Just thought I would write a short (brag) story about my recent cash game success and how my tourney play has helped it.
Before about 10 months ago when I decided to get semi serious with my poker, I would jump around a lot in the games I played – I would play 6max and heads up cash as well as a few tourneys here and there, and some PLO etc etc. I was relatively decent and went from 10NL to 50NL (although I was pretty underrolled for 50NL looking back at it). The reason I decided to quit cash games was that I found out that I was a massive spewtard and I would just automatically take lines like mashing pot with QQ until all the money was in the middle (obv a slight exaggeration but you get the idea). I was also a massive calling station – I would tell myself that this river I should be bet-folding, but then when I actually did get raised, I would always call. Then I would tilt the hell out of myself. And because I was underrolled that tilt was devastating.
Anyway, the point of my story is that I am feeling really good in my tourney game and poker in general, so whenever I have had a spare hour, I have been squeezing in some cash games too. Mostly 20NL heads up (on cake, before I decided to get my money off of there) and more recently, 6max 50NL on 888.
The first thing to note is that I am definitely overrolled for these levels – 200BI for 20NL and 80BI for 50NL, but I found that has helped a lot because I am not caring about the losses as much anymore.
Before I bore everyone to death, I will get to the crux of this post – my tourney training has helped my cash game play a TON. Specifically in the areas of pot control and bet sizing. Pot control in cash games is just asimportant as it is in tourneys. That might be trivial for some, but it really has taken me some time to figure this out. My skills in pot controlling have increased dramatically, and this just means that there are WAY less tough decisions. It may mean that sometimes I don't get max value, but easy decisions mean less tilt, I can play more tables etc. Now I'm certainly not advocating a passive style of play, but going for 2 streets of value instead of 3 with top pair type hands against random TAGs has proven to be a lot more profitable because we can get them to call lighter on the river or get value when they bluff themselves, and lose smaller pots when they beat us.
The second area of improvement is my discipline in river play. As I mentioned before, I used to be a huge station on the river, but to have any success at all in tourneys you have to learn to make big laydowns and this has helped my cash game play immensely.
So I would advise everyone that if you have a spare hour, maybe compliment your tourney grind with some cash games, getting as much volume as you can in any form of poker is key to getting better. (it also helps with the tourney downswings if you can grind out some cash game sessions too)
Better put the graph in, brag posts are useless without them 😀 This is my 2011 graph across all sites. As you can see, I don't have much in the way of volume, and I am obv running hot, but I still feel like my decisions have been much easier lately playing cash.
for good measure, I have put my tourney graph in too. pretty big downswing atm, but I am running super bad just at the time when I started to up the stakes a bit, so I am not worried at all. Playing a lot more $22s and $33s, and I am feeling great, getting lots of deep runs for min cashes at the moment, but a big score is around the corner, I can feel it. (edit: since i wrote the draft for this, i finished second in a 2r on stars and 6th in a $22 on 888, so things are turning around already)
If you have read this far, thankyou, feel free to comment about my sick redline or anything else 😀