Ever since I began playing online poker back in September of 2006, I have always dabbled in cash games. Up until February of 2009, the word 'dabbled' could be replaced by 'donated' as I spent 13K hands (admittedly not a huge sample over 30 months) dumping $3K into other people's accounts. The difference between cash-game and tournament poker is simple. In cash game, you are always playing 100 or 200 BBs deep (assuming you always buy-in for the max) and in tournaments, your stack size is always fluctuating relative to the blinds/antes.

Cash game poker strategy is similar to that of early deep-stacked tournament strategy when hands like AA and KK lose value and hands like 33 and 89 suited gain value. Why? Because, when you are playing 100 or 200 BBs deep, it generally takes a 'nut' or close to nut hand to win a big pot or stack an opponent. Remember for a decent opponent to lose an entire buy-in in one hand, they will usually have to have a big hand against your bigger one. Hands like AA have great value when you have 15 BBs late on in a tourney but with 200 BBs, it is a dangerous hand as one pair (even an over-pair) will almost never be good in an action packed hand of raises and re-raises.

My poker-strengths have always been my ability to play 'small-ball' poker, out-manouvering my opponents with little bets and positional raises, stabbing at pots, taking minimum risk for maximum reward. The structure of tournament poker makes this an effective style, a winning formula when survival is of paramount importance. Cash-game poker, on the other hand, is a value game. If an opponent wins your chips, you can instantly rebuy so survival is not an issue.

Transferring my successful tournament poker modus into the cash game arena proved costly. For over two years, I struggled to adapt - to find a winning strategy even at the lower limits. 2009 came along and I made a promise to myself that I would plug my leaks and become a lucrative cash game player. I would dedicate a proportion of my poker hours to the pursuit of cash-game success. I would find a way to beat the game and move up the levels.

To help me stay focussed and analytical, I kept a poker-diary of sorts - a few scribblings from sessions that went well and badly, a few notes on what seemed to work and what didn't. As usual with poker, there was a minefield of variance to take into account. I knew well that my most profitable sessions would not necessarily be my best, nor would my losing ones be my worst. I hoped that by keeping track of my thought-process, I would be honest about my progress.

 


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