Tournament Poker Vs Cash Game
Advantages:
Tournaments: With a relatively small investment you can gain a fairly large amount of experience. Let's say you would like to invest $100 in poker. Playing $1+0.10 ($1 goes to price pool and $0.10 is your entry fee) or $2.20 entry tournaments you can play many hours of poker and be in very many different situations. You can learn in these situations a lot about the game and see the quality of players. A very big advantage for beginners is that in these low entry fee tournaments even if you made a bad decision and lose an all-in, you will only lose your entry fee ($1.10 or $2.20). If you lost an all-in in a cash game, the $10-$20 pot will hurt your bankroll a lot more.
Cash game: The very big advantage of cash game is that you can sit down and play any time you want and as long as you would like to. This type of game is very flexible and you can easily play multi tables any time you wished to. While tournament play is very time consuming, cash game you can play also for 10-20 minutes if you didn't have more time. This is crucial, because a tournament can easily last for 5-6 hours and most of the players do not have that much time to play.
In cash games you can also play different types of game. For example: 2 hold'em full-ring tables, 1 short-handed hold'em and an Omaha game. In cash games you can also win more money in a short amount of time and give a boom to your bankroll. A key importance as well that you cannot forget: as rakeback can be one of your major sources of revenue at the end of the month it is impossible to get huge rakeback only playing tournaments.
Disadvantages:
Tournaments: It is a very time consuming way of playing the game. Best is if the entry fee is only 1-2% of your total bankroll. The distribution of winning varies largely on different poker rooms. If you decided to play tournaments it is very important to check out the different poker rooms what they exactly offer for tournament players. What do I mean? Some poker rooms reward 15-20% of the players who entered the tournament. Of course in this case the winning % of the total price pool is not too large; however you will be quite often in the money. On the other side there are poker rooms that only reward 9-10% of the entrants, and even from the winners only the top 1-2% will get a very good price. The advantage in the second case is, if you were in the 1-2% you will get a huge reward.
As you see you have to consider where you would like to play and if you wanted a short-time but low ROI (return on investment) or you rather win a smaller percentage of the time but then a huge price. Anyway you have to be patient and get ready to be unsuccessful sometimes even for 10-20 tournaments until you make a final table. The worst disadvantage for me is psychological in tournament play. This occurs when you play 2-3 hours perfect poker and in a bad beat or after one bad decision you lose all your money, be out of the tournament and did not win anything. In this scenario it was only a waste of time. In cash game such problems do not occur. You have to decide which internet poker site fits to your expectations.
Cash game: To see the disadvantage in this type of game is very obvious. Inexperienced players have to pay the price of poker. While if you lost in tournament because of a bad decision, you only lost your entry fee but in a cash game you can lose a whole lot of money. This can have a crucial effect on your bankroll. In cash game, players risk a lot more money than in tournaments. Experienced players can also put pressure on beginners if they realize that a beginner does not want to take much risk because of the fear of losing. In this case the experienced player can raise regularly and the beginners will just fold most of the time slowly losing their whole stack. Not even mentioning when someone is on tilt and maybe loses half or the whole bankroll in a couple of hours in a cash game! Do not be one of these players.
You cannot learn poker for free (because playing costs you money), but with the right strategy you can save a lot of money for you! I hope you got a good view on the difference of tournaments and cash games in poker. In Part2 we will discuss more precise topics regarding all-ins, bankroll issues, your opponents and shifting gears.
Tournaments: With a relatively small investment you can gain a fairly large amount of experience. Let's say you would like to invest $100 in poker. Playing $1+0.10 ($1 goes to price pool and $0.10 is your entry fee) or $2.20 entry tournaments you can play many hours of poker and be in very many different situations. You can learn in these situations a lot about the game and see the quality of players. A very big advantage for beginners is that in these low entry fee tournaments even if you made a bad decision and lose an all-in, you will only lose your entry fee ($1.10 or $2.20). If you lost an all-in in a cash game, the $10-$20 pot will hurt your bankroll a lot more.
Cash game: The very big advantage of cash game is that you can sit down and play any time you want and as long as you would like to. This type of game is very flexible and you can easily play multi tables any time you wished to. While tournament play is very time consuming, cash game you can play also for 10-20 minutes if you didn't have more time. This is crucial, because a tournament can easily last for 5-6 hours and most of the players do not have that much time to play.
In cash games you can also play different types of game. For example: 2 hold'em full-ring tables, 1 short-handed hold'em and an Omaha game. In cash games you can also win more money in a short amount of time and give a boom to your bankroll. A key importance as well that you cannot forget: as rakeback can be one of your major sources of revenue at the end of the month it is impossible to get huge rakeback only playing tournaments.
Disadvantages:
Tournaments: It is a very time consuming way of playing the game. Best is if the entry fee is only 1-2% of your total bankroll. The distribution of winning varies largely on different poker rooms. If you decided to play tournaments it is very important to check out the different poker rooms what they exactly offer for tournament players. What do I mean? Some poker rooms reward 15-20% of the players who entered the tournament. Of course in this case the winning % of the total price pool is not too large; however you will be quite often in the money. On the other side there are poker rooms that only reward 9-10% of the entrants, and even from the winners only the top 1-2% will get a very good price. The advantage in the second case is, if you were in the 1-2% you will get a huge reward.
As you see you have to consider where you would like to play and if you wanted a short-time but low ROI (return on investment) or you rather win a smaller percentage of the time but then a huge price. Anyway you have to be patient and get ready to be unsuccessful sometimes even for 10-20 tournaments until you make a final table. The worst disadvantage for me is psychological in tournament play. This occurs when you play 2-3 hours perfect poker and in a bad beat or after one bad decision you lose all your money, be out of the tournament and did not win anything. In this scenario it was only a waste of time. In cash game such problems do not occur. You have to decide which internet poker site fits to your expectations.
Cash game: To see the disadvantage in this type of game is very obvious. Inexperienced players have to pay the price of poker. While if you lost in tournament because of a bad decision, you only lost your entry fee but in a cash game you can lose a whole lot of money. This can have a crucial effect on your bankroll. In cash game, players risk a lot more money than in tournaments. Experienced players can also put pressure on beginners if they realize that a beginner does not want to take much risk because of the fear of losing. In this case the experienced player can raise regularly and the beginners will just fold most of the time slowly losing their whole stack. Not even mentioning when someone is on tilt and maybe loses half or the whole bankroll in a couple of hours in a cash game! Do not be one of these players.
You cannot learn poker for free (because playing costs you money), but with the right strategy you can save a lot of money for you! I hope you got a good view on the difference of tournaments and cash games in poker. In Part2 we will discuss more precise topics regarding all-ins, bankroll issues, your opponents and shifting gears.
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