Quote Originally Posted by givememyleg View Post
Hey Alex,

Thanks for taking the time to visit our site and answer our member's questions!

  1. What is/are the most common issue(s) you see players make transitioning from cash games to tournaments?
  2. How has twitch changed the game for you? What are the pros/cons of live streaming while playing?
  3. Do you prefer online or live play? What adjustments are necessary playing live rather than online?
No problem, pleasure to be here

1) Cash game players go for the kill too much. In tournaments there is great equity in being even in a slight chip advantage. If you risk that for a so-so payoff you will have risked too much. There is a reason Phil Ivey doesn't have a Hold'em bracelet. Phil Hellmuth thinks of a tournament as a business. There is much more to the game than an immediate chip EV payoff. What is his position going to be if each play mucks itself up?

The lion's share of the money is in the final three spots. It doesn't matter how many chips you have when you get there. Poker tournaments are about deriving value from as many hands as possible, not deriving the most. If you have 422 hands you can see in a tournament but you off yourself by going for a thin value on hand 88, you just forfeited the rest of the hands.

2) I honestly can't choose. I think you need to balance. It's fun to play live the first week or so because it's a change of pace, but then I start wanting things to go faster, and for their to be less BS timebanking. Once I'm home however sometimes I miss being able to focus on one larger table at a time, as opposed to having the distractions of home bothering me.

With live you have to do much more estimating. Online you can have a diagnosis of a players game for five years. Live you have to really feel out how the guy is playing that day. You need some base line ranges to work with. If he opens X that means he's playing at least Y% and you can do Z. If you don't have these pressure points memorized you're leaving money on the table.