Sure, we’ve all been seduced by the glamour, fame and money we see every week in the no-limit hold’em tournaments we see on TV. Championship bracelets, screen time and piles of cash can turn anyone’s head. Even though we may see many familiar faces at these final tables, we’re not seeing the many times that those players have finished out of the money, on the bubble or just short of the TV table.
In an earlier piece (‘To Cash or Not to Cash‘), I examined the role that variance plays in the career of a successful tournament player. But what does that tournament player do when he just misses the bright lights of the TV table? Some may drown their sorrows at the bar while others may slink back to their hotels and ask themselves what went wrong. The best ones, the ones that truly make their living at the game, go to the cash game tables. marked cards
On interesting fact that many newcomers to the game may not know is that, before the big tournament boom and the “Moneymaker Effect”, the purpose of poker tournaments was not to offer big events and huge paydays to the everyday player. Instead, the main idea behind poker tournaments was to bring in players for the cash games. In fact, many of the “founding fathers” of the game like Doyle Brunson, Mike Caro and Amarillo Slim Preston did not participate in some of the early World Series of Poker tournaments. Although they know that they could win bracelet after bracelet at will against the smaller fields at that time, they instead feasted on the carcasses of the defeated players who would wander into the cash games.
In the past, most casino hold’em cash games used a limit betting structure. Now, with the explosion in popularity of no-limit hold’em tournaments, players who can’t wait until the next tourney to get their fix can now satisfy their cravings in no-limit cash games. These games have become so prevalent that many card rooms are cutting back or abandoning their traditional $3/$6 or $4/$8 limit games in favor of the more popular (and more lucrative) $1/$2 and $2/$5 no-limit games. No-limit cash games have become so popular that poker author and former WSOP Main Event Champion Dan Harrington has created companion volumes to his famous Harrington on Hold’em tournament strategy guides. His two-book set is called Harrington on Cash Games: How to Win at No-Limit Hold’em Money Games. Many more books, videos and other instructional materials will soon hit the shelves that will focus on the peculiar beast of no-limit hold’em cash games. card cheating
Before you jump into these games, even if you are an experienced no-limit hold’em tournament player, you should be aware of some of the subtle differences between tournament and cash-game environments.
Short Stack vs. Deep Stack
When players start a typical freezeout tournament, each one sits down with an equal number of chips. When you take your seat at a no-limit cash game table, you will see a wide range of stack sizes. Also, when you buy into a tournament, you buy in for a set amount. At a cash game table, you can choose to buy in for any amount between the minimum allowed (typically thirty to fifty times the big blind) and some fraction of the largest stack in play. You get to choose if you would rather start out playing as a short stack and push all-in early in the hand with your best cards, or use more deep-stack techniques such as semi-bluffing and bluff check-raising.
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