Great Tournament and Ring players

[Off5th]

How many of you are great at tournaments and also in cash games? I think that my cash game is to say the least decent because my bankroll has gone up 30% and i havent had any bad streaks yet. As far as tournaments, specially sit n go's, i haven't enjoyed that much success because of my hand selections. I dunno for some reason when blinds get big i start to panick and go with mediocre hands like K-10s. But for cash games i'm really patient and wait for monsters hands or suited connectors and play them really well. I guess my question is how do you adjust your game from playing cash games and tournaments. Is playing more hands on the blinds a good idea? Is it important to complete your blinds (sb) rather than just fold if you have lets say 56o and theres no raise?

[drdeutsch]

When I play ring games, I tend to play Loose Aggressive Passive (according to Pokertracker), but I'm trying to tighten up my game to Tight/Semi-Tight Aggressive Aggressive. Mind you, that's at 02NL hold em, because I'm still a newbie and want to get at least 10k hands and a steady winning rate before I move up to 25NL. I've pretty much broken even over my first 1500 hands, so maybe I'm still playing too loosely.

As far as SNG's go, I'm doing pretty well. I've only played 16 of the PS 5.50s, but I finish ITM 50% of the time and have a 189% ROI. These I tend to start out pretty loosely and play a lot of hands trying to double up early before the blinds get big. At around 75/150 I start to really tighten up and only play really good hands or even mediocre hands in position

So, that's this newb's style.

[Rondavu]

You should read posts in the tournament section to get a feel for what winning technique is. Cash game and tournament are much different animals as you've discovered. Tournaments are more preflop poker, especially at the later stages. Cash game is postflop poker. Tournaments are representation into the blinds. Cash game blinds are meaningless, and playing into them only stands to give you action. Do you want that action is the question.

It's not easy to sum up all the contrary nuances of the two animals, but from what you stated, pushing KT late in a tournament can get you in big trouble. Aces are gold. I'll push A8 before KT. You want the other guy to have KT. I'd rather call an all in against a stack 1/3 my size holding A5o, than call a raise from an equivalent stack holding AJs. When you're playing for stacks and everyone knows it, the rules change. You can reasonably recover from a bad read in a cash game, where a bad read in a tournament is going to hammer you.

[The_Bankroll]

I play both and turn a profit at both. It just takes being able to have the two seperate in your mind, and having a through understanding of each. I'm mainly a limit cash game player, but I'll hit up NL MTTs for fun sometimes (eventhough I'm thinking about playing more and taking it more seriously) and SNGs whenever I'm clearing a bonus on Bodog.

[thirteen]

I'm decent at both but not great at either. I also wonder if its truly possible to be great at both. If your intentions are to make money, you should probably just pick a segment of the game and focus exclusively on it.

I believe it was Soupie who once said that he believes its very important to specialize in order to be successful in todays poker world.

My issue is that I'm hesitant to make that hard decision between the different formats. However my personality type is that of someone who likes variety and I tend to be skilled in various areas within my professional life as well. So I'm likely to eventually favor one format over the other, but I'll play all of them.

[lamaros]

many poker skills are universal, there's no reason a good player shouldn't be successful at both.

[The_Bankroll]

many poker skills are universal, there's no reason a good player shouldn't be successful at both.

I agree. In fact, I disagree with the specialization argument. I think playing both makes you better at both. And you don't need specialization to succeed in today's poker world. Look at how many pros play mixed games.

[saxdaddy]

I think the high is better when I win $50 in a $5.5 27 player tourny than when I win $50 in a ring game because of the effort and drama involved. I started out playing tourny, then bonus chasing led me to play ring. I see a fair number of players get reckless when their chips are low in ring, which is really stupid. In toury you have to gambool in that situation but in ring you should keep playing your A game, add chips to get back to the max buy-in and plow ahead. I also see all-in's with an over pair in ring sometimes which I reognize as something I used to do in tourny play. Again, not the wisest move in ring. Ring play is different, but more profitable for me, and I like profit so I now go for increasing my BR over the high of winning a tourny, unless I am really bored or frustrated then I'll play a tourny just for the fun of it. My 2 cents anyway.

[Miffed22001]

I turn a profit at all 3 types ring, sng and mtt. basically im better at ring because i can make the right decisions over and over again. Ive learnt my math so to speak. sng for me has to much gambOOl element in the later stages, eg overs vs pp races etc That imo takes away from me a key strength in my game, the ability to make a good call. Mtt is the middle ground and requires a bit of both therefore i turn a healthy profit but not an exellent one. All the games require diferent skills that need to be learnt and practiced.