Best online poker room

If poker is a game of patience, then cash games are the ultimate test. You have to sit tight and wait for those few opportunities, and aggressively strike with a big hand. Remember that the blinds are not increasing like tournaments, so you do not have to be feisty over small pots. You want to win big when you have the nuts, and stay away from tricky situations with mediocre hands. Here are a few tips for being successful in cash games.

Playing Tighter

In cash games, you should generally play pretty tight and realize that your opponents will often be tighter than you might be used to from tournament play. Because of this, high connector hands such as AK, KQ, or AQ are not as valuable as they might seem because they will usually win small but lose big when somebody picks up a three of a kind or better with their pocket pair or drawing hand.

You want to be on the other end of that, so you should try to put yourself in situations to make monster hands in order to win big pots. Big pairs, such as JJ or higher should be raised. With pairs lower than that you generally shouldn’t mind limping or getting in against multiple opponents because you are more likely to get paid off.

Stack size is also a consideration in how tight or loose you want to play. For example, if you have an otherwise good opportunity to get in with a drawing hand but the only other player in the hand is all in for a small amount of chips, you should fold. There are not implied odds there, so if you hit a big hand, the payoff is not enough and not worth the pre-flop chip commitment.

Analyzing Opponents

In the broad sense, the patterns you look for in your opponents play are when they play and when they fold. To really get an idea, though, you must make note of specific situations that come up repeatedly. Watch showdowns to see who plays too wide of a range of hands. You will find many people online playing weak aces, and you want to be in hands against them, especially if they have trouble folding these when an ace hits.

Also look for how your opponents play draws. Some will make big bets with draws, others will call big bets with draws or even just mediocre hands like pairs. If you get a sense of a player folding too much in spots where you think he might have had something, make note of that player as someone who can be bluffed. On the other hand, do not bluff players that call too much.

Managing Bankroll

To be comfortable at a cash game, you should have 100 big blinds when you sit at the table. So for a $1/$2, that would be $200. In your entire poker bankroll, you should have around 20 buy-ins, or in the example, $4000. If you get down to 15 buy-ins or less, you should move down to playing the next lowest stakes game where you have 20. If you are consistently winning, and accumulate over 20 buy-ins to the next level of blinds, then you can move up. These rules are easy to put down on paper, but it is the discipline to stick to these that keeps players from going broke on cold streaks.

Which Cash Games To Attend

Before you sit at a table, try to observe a little bit of the play. You want to see at least 1 or 2 players that seem to be playing inferior hands consistently. Try to pick up weaknesses of the players, such as an overly aggressive player you can trap or an overly tight player you can bluff. You want to be confident that you have some edge on at least a couple players at the table.

If you use these guidelines and have the discipline to stick to them, you can become a winning cash game player. Cash games are even more about playing your opponents styles than tournaments, so always be paying attention to pick up patterns. It could really pay off for your game in the long run.