From Cash Games to the Tournament of Tournaments

At this time of the year, when the main event of the World Series of Poker gets started, a lot of poker players wonder, “What if?” For the other 50 weeks of the year, they’re content to play cash games at their local casino, or online, or just at a kitchen table. But come Independence Day, they’re wondering if they have what it takes to be successful in the world’s biggest poker tournament. Maybe they’ve even won a seat into the “Big Dance,” and are desperately hoping their ring-game skills will translate into tournament skills. How can they accomplish the dream? How can they go from a cash-game world to a tournament world and thrive?

Cash games and tournaments are not supposed to be all that different. In fact, most poker-math guys will tell you that, with exceptions at the money bubble and at the final table, optimal play in a tournament setting is the same as it would be in a cash-game setting, where the chips are worth real money. While that is fine from a theoretical standpoint, and might even be 100 percent correct in a land where everyone played perfect poker, tournaments and cash games play out very differently in the real world, and call for separate, if overlapping, skill sets.

The early stage of a tournament bears more similarity to a cash game than any other stage. The stack sizes are relatively big compared to the blinds, just as they are in a typical cash game. Still, the specter of losing all of one’s chips is always looming in every tournament setting, and even in the early stages, it changes the way people play.

In a no-limit hold’em cash game, reraising an initial raiser is a common move. It’s so common, in fact, that a popular counterstrategy to this move has emerged — the four-bet bluff. The four-bet bluff, in turn, has led some cash-game players to go one step further and reraise all in with a speculative hand. It is not unheard of to see the following sequence in a $1-$2 no-limit hold’em game: The cutoff raises to $7, the button reraises to $24, the blinds fold, the cutoff reraises to $60, the button moves all in for $200, the cutoff calls, the button turns over 7-6 suited, and the cutoff turns over pocket nines.

In a tournament setting, with starting stacks of 10,000 in chips and blinds of 50-100, you would virtually never see a player get all in preflop with pocket nines, let alone 7-6 suited. When the first reraise hits the pot, tournament players immediately become wary that their opponent might have a big hand, and they’re not too inclined to test the waters with a four-bet, knowing that the next decision may be for all of their chips. Tournament players don’t want to bring the specter of going broke and being eliminated from the tournament into play. Many top tournament pros consider preflop play to be somewhat of a crapshoot, and post-flop play to be where real skill is required. In an attempt to maximize their edge, players like Daniel Negreanu, Erick Lindgren, and Gavin Smith do as little raising and reraising preflop as possible, preferring instead to turn tournament poker into a post-flop game whenever they can.

The upshot of all of this is that tournament players like to see flops with big stacks, whereas cash-game players like to push the envelope preflop by four-betting and five-betting with less-than-premium holdings. A rule of thumb for cash games is that the first raise means nothing, the reraise doesn’t mean much more, but the four-bet starts to get scary. In tournaments, the first raise still means nothing, but the reraise is already frightening. Because the second raise gets so much respect in tournaments, it’s a good idea to use it often, especially in the middle stages when the blinds and antes are a bit bigger.

And the blinds and antes will get bigger — far bigger relative to stack sizes than they are in cash games. This is a key difference between the two formats. Cash games pretty much always feature stack sizes of 100 big blinds or more (unless someone is intentionally playing short-stacked). In tournaments, after the early stages, a stack of 100 big blinds is a monster. Most players will have between 20 and 50 big blinds.

The smaller stack size changes play completely. Implied odds are gone. Stealing blinds and antes suddenly has massive value. The preflop reraise often puts an opponent to a decision for all of his chips, and therefore carries a far greater likelihood of getting an opponent to fold his hand. Cash-game players are simply not used to these situations, and learning to play with the smaller stack size is probably the single biggest adjustment that a cash-game player needs to make to become a successful tournament player. In the right scenario, a hyperaggressive maniacal style can be well-rewarded in a tournament setting, whereas in cash games, such a style is almost always doomed to fail. Cash-game players need to learn a few new ways to get chips when they don’t have the full arsenal of a deep stack at their disposal.

Playing a smaller stack is generally easier than playing a bigger stack, which is why it’s usually an easier transition for a cash-game player to become a tournament player than the other way around. But what separates good tournament players from great ones is knowing when to deviate from the expected course of action. A standard approach is to continually bet and raise, trying to pick up blinds and antes, and to back off when an opponent shows resistance. But sometimes it’s better to make that four-bet bluff. Sometimes it’s better to call the reraiser. Sometimes it’s better to go with a read, based on physical tells, or playing patterns, or sheer instinct. Many players can learn a by-the-book approach. The best players go beyond it.

My final piece of advice for making the cash-to-tournament transition is to revert to your best cash-game strategy against the very top tournament pros. At some point in most major tournaments, the wheat will be separated from the chaff, and you’ll find yourself at a table that’s full of successful, knowledgeable pros. That is not the time to crawl into a shell. That is the time to gamble, which usually means mixing it up preflop, and having little or no regard for making an all-in bluff or semibluff. To reach this level of fearlessness, pretend that it’s a cash game, and that you can rebuy if you go broke. Against stiff competition, gambling may be your best shot. Some of the tough players might even have trouble dealing with such a strategy, and you could find yourself with a small edge.

I hope this column has given cash-game players a road map for how to adjust to tournament play. I certainly could’ve used such a guide many years back!

Matt Matros is the author of The Making of a Poker Player, which is available online at www.CardPlayer.com. He is also a featured coach for stoxpoker.com.