the-poker-grafter

There’s no doubt that these days I’m a tournament player who dabbles in cash games. So what do I notice when I dip my toe back into this other world that I have largely ignored in recent years? Well for one thing, being a decent tournament player won’t in itself give you an edge. It’s all still Hold’em but the structures are so contrasting that they place different demands on the competitors.

So what are the main differences and how do they dictate strategy? Well firstly, all players do not necessarily begin equal. Of course this is always the case in terms of ability and experience but tournament players always begin with equal chip stacks and at the same time. NL cash games typically have a minimum and maximum buy-in level and within those parameters individuals can choose. Some players want to begin with the most chips so that they can bully opponents from the outset. They know that that they can also maximise their profits when a ‘double-up’ opportunity arises. But equally these deep stackers inevitably have the most to lose as well. Sometimes a chastened player who lost £500 quickly by putting it all on the felt from the outset will only return with £100 the following time to avoid a catastrophic repeat. There will be other players buying for the minimum amount simply because it’s all they can afford to lose.

My second point was that tournaments start at a set time. An 8:30 event will see most players trooping into the room at 8.29. Admittedly there will always be a few late arrivals but there stacks will still dwindle accordingly. When you join a cash game some of your opponents may have been sat there for six hours already. This can mean just about anything and it’s your job to find out what it is. Is the guy two seats to my left exhausted, drunk or does he always look that dopey! Has the Italian girl playing every hand gone on tilt after a nasty run of bad luck or is she on a ‘heater’ – a great run of cards – believing she can now win every pot? You’re watching, and indeed becoming a character within a soap opera, having missed several episodes already.

In a tournament a quiet hour and a stagnating chip stack is a cause for concern. If you’re doing nothing then you’re actually going backwards. In my familiar environment the blinds are constantly rising and it’s programmed into me that I must accelerate as time goes on if I’m not going to fall off the pace and get blinded away. This is definitely not the case in cash games where the blinds never increase. Consequently if you have the same number of chips in front of you at 10pm as you did at 8pm then there is no problem. Sure, you may feel like you’ve wasted your time but strategically you remain untarnished and, hopefully, fortified by a read on your opponents that wasn’t there two hours previously. This should bode well for the next two hours. My problem is that I need to constantly remind myself of these hard facts due to my automatic tendency to move through the gears over time.

Another big difference between the formats is the hands that people are prepared to ‘go bust’ with. Now, of course all players are different but I would suggest that the finite nature of tournaments means that good players will reach a critical point when they decide that a chance must be taken. This may involve taking a double-up chance with 10-10 before the chip stack gets too low. Contrast this with a NL cash game where a solid textbook player is unlikely to risk everything with a pre-flop hand such as 10-10 unless unusual circumstances are in place. This creates a whole new way of thinking for a tournament man like himself.
On the one hand I have to be more reticent about calling all-in with K-K on a low flop in a cash game. In this spot other solid textbook players are just that much more likely to have me beat with the likes of trips if they are betting really hard. In a tournament that doesn’t have a very slow format you will just have to commit with overpairs a greater share of the time. It can obviously be frustrating and a challenge to tighten up you calling range all of a sudden in cash games but the good news comes when we flip this situation around. If other players have tighter calling ranges as well then the potential for big bluffs becomes much greater. This weekend I had a hand that illustrates the point nicely.

I was in a lively NL cash game where four or five players were routinely seeing flops to a raise. I was on the button and decided because of strong position to see some action with the meagre holding of Q-2. The flop came with a staggeringly unhelpful J-6-6. When the play checked to me I decided to have a value bluff bet at the pot with nothing. Everybody folded apart from a tight player in the blinds who called. Given the size of my bet and his table image I was pretty sure he had to have a six in his hand, so I would be check-folding whatever happened next. However, what I hadn’t bargained on was another Jack coming on the turn. This changed everything. If he did have a six then this was a nightmare card for him to see. Furthermore my bet on the flop very easily represented a jack in my hand. Spotting an opportunity here I bet about three quarters of the pot on the turn. My opponent called again before the irrelevance of the river was dealt and he quickly checked into me again. I was now about 90% sure that he had a six and was hating the two jacks that could scupper him. I now had the choice of giving up the ghost by checking out for certain defeat or making one more massive move.

