Cash or tournaments: What is your thing?

Cash Games or Poker Tournaments – What’s your thing?

It is essential to understand which one is the right fit for you and your mindset - cash games or poker tournaments. We got in touch with Manish Yadav and Radhika Shankar to get a quick understanding the best of the both.

By Ananya Agarwalla

s a poker player, you

Amight have, at some point, evaluated what your priorities are when it came to choosing between poker tournaments and cash game poker. Building a tournament poker strategy or cash game poker strategy requires different skills and mindsets. Thus, it is essential to understand which one is the right fit for you and your mindset.

Gutshot got in touch with the two poker pros who have been shipping poker tournaments and cash games poker for quite some time. We spoke to Manish Yadav, a high-stakes cash player, and Radhika Shankar, a poker pro and tournament crusher, and tried to understand their perspective on why they play, what they play.

Cash game poker or poker tournament?

Manish: Cash game poker! For me, it’s more about the flexibility the cash games offer. I can join the game anytime and don’t have to skip on the other things because I can’t miss out on some MTT schedule.

When I started playing with friends, we were only into ring games, and that was an organic way for me to grow as a player. I had no plans to play full-time back then and wanted to keep it as a hobby that doesn’t interfere with the other things I’d like to commit. I’ve played some MTTs now and then. However, I never really enjoyed the grind. I’d instead work on the ring games and get better at it. That may change in the future, though, as I love traveling and playing those live flagship events. Radhika: Poker tournaments! I feel that poker tournament brings out far superior qualities in a poker player than anything else - be it patience, perseverance, skill, discipline, grit; nothing tests your strength more than tournaments do. Fortunately, being a parent taught me to be patient. So why not use that tool where it’s needed most – in poker tournaments!

How do you handle variance?

Manish: Variance isn’t a big deal now. I think when you’ve played enough professionally, it’s natural to come to be on terms with the variance. I would look up at those bell curves to know how far and for how long I can deviate from the actual win rate without worrying much about my ability to beat the games. I now have enough samples to have the first-hand experience

Radhika Shankar

on how the swings work. Now, after a bad session, it’s more about scanning the HH to find my poor decisions and fix them than to care about the win or loss. Ignoring the variance is important, and it has to be learned by everyone who wants to take the game seriously

Radhika: Bankroll management and discipline are the only ways to handle variance. It’s a known fact that even the best poker players will be slapped in the face by a downswing or harsh variance at some point or the other in their poker journey, possibly even multiple times. The ones who survive and live to see another day are the ones who stick to their bankroll, or even drop stakes, if need be and control tilt. If you rebuy when variance is high, you will find yourself losing every flip, maybe fifty flips in a row! I try (and successfully have managed) to stay within my bankroll when this happens. It’s the only way to ensure I’ll be playing poker for the rest of my life.

What kind of bankroll management do you follow?

Manish: I think I’m rolled enough to play all the games that run on Indian sites. Back then, I was a bit conservative in moving up stakes. Having played with my own money since the beginning and not having a mentor/coach guide me through the process efficiently, I had my reservations about things getting beyond my control and going backward or nullifying the progress I had made, which was the last thing I wanted. Even when I was convinced that I should move up by all the BRM standards out there, I needed to make a rule for myself not to touch the current stakes and only play the higher ones; else, I’d find myself sitting at the same tables again.

Radhika: I follow the hundred buyins rule, i.e., I must have at least a hundred buy-ins for the stakes I play. So, if my bankroll is 2 lakhs, I do not and will not play any games with more than 2 thousand bucks buy-in. I allow myself the liberty to roughly balance it out since obviously games vary in stakes. So, if there’s a game I’ve played above my buy-in, there’ll surely be one or two below, so it evens out.

Which do you think requires more skill, cash games or tournaments? Why?

Manish: Skills are involved in both the formats, though on different levels and kinds. The bigger the game tree, the more edge a player gains for a single hand in isolation. The average stack sizes in ring games are deeper; because of that, a good player can extract more EV per hand than in the MTTs. As the games go deeper, the right frequencies and balancing become more relevant. As you play a lot against the same player pool, you leave yourself exploitable if you haven’t worked upon your game by running the solvers for different spots and have made an excellent effort to keep your frequencies and ranges in check at every node of the tree. On the other hand, MTTs are played with diff stack depths at diff stages, making it hard to remember all the GTO ranges/frequencies as the number of strategically different spots pre-flop is a lot more than in ring games. ICM also adds to the complexity.

Radhika: Poker requires skill. Period!

What kind of advice would you give to someone who is debating between playing cash or tournaments?

Manish: It all depends on what kind of life you want, which format you enjoy the most, and your expectations from the game. For someone who is playing for fun and is fundamentally strong, MTTs should be the way to go. The average field in an MTT is softer than the ring games. Hence a good recreational player is more likely to make money there. Also, recreational players can’t be targeted for their leaks in an MTT as the tables keep shuffling. The longer you play against a better player, the bigger his edge gets.

Radhika: My only advice to anyone who chooses to play cash games or poker tournaments is to follow strict bankroll management. Especially in cash, it’s really very easy to lose money very quickly; a few buy-ins can disappear in minutes! Secondly, no matter which format you play, it is crucial to STUDY! It’s the only way to be profitable in the long run!