the chips. Cash is typically a much slower accumulation, so if you play too wild and loose in cash games you will run a good chance of losing money as much as winning it. Perhaps you are being too aggressive.

By the way, don't listen to anything I say. I barely know what I'm doing.

This sounds like me. I think I just play better with medium to smaller stack sizes.

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