Where’s the real money at?

If you’re looking for a great return on a relatively meager investment, looking for that one big break that will truly make a difference in your life, sooner or later you’re going to have to make the move from the cash tables to the tournament ones. It’s not that there isn’t money on the high limit cash tables: there’s plenty there, but you need a huge bankroll just to give yourself a real shot at all that money, and few people in the world can muster such bankrolls. The best way for you to make it big is through the MTTs poker rooms offer. Sure, you will need to make a sizeable investment here too, because it’s not like you’re going to walk away with the goods on your very first high prize-pool tournament. As you become a good tournament player, you’re going to have to play in about 40 tournaments to win one. At an average of $200 in buy-in though, that still only amounts to $8,000 and you stand to win well over 100k so it is a good deal any way you turn it around.
The one thing you have to pay keen attention to is that you indeed become a good enough MTT player to string together such a win-loss ratio.

Here are a few pointers on what you need to focus on when you’re making the transition from your cash tables to the tournament ones.
The very fist obstacle you’ll encounter at the tournament tables will be one linked to the size of your stack. In cash games, your stack has little to do with your survival: it is rather a weapon you can use to dominate your opponents and to maximize your winnings. In a tournament, your stack fulfills a double role: it’s a weapon as well as a measure of your tournament life. While in a cash game you can re-buy any time you like, in a tournament, that option is not available for you, or it is available in a very limited way (there are rebuy tourneys). The nature of your stack will force you to adopt a very different approach to strategy. You will no longer be able to fling your chips left and right and strike at every bit of available EV+ regardless of how minute it is. In a cash game, you should go after EV+ every time, because in the long run, this sort of approach will be rewarded. At a tournament table though, you’ll have to tighten up and give up marginal EV+ situations on account of the simple fact that once you lose you will no longer be able to assert your long term edges.
In tournaments, it makes perfect sense to let go of marginal EV+ for the sake of surviving to take advantage of a much better EV+ situation further down the road.
Another factor that is cause for a big difference between cash and tournament strategy is one tied to the blinds. In cash games, the blinds stay the same, and with them the variables of the equation remain pretty much the same from one hand to another over an indefinite stretch of time. In tournament poker, the blinds increase as time trickles by. This puts a constant pressure on your stack and implicitly on your tournament life. You won’t be able to sit by idly letting others duke it out: you’re going to have to get involved and in a way that will not result in your sudden ejection. Poker pro Dan Harrington has devised a set of strategy recommendations based on the proportional relation between the size of your stack and that of the BB+SB. In line with these recommendations, you’re going to have to learn to be extremely flexible in your approach.
As you climb up the blind levels, it becomes more and more important that you be efficient at stealing blinds. In a cash game, successful blinds-stealing is only likely to make a 2% contribution to your stack. In a tournament, especially in the middle-to-later stages, this contribution will be 10% and more.
Re-stealing and taking advantage of the bubble are also important aspects of tournament strategy.