A large number of people begin playing online poker though cash games because that’s where the majority of players get their initial practice. Some people fall in love with cash games, and choose to spend the majority of their poker sessions here. But no matter how much one enjoys playing in cash games, they’re eventually going to want to try out some tournaments.
Of course you should know a thing or two about the differences between the two styles of poker before making this switch. And the first thing you should keep in mind when moving from cash games to tournaments is that you only have so many chips. Many players come in with the cash game mindset of playing as if they’re able to buy back in once their money is gone. Unfortunately, when your chips are gone in a tournament, you are done!
This means that you’ll have to pick your spots more in tourneys rather than letting mathematics and odds rule your play like in cash games. For instance, you might be getting good pot odds on a hand where a call will force you all-in, but the situation might warrant that you fold and look to double up somewhere else along the way.
Of course you definitely need to make moves somewhere along the line because the blinds are constantly going up. This is very different from cash games where you pick your blind levels, and they remain constant the whole way through. Seeing as how blinds constantly increase, stealing blinds plays a bigger role in tournaments because the act becomes much more profitable. This contrasts most cash games where you’re not getting as much value out of stealing blinds since your stack won’t go up as much.
One more thing to keep in mind is that the tournament money is at the top as opposed to cash games where many different players can profit. Only about 10% of the players in a tourney are going to cash, and the top person is going to walk away with anywhere from 20% to 50% of the prize pool. Seeing as how this is the case, you’ve got to be focused on building a stack that will put you at the top rather than just hoping to make it past the cashing bubble.
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