cash vs tourn

[bigstock2001]

This is just some food for thought. How many people wanted to be something when they grew up to only find out that, that is not what was meant to be. I think this happens more often with players. I have done very well playing sit n goes and tourn with buy in of atleast 30.00. however I really want to be a cash player and have lots to learn, I spend all my free time reading and learning.
I honestly believe that the best skilled players are cash game players. This is where i want to be and will get there.

How many people out there feel that tourn players and cash players are two different breads. I feel only a few can master both.

Don

I have earned more money in my poker life from sit-n-gos, yet I can't shake the cash games, where I seem to be break-even to just a slight winner overtime. Cash and tourneys are very different but much can be learned and implied in both, if that makes sense. At any rate, and to answer your question, I want to be mostly a full-time cash player but I go where the money is, at least for me, and that's tournaments.

[cardsman1992]

Two totally different games, I think you should be able to play both but a lot of players are far better at one than the other. Gus Hansen is a great tourney player but the word is that he's not great at cash. I prefer cash myself, and there is a reason that during the WSOP, most of the "name" players look more forward to the side games than the tournaments themselves....

[oskar]

I play both and I'm not very good at either. I very much prefer cash, but a tournament every once in a while is fun. And i just found a new love: HU sng's.
They're all immensely different. I prefer cash because there are so many ways you can play it (In an amateurs mind there are endless possibilities )... The players determine the action and not the stacks and blind levels.
In tournaments I feel like most of the time there is exactly one way I can play a hand... The longer I play the more it feels like I'm a slave to ICM.

I think what helps my game is playing both at the same time - one sng table and 3 cash tables is a good mixture for me because I take a bit of my tournament mentality to the cashgames which prevents me from going apeshit against über passive minbet donks.

[sarbox68]

IMHO they're vry different once you get past the basics. I think the biggest difference for me is that good SNG playing requires you to have a range of styles. You can't just nit it up from drop to stop and win as you can for cash games. And if you go for broke LAG from the gate, you run a good chance of getting kicked early.

SNGs require you adapt both to the players and the blind stage, with different skills/styles for both. Cash only requires you to adapt to the player (at least at my limits...) altho' you gotta get much better at playing thin value to maximize earnings over time.

So to loosely quote RedZill4, "you use too many godd@mn words" (which is true... ), I play cash 'cause I prefer it. However, I try to mix in some SNGs to force me to think differently about some sh!t and break out of nitville.

[oskar]

That's interesting because I play MUCH nittier in sng's at least in the early stages. I get fairly aggressive when I get shortstacked, or when I play against shortstacks, or if they are too nitty... but it's all within ICM.
In cashgames I feel like you can get away with much more aggressive play with similar stacks/blinds. I think it's mostly because in a tournament I want to preserve as much of my stack as possible for a good hand so I can get maximum value when I do get a big hand. In a cash game, I have auto-reload checked, so I don't need to worry about that, ever.

[sarbox68]

I think we're saying the same thing... My point was that you gotta deal with blind-stage in tournie play, which doesn't exist at cash. So ABC SNG maybe has you tight early, looser mid + some extra blind stealing, tighten up again on the bubble unless you big stack and then once the blinds is statospheric, it's push/fold ICM sh!t.

Cash don't play like that 'cause the blinds is the blinds is the blinds no matter how long you sit at the table...

Player dependent play is of course the same... and in cash, you can play thinner value 'cause as you said, you can always get more chips

Another thing is that you encounter having ran out of money to bet with in SNGs more often... in cash games, yeah sometimes I mess up my bet sizing based on stack sizez, but it's more often in SNGs