Clean up your poker cash-game act

Making money at the cash tables is by no means a simple challenge. There are countless aspects of your game that you can chisel, improve and take to a higher level, and there is no set cash game strategy that guarantees you results under all circumstances. Therefore, in addition to knowing your strategy, your goals and your capabilities properly, you need to be extremely flexible and able to adjust on the fly to radically different situations.
According to poker experts, each cash player has an A game, a B game and a C game. You’re A-game is the one that makes you the most money. Everyone who’s put in significant time at the green felt has experienced spells during which everything seems to click. Your semi bluff on the 4-card flush gets called and you proceed to fill your flush several times in a row. You pick up good starting hands, the table begins to fear you and you’re able to make money on your beer hands too. You’re in the zone, you’re playing your A-game.
Since this is by far the most enjoyable part of playing poker, most people focus solely on their A-play. They devise schemes to maximize their profits and the time that they spend “in the zone”.
Your C-play is the exact opposite of your A-play. Nothing clicks for you, your opponents roughshod all over you and you lose money. Because it is something most people would rather forget about, the C-play gets extremely little attention from most average cash players. You B-play is somewhere between you C-play and A-play. You spend most of your time playing your B-game and therefore it is extremely important. What I’ll discuss in this article though is the C-game which is by far the most neglected of all, for the above named reasons.
Paying attention to your C-game is extremely important and believe it or not, that’s where you can improve the most, since that’s where the most room for improvement is. Improving your C-game is all about damage control, so I’ll warn you: it’s not going to be pretty or enjoyable, but it’s going to make a huge difference.

Make a conscious effort to identify the worst of your C-game. Always focus on the worst part, then isolate it in your mind. Once you’ve done that, eliminate it from your play. Do whatever it takes to get rid of it: stop playing if that’s what it takes. Once you’ve successfully eliminated the worst of the worst, your whole profit equation will be rearranged. Suppose you generally win $10 on your A-game and then lose $10 on your C-game. By getting rid of the worst of the worst, maybe you’ll lose only $8 on your C-game and voila: you’re in the black.
Once you’ve gone through this process, repeat it. Soon, what used to be your B game is what you’ll consider your C-game and your profit margins will rise.
Again: the very first step is to identify the nasty leaks in your game. Here are a few pointers to help you achieve that.
Tilting is one of the biggest leaks in every player’s strategy setup, and no I’m not talking about wild, swearing, close to fist-fight tilts here. Some forms of tilting can creep up on you almost unnoticed, so you need to pay keen attention to identify your tilts. The best way to tell whether or not you’re on a tilt is to check how big a part emotion plays in your decisions.
The best way to eliminate the tilt from your game is to just stop playing and leave the table when you’ve positively identified one of these little buggers.
If there’s a sneakier leak in your game than the tilt, it has to be exhaustion. Exhaustion has a super-subtle way of creeping up on you and before you realize, your decisions are influenced by the long hours spent at the green felt. Once you realize that catching some Zs becomes a returning fantasy for you, exhaustion is probably all over you already. Fortunately, combating exhaustion is relatively simple. Get up, take a walk or simply turn your computer off and hit the sack.
Distraction is the lesser of the evils of the C-game. Most people don’t have particular difficulties staying focused, at least for a limited amount of time. Once you notice that you start losing interest in what happens at the table, it’s probably time for you to get moving. The object of poker is to make money and not to watch TV or to stare at a cocktail waitress, so if you’re in the mood to do that, do it but not while playing poker.

Be honest to yourself and know when you’re outgunned. Humans will naturally avoid confrontations in which they stand a poor chance for success. If your opponent is simply a better poker player than you, admit it to yourself and leave. Again: the object of poker is to make money and not to prove some sort of macho point or whatever.

Playing on scared money is extremely detrimental to your poker performance. Nearly every decision you make will be guided by emotion and by considerations that just make it impossible for you to hit your A-game. This is why you need a healthy bankroll and you need to be willing to lose money in order to make money.