What Do You Do Different In Tourney & Cash Games?

[pzhon]

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The best players in a tournament won't be playing super tight during the early rounds, they will be stealing pots from weak-tight nits by aggressively playing speculative hands in position, and then busting the loose-passive donks when they hit a big hand.

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I agree. This is a good description of some of the strategies used by top players.

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If you have pocket queens and someone pushes all-in with AKo, and you know they have AKo, it's generally correct to fold during the early stages of the tournament (again, if you're better than the competition), even though you have more than half the equity.

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Anyone who folds QQ preflop to a suspected AK all-in is a losing player, much less one of the best in a tournament.

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Do you understand the difference between $eV and cEV?

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I do. That doesn't appear to be the source of disagreement.

There are two main arguments for rational risk aversion in this context.

[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] Prize structure: Any prize for second place rewards survival to some extent, making the value of chips sublinear. However, this is greatest for SNGs, where it changes the calling threshold by several percent, and has a minimal effect in early stages of MTTs which pay about 10% of the field, where it might change the threshold by less than 1%.

[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] Skill advantage: The average player roughly doubles up half of the time. A skilled player doubles up more than half of the time, which means the value of chips is sublinear even if the winner takes all. This should be the dominant factor in MTT discussions.

I don't think people have made a case using bankroll management, and I doubt it would be very strong, so I'll ignore that.

Despite these, the contention is that QQ vs. AK is too good to give up.

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You are only a 54% favorite with QQ against AK.

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Actually, QQ is a 56-44 favorite over {AKo,AKs}. It's 54-46 over AKs, and 57-43 over AKo. See http://www.pokerstove.com .

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If AK open-pushes in a tournament, and you're getting very close to 1:1


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It's not close enough to ignore the dead money. Have you done the math? I've posted this calculation a few times, e.g., for SNGs. Even in the first level, the dead money usually lowers the calling threshold by more than a percent. The dead money often changes the calling threshold by 3% or more even in early levels.

In fact, this is a larger effect than if the big blind is yet to act and might wake up with KK or AA about 0.5% of the time, which only costs you about half of your stack on average when it happens.

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folding is unquestionably the correct move.

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That's the opposite of the conclusion of this Matt Matros article in CardPlayer, which concluded it was not only right to call with QQ against AKs, but that it was not a close decision. While I think that article was flawed, as I pointed out in a discussion of a similar article in the 2+2 Internet Magazine, many other studies have also concluded that it is right to call with QQ. Your assertion of the opposite is far from unquestionable.

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It can even be correct if you're getting relatively better odds than those. I suggest reading Sklansky's book on tournament poker, where, I believe, he recommends this exact thing.

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I have read it, and I suggest that you recall the context. The very best players might fold with a small advantage that comes with a high chance of busting out. The vast majority of players, even winning players, should not fold such an advantage.

For some reason, people misunderstand this as saying that in order to become a great player, you need to fold with a large advantage that comes with a chance to be eliminated. That's not what you are saying here, but you are applying the advice for the best players out of context, to advantages that are too large and for players who are merely winning players.

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Let me put it this way: Do you agree that there are circumstances where you can have positive chip expectation, but not positive money expectation? That is, where you avoid marginally +cEV situations (such as races)? If you do, and exclude QQ v AK, how narrow does the margin need to be?

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An 8% pad (which represents about a 16% overlay, adding about a sixth to your stack on average) is huge. There are many other times when you can estimate your edge to be smaller than that. They happen frequently postflop, e.g., you might be getting slightly better than 3:2 on a call, and you might be confident that you are very close to 3:2 against your opponent's range due to past studies of the situation. Or, you might push when you need to be called less than 60% of the time for it to be profitable, and you might estimate that your chance to be called is 55%.

Please don't assume that those who are arguing against you are overlooking simple factors. That's not the only way to disagree.

[pzhon]

One of the most important differences is that the stacks are usually smaller in relation to the blinds in tournament play. It is common for the average stack to be 15 big blinds or less for much of the tournament, while the average stack is often close to 100 big blinds in a cash game. Antes further reduce the practical size of the stacks. This means playing pair poker is more important than making rare monsters, and means that the blinds represent a larger amount of dead money relative to poor players' postflop mistakes.

Another important difference is the prize structure, which rewards survival to some extent. This means players are much more likely to fold in tournaments in situations where they would call in cash games, often because they overvalue survival. The net effect is usually to favor aggression.

Much of the prize money is concentrated in the top prizes. Playing well once you make it into the last 4 players matters a lot in tournaments, even though it isn't what you do for most of the tournament, and you can avoid playing at shorthanded table entirely in cash games.

One of the more overrated factors is the ability to rebuy immediately in a cash game. This is often brought up as though it is significant with no relevance whatsoever to the point being discussed. Most of the differences in strategy would still exist in a cash game when you don't have any more money in your pocket, and will have to take some time to rebuy.

[Jazezy]

Do any of y'all play hands differently in the two? Do some hands have more call value, raise value, re-raise value or do you take the same line with same hands?

As far as folding QQ I would agree if you know the person has Ako early in the tournament. If you both have the 10k in chips do you think you suck enough that you have to risk your entire tournament on a coin flip just to accumulate chips??