I asked how much he had left and knew I had him covered. One more bet around the size of the pot would put him all-in. It would only work if he had a six, not a jack, believed I had a jack and could fold his six accordingly. It was a very tense moment but I reckoned I could make him fold his full house so I went for it. After some consideration that felt like an eternity but actually wasn’t that long…he folded. And showed his six in the process. It was a great moment for me where the risk of looking a fool was immense! I most definitely didn’t show what I had been up to. As crazy as this play may seem though it was constructed having logically working through the hand. I realise that the NL cash game gave me a chance to make this play where it would have been just too high-risk in most tournaments. In a fast structure a guy with a six might well think ‘he could have a jack, but I should call with my full house anyway.’ Thankfully my cash opponent didn’t feel this way.

Last week I grabbed a rare opportunity to hone my cash game skills when I joined a £1/£3 game back at The Empire casino. Actually, that’s misleading; the opportunities are always there but I rarely choose to grab them. As stated on many occasions before, I regard myself as a tournament player, whether single or multi-table, and I’ve become rather set in my ways. Going back a few years I played a great deal of cash games, but at the time, I favoured the fixed limit variation. I regard myself as relatively inexperienced as a no-limit cash player and consequently felt like I was jumping in at the deep end a few days ago. It was a paradox that I may well have played more hands of poker than everybody else at the table yet was still rusty in cash terms.

The first re-adjustment I had to make was to the dynamic of the game itself. In tournaments all players start equal, at least in monetary terms. You pay an entry fee and purchase an exact number of chips in return. In cash games there is typically a minimum and a maximum buy-in determined by the stakes and each participant can choose what level to come in at. On this occasion the minimum buy-in was £100 and the maximum £500. I bought in cautiously with the minimum, a decision that many cash experts would perceive as putting me at a disadvantage. The reasons for this are quite obvious. Firstly, I denied myself the opportunity to get maximum value from my best hands. An early double-up from £100 to £200 is obviously less lucrative than the same percentage shift from £500 to £1000. Secondly, it’s much easier for a short-stack to get pot-committed or pushed out when simply wanting to see a flop. Thirdly, if you lose a couple of hands before you win one then it’s time to reload or leave. Fourthly, and somewhat because of the previous reasons, I was likely to be perceived as weak and therefore a good target to be bullied.

I would suggest that many of these disadvantages can be countered or at least minimised. First of all, the double-up argument can obviously be flipped over. It stands to reason that if you can win twice as much on a single hand by buying in higher, then you can also lose twice as much. Not exactly rocket science I know, but worthwhile to remember nonetheless. Secondly, if you can get yourself pot-committed with a short stack then you can also trap bigger stacks into being ‘priced in’ to pay you off. The fact that you need to win one of the first hands you commit to is a genuine problem but hardly unique to the short stack. In this instance the difference between me and the guy who bought in for £500 would only be money on the table when all said and done. Hypothetically, I’ve probably lost less but he’s still in the game.

My game at The Empire was phenomenally lively. In the tournaments I tend to play the early stages are typically cagey while the blinds are small and irrelevant. That brings me to the other major difference in format. In cash games the blinds stay the same throughout so there is no sense of acceleration as time goes by. For some cash players this clearly seems to negate any perceived need to start cautiously. The pace was frenetic from the outset and as I looked round the table it was clear that there were about 7 ‘wild men’ out of the 10 of us. This told me a few things. If I was dealt some good start cards I needed to play them hard and fast to reduce the field. It seemed very unlikely that I wouldn’t get paid off if my best hands held up. Conventional wisdom suggests that you should play in the opposite style to the majority of the table. So at a tight table you play looser and at this table you most definitely needed to get tighter. With my limited stack there was no way that I was going to be allowed to sneak into many pots on the cheap.

The tone of the evening was set early on when four players saw a flop for £35 (more than 10 times the big blind) without a premium hand anywhere in sight. The massive pot was captured by one of the biggest buy-ins who was in there with 6-5o to see the flop of 2-3-4. This gave me food for thought. I’m pretty sure I’ve never flat called for 10 times the big blind with 6-5o and I would have remembered seeing a flop like that if I had done! Cash games are clearly another world entirely. So much for conventional wisdom.

That said I stuck to my plan. I played tight, more so than I intended if I’m honest, before playing 8-8 very hard from under the gun. I doubled up after receiving all the action I could have wished for from A-2o out of position, from a new player at the table. He clearly wasn’t going to calm things down! I then waited another hour to hit top two pair with K-Q after paying far more than I liked to see a flop. That secured me a small profit for the session having won two of the big three pots I had committed to. It was a satisfactory outcome and a break from the norm but I looked forward to returning to my comfort zone.

Simon Ballou writes for Oddschecker Poker