The long winding road from poker cash games to poker tournaments

One of the best ways to make it big in online poker is to build up a bankroll via SNGs or cash games and then to start playing in high buy-in guaranteed prize-pool tournaments (run by pretty much all major poker sites every weekend). For that though you need to make the move from the cash game tables to the tournament ones. If you manage to work your way up to being able to play in such high buy-in tournaments every week, you’ve probably earned the right to consider yourself a successful cash game player. Does that mean you’ll be as successful in tournaments too? After all, the game is the same, played by the same rules, what could go wrong?

Lots of things actually. The few differences in rules between cash games and tournaments twist the game completely out of shape thus being a good cash game player won’t guarantee you anything at the tourney tables. You’ll be forced to rethink the whole essence of your approach and basically learn to play again.
The biggest difference between cash games and tournaments stems from the nature of the stacks available to players. In a cash game, your stack is infinite (assuming of course that you can afford to re-deposit every time you hit rock bottom). This means that taking advantage of marginal EV+ situations not only makes perfect sense, it’s a must.

Regardless of the short-term luck-induced bankroll swings, in the long run you will always see a profit provided you only get your money into the middle on EV+ situations. In a tournament, things aren’t quite as simple. Given the finite nature of your stack, getting it all into the middle on a marginal EV hand is quite foolish. In cash games, your stack is a weapon that you use to make money. In a tournament, besides being a weapon, your stack also represents your lifeblood. In order to be able to use it to forward your cause, you first need to protect it. If you’re faced with a marginal EV+ situation, you’re therefore better off just letting it go, so you can shove your chips into the middle on a much better opportunity later. Tournament poker means that you need to walk away from certain EV+ situations, regardless of what your gut tells you to do.

Another thing about tournaments is that the blinds increase at set intervals with the express goal of placing more pressure on players all the time, in order to force the outcome.

The ever increasing blinds mean that you need to keep chipping up in order to maintain your stack-size on an optimal level, and for that, you need to adapt your strategy to your changing blinds/stack-size ratio. Being able to play optimal poker when your stack size is large will not be enough for tournament success. You’ll have to learn to handle different stack sizes, and you’ll have to be aware of the optimal way to play in every situation. Stealing blinds is something that happens in cash games too, but in tournaments, past a certain stage, its importance will sky-rocket. Without proper blinds-stealing skills, you will not make it past the most critical stage of the tournament.
During the later stages, when the blinds become truly significant compared to everyone’s stacks, you’ll have to make moves that you shouldn’t even dream about during the early stages. When you’re down to your last few chips, taking a coin-flip is the best bet you can make under the given circumstances. This is where the fold equity comes into play: being the aggressor (the player doing the shoving) instead of the caller is extremely important when it comes to securing the best possible odds.

If cash games are about playing the same type of poker to perfection, tournament poker is about flexibility and adaptability. In order to be a successful poker tournament player, you need to be a complete player, mastering every aspect of the game.

Learn to handle tournament coin-flips properly – Poker Strategy

With the battle noise in the wake of the WSOP Main Event barely settled, we take a look at a bit of tournament strategy as such blog posts have been woefully neglected lately, since all the precious little energy of this writer went into WSOP reports and blog posts.
Today’s subject: the almighty and dreaded coin-flip. That’s right, love it or hate it, the coinflip is here to stay and as long as there’s tournament poker, its place in the poker history books is secure. No tournament winner has ever won an event, live or online, without wadding through his fair share of coin flips.
The bottom line is, regardless of what you do, you won’t be able to avoid this bad boy. Now that we got that down, let’s see how you can make sure that regardless of the 50-50 (or near 50-50) nature of the coin-flip, you give yourself the absolute best possible odds.
The coin-flip does not give you good odds. Ask any poker player about getting all your money in on adverse odds and he’ll tell you to hold it and wait till a better opportunity rears its head. That’s very sound advice indeed and that’s exactly how you should act in cash games, where – with a few exceptions – getting all your money in on a coin-flip is a big mistake.
The odds you’re faced with aren’t any better in tournament poker either. Due to the escalating nature of the blinds though, you will sooner or later find yourself in a position when a coin-flip is your best shot at staying alive. In conclusion: don’t seek out coin flips and never think you’re being smart shoving all-in on them when deep-stacked. The coin-flip is a move reserved to those whom the tournament pressure has pushed onto the edge.

The fold equity is the first factor you should exploit when you go for that decisive coin-flip. That’s right. You won’t be able to avoid a coin-flip, but you sure as hell will be able to pick your spot. In this respect, you have to know that when you make that all-in move and you wait for someone to make the call, you actually stand a better chance at staying alive than when you’re the guy making the call on someone else’s all-in. The extra value stems from the fact that when you make the move, chances are no one will call you and you’ll take down the blinds, thus adding to your stack and staying alive in the tourney.
It is extremely difficult to quantify this edge, but I suppose it’s quite obvious that the guy pushing all-in has two shots at winning the pot: by making his opponent(s) fold or by winning the hand outright. The caller has to win the coin-flip in order to stay alive, there’s no other possibility for him.
That means you want to be the aggressor. Pick your spots right and secure that tiny edge the fold equity offers you. If you have to go, might as well go out with a bang, right?

Make sure that when you take that decisive coin-flip, it is indeed a coin-flip you’re talking about. You know, a 50-50 one or at least a 48-52% one. A 30-70% match-up is not exactly a coin flip. Shoving all-in on hands which just beg to be dominated is not the way to set up your do-or-die coin flip. Take something like an Ace-rag for instance. You have better odds on it than on a K,Q but just about any other hand with an ace in it and any pocket pair has you dominated. On such a hand, you need a truck-load of luck just to be in a coin-flip, never mind winning it and staying alive.
What this part of the coin-flip strategy comes down to is opponent-reading skill. Take a hand like pocket 4s for instance. That’s not such a bad hand to stake your tournament life on, provided your opponent calls you with something other than a pocket pair. If he does have a pocket pair, chances are his is higher than yours and in that case, you’re in a pretty deep trouble.
The bottom line about the coin-flip is: a coin-flip is a 50-50 (or close to it) match-up, not a 40-60 one. Make sure that your coin flip is actually a coin-flip and not just some faint attempt at it.

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.