Cash Games vs. Tournament Settings

When I first started playing NLHE, I only played in a tournament setting. So, when I would buy-in and receive my chips, I wouldn’t look at those chips as being worth $5 - $20. Rather, I would see those chips as my tournament worth.

The first few SNGs that I played in, I did fairly well for just starting out. I finished 4th, being just out of the money a few times, and hitting ITM more often that I had hoped. So I figured, what the hell, I have some bonus money to clear, why not try some NL cash games? Well, the first 5 times I sat at a cash game, I bought in for the minimum of $10. I figured this way, if I do lose, I’d be able to limit my losses.

That’s exactly what I did, lost. I lost $50 over the course of 3 days sitting in cash games. And I was very disheartened. I took a break for a few days, and decided to start playing again, but only in SNGs. I thought that maybe I just wasn’t cut out for cash games, or maybe I just wasn’t that good of a poker player.

But I didn’t want to give up. I absolutely love to play poker. So, I decided to try to figure out what I was doing wrong. I have read a fair amount of information in books, I found this site (which is tremendous) and I started narrowing it down to playing too many hands and defending my blinds too often. I would cold call 1 or 2 bets in front with marginal hands and it was a terrible leak in my game. I also found that I was defending my blinds when I shouldn’t have been, which was another costly leak.

But I finally realized what my biggest problem was when transitioning from a tourney setting to a cash game. When I looked at the amount that I bought in with I saw it as $10 or $15, not chips. And I played very tentatively, not wanting to lose that money.

Well, I decided that I was going to treat my buy-in as chips, not as money that I could be using for something else. It was a mental barrier that was holding me back. And since I have started playing in this mindset, I can actually play my game, as opposed to others playing their game and donating my chips to their stack.

I don’t know if this will help anyone else, but it seemed like a helpful realization to me and I thought that I would post it.

Just a tip that is hard to break from tournament settings:
It's not (usually) worth it to attempt to steal blinds in cash games. If you don't have a hand you want to raise with in the first place, don't bother.