addz123

Here's one i wrote about a year ago. Rakeback Mafia Poker Rakeback Homepage Poker Questions Answered What Are More Profitable, Tournaments Or Cash Games?

man I hate to do this - but its to help you not knock you

moneymaker was in 2003 WSOP not 2001

fix it quick before one of your readers spots it and comments in your site

cheers SB

Uh, lol?

Tournaments are a joke. You need to run hot to do well in them, nothing else. Tournaments are hardly even a skill game. Tournaments are only better than cash if you suck at poker.

I completely agree jd. There is a lot more skill involved in beating cash games. With tournaments, if you are not winning the races, you are not going to win a single tourney. You don't need this element of luck to become a winning cash game player. You can rely on your edge to pick a better spot.

Look at the WSOP ME 2009 for example. I have complete respect for Joe Cada's game, I hear he is a beast when it comes to mid stakes HU cash games online, but the dude got lucky, twice I believe in the later stages of the tourney, when both times he hit a set after being all in pre flop against dominating hands.

That's what irritates me with tournaments and why I have chosen to only play cash. The bias toward tournaments really shows in the article when you wrote "you know the maximum you can realistically win is 2-3 big blinds per hour". After reading that it made me think of Mike's quote in Rounders, if you can't spot the fish at the table within the first 30 minutes, then you are the fish. Good cash game players are winning a heck of a lot more then that.

Does spamming on here work ?

Anyway, cash games all the way. Tournaments are just luck ;-)

Also, why in the HELL is Hellmuth listed as the "World's Greatest Tournament Player"? He is a god damn bum!

No good player has respect for him. FFS Negreanu ripped him for five minutes straight (Negreanu isn't that great either, but he admits it, and for that I respect him). Every other player laughs at him. He hasn't done ANYTHING since the fields got bigger/tougher. In fact there is speculation that he is DOWN money since the poker boom.

He is the prime example of why cash games>tournaments. Anyone can win a tournament, but few players will consistently beat cash games.

That article pissed me off to be honest. It doesn't take much to get me angry, but nothing frustrates me more than a moron who thinks a tournament is anything more than shooting dice with the occasional 52/48 edge.

^ spoken like a true cash game player.

Not bad Addz, focusing on the business / conversions side rather than the train-spotting stuff I'm not sure that 'freerolls' fits to be honest though. You set the scene with big wins from small outlays, appealed to peoples desires for extra profits with overlays... then kind of lose it with the freerolls imo... would hit them with some easy online tournaments or the best place to learn tournament play next, sell the idea that one deposit could equal a decent payday... and give them a link to click.

Mark

Damn jdwanchalk chill out, you're such a spazz. I'm a cash game player too but tournaments also have a great element of skill. I'm not going to teach you any lessons today though so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it.

I have a 45% ROI over my last 70 tournaments with 1k+ profit in tourneys over the past week. There is a skill element, in the very, very long run. You can't win a tournament if you don't win multiple coinflips or worse, that's just not something that can be said about cash games.

Originally Posted by jdwanchalk

Uh, lol?

Tournaments are a joke. You need to run hot to do well in them, nothing else. Tournaments are hardly even a skill game. Tournaments are only better than cash if you suck at poker.

Surely we have to consider the constantly changing blind levels, antes, and players on your table when looking at the skill of a tourney though? Cash games, like you say, can be made easy when you're playing shit/predictable players. Tournaments on the other hand, require you to make more moves and play much more agressive even when you've got dog shit. You're forced to enter pots and earn more chips than you naturally would in a cash games, which makes them slightly more difficult than cash games.

Yes, but when it comes down to it you WON'T win if you don't win multiple coinflips. If flipping a coin to determine a winner isn't luck, I don't know what is. Obviously chip accumulation isn't done through the grace of God, that wasn't my point.

IMO you can maintain a very decent ROI if you are a good player. Of all people cash game players should know that its all about long run results. Good tournament players will show long term winning tournament results. It is also why good tournament players will avoid coin flipping for their tournament lives until they have to.

I think most of us can agree that we wouldn't be here as players or affiliates, had it not been for the publicity of poker tournaments. Tournaments have obv been great for the game.

I play both and really enjoy tournaments more. But I think it's clear that cash games are where the easier money is.

To make a living or decent side income from MTTs you have to be very consistent, patient, win a lot of flips, and put in a lot of volume.

Freerolls are pretty much a complete waste of time. You'd be better off advising players to look for spare change in the couch to build a bankroll.

Overall, nice article. You may want to break up the large blocks of text, and add some headings to make it easier to read.

@JD - You've been doing better at toning it down when it comes to affiliate stuff. How about using the same discretion when talking poker? This is still an affiliate forum, not 2+2.

Saying there is no skill in tournament poker is beyond ridiculous. Sure the variance is higher and you need to run good to win a tournament, but there is a reason why the likes of Gboro et al show such incredibly good results over long periods where the variance has somewhat normalised.

The truth of the matter is that the old cash game vs tournament debate has raged for years and I'm sure it will continue to, but there is no doubting that there is skill set required to succeed in tourneys.

My personal opinion that I have held for years is that it is a lot harder for a successful tournament player to transition to become a successful cash game player where as i think a good cash game player can easily make the transition to a succesful tournament player once they get a good understanding of ROI and how to play 10-30 BBs optimally in terms of shoving ranges etc.

Forget it, won't waste my time.

Long story short...

Tournaments=luck with slight edges that result in possible long term profitability.

Cash=skill with slight luck that results in short and long term profitability.

webmasters really should not talk strategy... oh wait, were the ones writing nearly all the strategy content on the internet... lol

basically impossible to have any measurement of tournament ROI that is statistically significant in my opinion. I believe the implications of tournament poker require such a large sample size that it is just not possible to make any deductions from the data. Every cash game hand can be treated as an individual event. This cannot be done in a tournament IMHO and each tournament must be measured as 1 event as a whole.

the difference between hero and zero can usually be found in 10-20 tournament results where someone hit it big or took something down. Its easily conceivable that they could be unlucky 20 times throughout their career and those wins never would have happened; hence they would be broke even with the same skill level. The notion that these number games can be played with their tournament profitability with any real effect on the apparent outcome shows that the results are just not statistically significant. If these words don't make sense to you I will rephrase... tournament poker results are near meaningless.