Playing Poker the difference between tournaments and cash games

During my stint as a professional poker player, I was on a learning curve for much of the time and one thing to learn when playing poker – be it Texas Hold’em or any other poker game, is the difference between playing a tournament and playing a cash game. On the surface – they are the same game, but money management is far more important in  certain stages of a tournament than at any other time. I am talking about freezeouts not rebuys here. Rebuys demand a different strategy and I will be looking at rebuy tournaments in another hub. 

In a freezeout tournament where you are limited to the starting chip stack and may not rebuy, it is vital to conserve your chips early on. Bluffing is extremely dangerous at this stage of the game unless you have weighed up your table and decided there are enough tight players to make the occasional move. Patience is your friend in the opening levels.

In a cash game, you can always reach into your pocket and add more chips. In a freezeout tournament this is not the case, so you must play accordingly. No silly moves, wait for a good hand and conserve your chips while the blinds are low. As the tournament progresses and the value of blind increase this strategy needs to change. Although, I have sat through enough tournaments to know that you can see nothing but junk for hours on end so you will need to loosen up occasionally when you judge the time is right.

My rule of thumb is not to get worried in a poker tournament until my chip stack is below twenty times the big blind. At this point you need to make a move or catch some cards. One thing to take into consideration is the time intervals that the blinds are raised. So keep your eye on the clock and the next blind level to make sure your stack does not fall below this level. I have been caught out in a few European poker tournaments where the organizers changed the structure later on in the game to weed out players because they had miscalculated the time the game would take and were running behind schedule. This rarely happens in the US or a major casino, but if you are playing in Europe – beware the lousy organizers.

Another crucial stage of the game is the point where the cutoff to reach the money  is close. If only a few more players need to be eliminated, many tighten up at this point. DO the opposite – loosen up and watch your chips stack grow. Or crap out ☺