Basic differences between tournament poker and cash games

The main differences between cash games and tournaments are that in tournament poker the blinds increase at regular intervals, and play proceeds until one player has amassed all the chips, while in a cash game the blinds remain the same, and your chips have actual cash value and can be cashed out whenever you feel like it (if you end up having any left). In effect, you can get up whenever you like from a cash game, but if you leave a tournament while still in it there’s no refund and your chips are just ‘blinded off,’ or eroded gradually as the blinds come round until you’re out.

The poker generally seen on TV is tournament poker. Players reaching that televised table at the end of a big tournament have often been playing for up to four or five days, and a field of hundreds is whittled down to, in the end, one winner. Tournaments start with a number of players buying in for a set amount (for example, the $10,000 World Series Main Event) and being given equal stacks of chips (the number of chips doesn’t have to equal the dollar buy-in, so you could have a home-game for $5 where you get 5,000 in tournament chips). An example blind structure might look like this:

Small Blind Big Blind Duration
----------- --------- --------
25 25 30 min
25 50 30 min
50 100 30 min
Break, race off the 25 chips
100 200 20 min
150 300 20 min
200 400 20 min
300 600 20 min
400 800 20 min
Break
500 1000 20 min
600 1200 20 min
800 1600 20 min
1000 2000 20 min
1500 3000 20 min
2000 4000 20 min



And so on raising in increments of 500/1000 until there is one winner...

This is a made-up tournament structure, but there are some points to notice – the blinds do not always go up in even increments. Players often complain about tournaments where the blinds are ‘too fast’: not enough time per level, and big jumps between levels. This forces action to the point where individual players’ chip stacks become collectively short. They often refer to this as a ‘crap shoot,’ or a point at which anyone can win as the blinds are so big there is not a lot of actual play left in the game. There will often be the addition of an ante in later stages of a tournament, a blind posted by all players, every hand.

So the structure might look a bit more like this (the actual structure from the WPT Event in Paris):

Small Blind Big Blind Ante Duration
----------- --------- ---- --------
25 50 - 90 min
50 100 - 90 min
100 200 - 90min
100 200 25 90min
200 400 25 90min
300 600 50 90min
400 800 75 90min
600 1200 100 90min
800 1600 200 90min
1000 2000 300 90min
1500 3000 400 90min
2000 4000 500 90min
3000 6000 500 90min
4000 8000 1000 90min
8000 16000 2000 90min



The blinds are so long and the starting stack of 10,000 so big in comparison to the blinds that this tournament lasted 5 days and is about the most generous structure you’ll find. Well, it does cost €10,000 to enter...

So you’ve busted out of the tournament and want to play cash? The game is the same (action and the deal moving clockwise round the table, blinds of some sort in the pot) but you buy in for a certain amount and your chips equal that amount of money. For example, in a $2 - $4 limit game you might buy in for $100 and be given the equivalent chips. If, after an hour, you’ve made it $200, then that is the amount you can stand up with and cash out.

Cash games online are very easy to play. In a limit game, you will be presented with buttons (‘check’ ‘bet,’ ‘raise,’ ‘fold,’ depending on preceding action) which you simply press when it’s your turn. Live it’s almost as easy – usually cash games come with a dealer who keeps the action going in turn and lets you know the bet and in pot limit or no-limit games also the size of the pot. They also make sure that everyone acts in turn and keeps an eye on etiquette in general (this applies a lot more rigorously in Europe than the States). There are a lot more differences between cash and tournament poker which involve tactics and styles of play (it’s amazing how much difference static blinds, and the ability to choose how much one buys in for make) but the only other major one is the fact that if you lose your chips in a tournament, it’s curtains, but a cash game player can just reach into their pocket and ‘pull up’ giving it another shot.