Hypothetical Question: Ring vs Tournament Player

[TheAcesRToxic]

If a given player is a winning cash game player, lets say 2+ BI's per 1k hands on avg, does that automatically mean they should have a high winrate in tournaments (MTT's/SnGs included). If not, why?

I often see many discussions about this person and that person being a tournament monster, but getting crushed in cash games and vice versa. Is there a reason for this? Comments from you guys would be greatly appreciated.

[jay_shark]

Roger federer has never won the French Open .

Believe it or not !!

[TheAcesRToxic]

lol, seriously though

[mattak]

Common wisdom around here is that cash games are more complex than tournament play. I personally think that is true but you might find some arguements at Pocket 5's. Cash games are more profitable, especially at the higher limits. So, to answer your question, the best cash game players are probably the best poker players and could show better long term results than most tournament specialists. However, most cash game players dont focus on playing tournaments because the ROI is lower and variance higher.

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
If a given player is a winning cash game player, lets say 2+ BI's per 1k hands on avg, does that automatically mean they should have a high winrate in tournaments (MTT's/SnGs included). If not, why?

[/ QUOTE ]
No. They are related, of course, but the stack depths are usually much lower in tournaments, other players are more afraid of losing everything, and prizes for second and lower places reward survival. Some ring game players also don't know how to play shorthanded, which is important in almost all tournaments. A cash game player needs to adapt to the tournament situation, and some players aren't flexible enough.

[ QUOTE ]
I often see many discussions about this person and that person being a tournament monster, but getting crushed in cash games and vice versa. Is there a reason for this? Comments from you guys would be greatly appreciated.

[/ QUOTE ]
While there are some differences between NL cash games and tournaments, this may not be behind most of those statements. Historically, when people said that, there were few NL ring games. People were talking about players who played well in NL tournaments, and poorly in limit ring games.

In limit, the bets are smaller, the hand evaluations are different, and you can't make up for playing badly on hand after hand with one good play. Many tournament players would get bored and try to outplay people with weak hands, but it's very hard to make up for poor preflop hand selection, and it's hard to steal a pot when people are usually getting great odds to call down.

More recently, there have been plenty of NL cash games, so some of the statements are about high profile tournament personalities losing in NL cash games. It could be that they don't know how to deal with the deeper stacks and decreased folding equity, but it could also be that one reputation or the other is wrong.

[Lego05]

[ QUOTE ]
Roger federer has never won the French Open .

Believe it or not !!

[/ QUOTE ]

He probably will ventually though.


The games are different. I've always heard it said and agree with that it is easier to go from being a cash player to playing tournamnets rather than to go from playing tournaments to playing cash games. However, it can be done either way. IMO the main difference is the depth of stacks. Also bubble play and chip ev not equaling dollard ev in tournaments can come into play. That's especially teu in STT's (one table tournamnets which are so different from other forms of poker) although it is mostly also true in the late stages especially the final table of MTT's.


BTW there's probably other stuff I'm missing especially because I don't want to spend any more time on this.

[poker_bill]

Well, I do the online SnG's and MTT's and play B&M MTT.

With tournament play, you have to keep track of the other players around you, and how much they have in relation to their M's and Q's (taken from Harrington on Holdem).

Table sizes shrink and grow, so your starting hand selection will change.

When the blinds are get big, stealing becomes important.

Hands that were marginal in the beginning can become all in hands late in the tournament.

There's a lot more to it, but that's what came to me right off.

[SellingtheDrama]

One of the big differences in tournament (especially MTT) play compared to cash games is the lack of ability to seat/table select.

In a cash game you can usually position yourself wherever you want to, and in a tournament you get what you're dealt. You have to be more adaptable and understand the adjustments necessary there.

Also, as noted, cash games are generally strictly deep stacked affairs, while a tournament tends to have a field with a significantly smaller M, which dictates a certain playing style.

[PantsOnFire]

The style of play in a tournament is much more dynamic. Unlike a cash game, those chips in front of you are all you have and when they're gone, you go home (or to a cash game).

Since that reality is in front of everyone, some players deal with it differently. You'll get one group who is trying to double up as soon as they can so they will be all-in at the first good opportunity (and that opportunity might just be 66 or AJs). The opposite of those guys are the ones who treat their chips like children and the table is a freeway. And everybody else is somewhere in between. And that's just at the start of the tourney.

Then the stakes begin to escalate. Players get desparate. Some get desparate too early and some never even recognize that they need to get desparate until it's too late and they fizzle away into the night.

So a good tournament player needs to sift through all those dynamics to figure out what is going on. For example, he could have two pair on a wet board and be facing an all-in. But he needs to know what kind of guy he is up against. The guy trying to double up will have the flush or straight draw while the guy in survival mode will have top set. The same applies later in the tournament when some players get desparate to varying degrees. A very desparate player may just move all-in in a big pot with a very slim draw. A good tournament player knows this so he could move all-in with the nuts and some other player could misread that as weakness and bite.

I play mostly tourneys so that's what I basically talked about. However, I hope you can see that a cash player headed to a tourney might be like a fish out of water and vice versa of course.

Same game, basically same rules, whole different mindset and skillset.

[jstill]

I assume any top cash game player can play tournaments fine sng or mtt, the opposite is generally true of the lower limits, just some great tourney players play over their experience in cash games or against players who they dont have an edge on in deep stack poker as they arent as experienced, and generally the mistake is they stack off too light pre or postflop as they do in tourneys or play too tight adjusting to cash games as an overcompensation of their transition...

cash game players however may lack some of the understanding of end game tournament play when the stacks get lower and may play too tight or too loose, and may not be able to take into consideraton things like pay out structure and look at it from too upfront of an EV standpoint as in cash games...

theyre just different and both take experience to get a hold of, tournament players dont often put the time in to refine their cash game play and vice versa