Why I Play (Mostly) Cash Games Now

I’m not terribly far removed from being a professional tournament player, but I do feel like it’s been long enough to have a pretty good idea of how things have changed and how things have stayed the same compared to my old life. Of course, I was never a terrifically high-volume live tournament player. I don’t have all my records on hand, but I’d be surprised if I ever played more than 70 live tournaments in one calendar year. A typical year for me would be to go to the PCA to play the main event, then Tunica for the main event, LAPC for some prelims and the main, maybe something in Europe in March or April, back to Vegas for the full WSOP, some time off until August and the Legends at the Bike series, then Bellagio in October and December. I wouldn’t spend tons of time on the road, but it’s still a pretty decent schedule of travel and poker for the year. When I was home in-between tournaments, I would play online, usually three days a week, maybe more. It was a great lifestyle for a twentysomething with not many attachments, no house to take care of, and more money and courage than sense. I’m certainly glad I did it, as I ended up making a ton of money, finding a cool way to travel the world with my wife, and meeting lots of people that made my life more interesting.

Of course, it helped that after a couple big wins, I picked up a sponsorship from PokerStars and they subsidized my globetrotting ways. I can’t thank them enough for the opportunities they gave me and it was really a treat to get to be a part of the best poker site in the world. Unfortunately, that relationship came to an end, and I was forced to make a decision. Would I continue to play tournaments for a living or try to figure out how to become a full-time cash grinder who sprinkles in a tournament here and there?

While the tournament lifestyle did afford me many opportunities along the way, I’ve grown to love being a cash game player for many reasons. First of all, I love the extra freedom I get from playing cash games. Tournaments have a start time and end time, but cash games don’t, so I can set up my schedule in such a way that I get to take care of my kids in the daytime and work the nights I want. I don’t have to be at x place at y time unless I choose to be. Before I had kids, this wasn’t a huge problem for me, but having to coordinate child care, quality time with my wife, and tournament schedules is pretty difficult.

Then, there’s the variance. Of course, there is variance in cash game poker as well, but it doesn’t hold a candle to tournament variance. I definitely get stressed out when I’m in the middle of a long break-even stretch at cash games, but tournaments are an altogether different beast. It’s not difficult to go 20 or more tournaments without cashing and that’s 20 days or more and lots of hours down the drain with no clear end in sight. At least in cash games, if you have a break even or losing month, you have some winning days sprinkled in there. You have some times you feel like things went right, and you don’t spend that long stretch constantly worrying about whether you’re playing well or if you’re just terrible or if you’re just running poorly, and oh God, when will it end?! Tournaments are such a feast or famine endeavor, it’s hard to keep your head when you’re down in the valley or up at the top of the peak. There is such a thing as positive tilt after all, just ask Jared Tendler. Keeping your cool at the bottom and the top is perhaps the most important skill of a tournament poker player, and that’s not just about your final results either. Even within tournaments that go well for you, there will be large highs and lows and being able to navigate those is incredibly important.

I know lots of cash game players look down on tournament players as if the game is all luck and no skill. I hope that I’m not coming off that way. I’m constantly impressed by the people I play with in tournaments and, as I just wrote two weeks ago, I played in an incredibly tough tournament recently where I would have happily traded several of my tables for almost any live $10-$20 or higher game in the world. Tournaments are a wonderful addition and a new and varied problem to add to my repertoire of cash games. I learned something from Sesame Street recently that I think applies here. Cookie Monster now says that cookies are a sometimes treat, and that’s how I look at tournaments. I can’t do them as a sole source of income anymore, but they are great as a sometimes treat. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG