Guest Post from Drizztjd – Tournament or Cash?

Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail

It’s usually fuel to fire up a fine argument amongst poker players, especially those plied with large amounts of alcohol and a spur under their saddle. What’s the best, poker tournaments or cash games?

It generally goes a little like this: Tournaments are the best format, cash games players rule. Tournaments are for lucksack push monkeys, cash games are for boring rock-garden nut-peddlers. As long as poker has been around there has been an argument for both sides of the equation. Nothing is ever solved but in the end it’s just a matter of preference and comfort zone.

You can count me in with the nut-peddling grinder crew as I generally view the tournament players as a bunch of gamblers looking to get all their chips in the middle on the come. It’s also true I’m so tight that I make Allen “Chainsaw” Kessler look like the world’s biggest LAGtard. Different strokes for different folks. Tournament players find my process of grinding out my daily nut in number of big-bets won the dullest most unimaginative form of the game.

This week’s guest blogger comes along and tells both sides it’s our best interest to cross the line, get our money in the game when the price is right and expand horizons. I’ll let him explain.

Ladies and gentlemen, your guest blogger Drizztdj.

Tournament or Cash Player?
by Drizztdj

Unless you have been living under cryogenic freeze for the past six months, or last decade for that matter, you dear readers are aware of the poker exploits of one Phil Ivey. He flies, he wins, he grinds, he smiles on a rare occasion when certain loggers from Maryland are not outdrawing him at the World Series of Poker Main Event final table (that apple must have tasted bitter after the queen flopped).

He’s a tournament player obviously, right? Nearly won WSOP bracelet number eight by becoming one of this year’s “November Nine”, a WPT bracelet, $12.2 million in tournament winnings, the man excels at closing out the tournament once given the chip ammo piled up from the countless check-raises and reading the souls of those who dared to pony up the entry fee to sit at his table. No emotion unchecked, staying just ahead of the blinds to cash isn’t an option as its first place or no place, Phil Ivey is definitely a tournament player.

But, wait. There’s a little side cash game going on at the Bellagio with millions of dollars on the felt. When the lack of tournament chips appear in front him, the high roller can be seen behind the glass doors of Bobby’s Room at the Bellagio playing for stakes that normal nine-to-five cube monkeys like myself only see while hitting up the play chip games. Only those aren’t play chips they’re $10,000 and $25,000 real currency chips being splashed across the felt on an up-and-down straight draw, or trying to squeeze out a wheel in deuce-to-seven triple draw. Likewise, if you’re a closet online nosebleed railbird like me, you’ll see Mr. Ivey’s avatar taking on all comers at Ivey League, Ivey Showdown, Ivey Thunderdome, and Ivey’s Playground tables, playing with $1,000 /$2,000 blinds all levels limit or no limit and in all games.

So, he’s a cash game savant right?

Wrong.

He’s a poker player, much like yourself or at least you’re studying up to become one. Whether it’s the Sunday Majors with $530 buy-ins, the $.01/$.02 no limit Omaha eight or better tables, or Dan’s basement rotation game, chips are chips, the job of the poker player is to extract as many of them possible from your opponents at the table.

Period.

Granted there are the rising blinds of a tournament, or the various table sizes like shootouts, heads-up, cashout, matrix, 6-max. Same with the cash games and their various degrees of blind levels, double stacks, short-handed tables they make you adjust to position, stack size, or the amount of jager-bombs the lush in the four seat had before sitting down.

You can read countless books on tournament versus cash game play and try to “specialize” yourself as a MTT wizard, or feared cash game rounder but in the end a player should try to become one thing. To become a complete poker player with the ability to sit down at any table with any poker variation and feel the profits about to slide into your stack.

Limiting yourself at the tables means side-stepping a potentially juicy cash game because setting out a stack of your own money instead of tournament chips scares you, your stunted growth as a player will only get worse. Or seeing a huge overlay in the Sunday Brawl and walking away from the free money being put on by Full Tilt because tournament play gives you hives. Personally, I have no reservation of tossing a buy-in into the middle of a $50 or $100 buy-in NLO8 cash game on a draw or bluff, but try to get me to spend a $24 token on the $5K PLO guarantee? I turtle up quicker than a quarterback seeing Ray Lewis come through the line untouched and about to decapitate me. It’s a leak and one I cure by occasionally dipping into the $24 and $75 token tourneys (after grabbing a token from the satellites of course).

Sure I enjoy tournaments and occasionally do fairly well in them (except for last night which we’ll blame on the moon’s alignment with Saturn and my daughter’s inability to sleep without a 15-point check before dreaming about whatever a three-old wants these days) . If one were to look up my negative to break even stats they’d see my average buy-in is around the price of a happy meal. Taking shots at a different buy-in level is something everyone should take but it shouldn’t come at the expense of being a “tourney player” or “cash game” player only.

Do read the free advice given by Team Full Tilt.

Do take shots outside of your comfort zone. If you’re a “tourney” player, fire up a ring game, if you’re a “cash game” player hit up one of the many guarantees offered here at Full Tilt.

Do NOT become half of the poker player you want to be. After all, wouldn’t you someday like to be tossing dice with Phil for a million a throw while jet-setting across the globe to 5-star resorts after taking down a tourney and cleaning up the cash game afterwards?

Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, drizztdj, Guest Posts