Custom Poker Chips

Difference Between Cash Games and Tournaments

Dec 11 , 2021
Time investment
If our time is precious, it is undoubtedly the best to play cash games. We can join and leave the cash game at any time. This is especially true when we consider the invention of "Snap" cash games, that is, we can immediately join the tables we want to play. Previously, games of less than 5 minutes were impractical because it took us more than 5 minutes to join the table first.

If we compare this with the tournament, we often need a long trimming time in the tournament to prevent a round of the game from being too long. Some large MTT's can take more than 8 hours. Despite the fact that we are often eliminated in the first few hours of the tournament, even before registering, we have to ensure that we have at least a full eight hours of free time. For professional players, that is not a problem, but for those of us who have daily jobs, it is not too practical.

Remember that not all MTTs are large events, this is very important. We can also conduct tournaments in the form of "single table". These smaller tournaments still require time investment, but factors such as time are usually easier to manage. The disadvantage is that its return is far less than that of a large MTT.

Value Difference
Here is a reason why many professional players choose cash games instead of tournaments. The value difference in tournaments is much larger than in cash games. Naturally, we can limit the difference by playing small activities, but generally making a living with MTTs means that we really need to be prepared to accept the difference.

In extreme cases, a cash game expert with good chips may not be profitable for more than a month because of an unsuccessful match, for example, the difference. For MTT experts, this will become more difficult. An MTT professional player can really have no return on investment for more than 6 months. Now we are talking about online MTT experts who have good chips in the tournament. When we began to analyze the professional players on the offline tour, we can see that there are professional players here who may not have income for several years, just because they are not lucky enough to win big wins.

However, this can prove that the tournament has higher popularity and prestige. We can have up to 10 buy-ins in cash games, and there is a good opportunity that no one cares about. Winning a large MTT is recognized as a more significant achievement. Being able to enter the final table of a large event is very exciting, much more than just playing a standard cash game all day. If you like excitement and fame, it may be more suitable for tournaments. If you are more concerned about honing out a consistent difference and reducing profits, then cash games are your best choice.

Comprehensive skills

The skills required in MTTs are different from those normally required in cash games. The biggest difference is about the effective chip size. In cash games, we will often open with our predefined chips, up to 100 blinds. It is true that we need to adjust our decisions when playing against players with lighter stacks, but in most cases we will play with 100 effective blinds.

In tournaments, the chip size is constantly changing. Similar to cash games, we usually start with 100 blinds or even 150 blinds, but as the level of the blinds increases, we usually find that we are gradually lacking chips. Under different circumstances, this dramatically changed the range of useful rounds we can play. When the chip stack is less than 20 blinds, the good part of our tournament career will show up and we have entered what is usually called the betting or foldover phase. At this stage, we often can only make pre-flop decisions, and the chips are not deep enough for us to enter more specific rounds and scenarios.

Playing less than 20 effective blinds is rare in cash games, so tournament players use a set of skills that cash game players often don’t need. Nash and ICM strategies are also often used to help players calculate the pre-flop betting cover range. This is an integral part of the tournament and requires a suitable set of skills, but most people will think that the 100 blinds match requires more advanced skills. As a result, most would agree that cash games are harder to compete for long periods of time than tournament games.

There is also a very important point to understand. We will experience time pressure in the tournament that we did not experience in cash games. Every cash game starts with the same structure. Structures in the tournament are constantly evolving, and these structures affect the decisions we make. In a situation that may change, based on how much time is left to the next blind level, or how many players are left before the tournament bubble bursts, sometimes a pre-flop all-in may be the correct judgment. For example, we can think that tournament decisions are more dynamic, while cash game decisions tend to be more static.

As a result, being proficient in cash games does not mean you will be a good MTT player, and vice versa. This is usually why many players choose to specialize in tournament games or cash games. Because both require a unique set of skills: specializing in one form allows us to maximize our potential instead of trying to learn these two sets of skills.

However, there is also a certain degree of crossover. There are strong basic principles of late tournaments that might help us when we find ourselves playing short-stack cash games. With strong 100 blind cash game skills, it may help us in the early stages of the tournament. So the result is that it is not absolutely wrong to pursue higher levels in both forms; it is just a personal choice.
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