[Dromar]

The whole QQ vs AK first hand of a MTT argument has been done to death. See Anthology of 2+2 Wisdom on MTTs, under "Early Stages of Tournament Play."

From my own experience, it's impossible to get people to come to an agreement on this. So I'm not even going to argue. For the record, I agree with pzhon.

My answer to the OP: What do you do differently in a cash game vs tourney?

Here's the difference: In a cash game, money is money, and it's pretty simple to see that whichever option that makes you the most money is the best option. In tournaments, however, you play with chips, that don't have exact cash value like in a cash game (unless the tournament is winner-take-all).
So in a tournament, the money gets paid out after "the bubble," which presumably you've heard of before. The only adjustment needed between tournament and cash play is to adjust accordingly to the fact that the bubble exists.
1. Players play different just outside the bubble. You need to adjust to their different play.
2. You need to take less risks just outside the bubble. How risk-averse should you be? It depends on the strength of the bubble. In a standard SnG, 60% of the money is locked for payment once the bubble breaks. That's huge, so you have to play noticeably different near the bubble in a SnG than you usually would in a cash game.
IMO, people tend to be TOO risk-averse in MTTs though. Depending on the structure, the bubble may only account for 10% or 20% of the prize to be paid out. There still should be some deviation from cash game play, but it should be less intense than the changes you should make in a SnG. Of course, people really hate playing a MTT for hours, and then busting without any prize, so this helps people overreact to the bubble.

Ways you should change your play near the bubble:
1. Don't be the one calling all-ins unless you've got a considerable edge (the definition of which varies by intensity of the bubble). Stack size permitting, you'll want to do a lot more push/fold, and less call.
2. Obviously, steal from overly tight players.

More bubble strategy (and better advice) can be found in the MTT forums, or in the Anthology link at the beginning of my post.

[greggg230]

My apologies - my response was with SNGs in mind, and I should have qualified that. I don't have enough MTT experience to talk about those.

I was also assuming that the player in question was the best at the table (I don't think it's a stretch to think that a 2p2er is the best player at any given SNG, at least for lower limits).

I understand that Sklansky is saying the best players should avoid marginal places where there is a chance of busting out, not that he's saying in order to be one of the best players, you should avoid those situations. The chips of good player are more valuable than the chips of a bad player (a good player and a bad player can have uneven stacks favoring the bad player but the good player might still have more equity in the tournament, i.e.).

I'd be curious to see the calculations for QQ v AKo in the early levels of a SNG - I don't think I've folded QQ pre-flop in an SNG (I only would in weird bubble situations), but that's because people will donk off their stacks with all sorts of terrible hands. It seems obviously right to me to fold QQ if a guy pushed all in with a face up AK when there were only $30 worth of blinds in the pot with each person sitting on $1500 stacks

[Gonso]

In cash games, you can put lot of chips on the line with barely favorable equity situations. If you have 40% equity in a hand, which means you're behind, you can call an all-in HU here getting 7-4 in a cash game. In a tournament setting, especially early on with a good table situation, you would pass on a lot of these.

[PantsOnFire]

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Do any of y'all play hands differently in the two? Do some hands have more call value, raise value, re-raise value or do you take the same line with same hands?

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Yes and no, it depends.

[jay_shark]

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I'd be curious to see the calculations for QQ v AKo in the early levels of a SNG - I don't think I've folded QQ pre-flop in an SNG (I only would in weird bubble situations), but that's because people will donk off their stacks with all sorts of terrible hands. It seems obviously right to me to fold QQ if a guy pushed all in with a face up AK when there were only $30 worth of blinds in the pot with each person sitting on $1500 stacks

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Here is one way to look at it . I will make several assumptions that everyone is equally skilled . Now it's a straight forwards ICM problem given 9 players .

Everyone's initial stack is worth 1/9 of the prize pool . Suppose ,it's folded to the sb and he pushes all in with AcKd and he flips over his hand . You look down and see QhQd , should you call ?

If you call and win , your stack is worth 0.2028 .

$EV=0.2028*0.5675 + 0*0.4325= 0.115089 >0.11111

So using this argument , I showed that you can call profitably with this hand even in an sng .

[Dromar]

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Do any of y'all play hands differently in the two? Do some hands have more call value, raise value, re-raise value or do you take the same line with same hands?

As far as folding QQ I would agree if you know the person has Ako early in the tournament. If you both have the 10k in chips do you think you suck enough that you have to risk your entire tournament on a coin flip just to accumulate chips??

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Sigh...

I had an an answer written up for this, but then my internets broke!

So the short answer is: You should generally play the same in tourneys as in a cash game, with the exception of the things I noted in my above post.

However, you'll come across many more shortstack situations in tourneys as a result of the rising blinds/no rebuys. This makes tourney play feel much different from cash play, where stacks are generally deeper.

[Dromar]

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As far as folding QQ I would agree if you know the person has Ako early in the tournament. If you both have the 10k in chips do you think you suck enough that you have to risk your entire tournament on a coin flip just to accumulate chips??

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If it were a coinflip, I would agree.