formats · cash game
Cash game.
The blinds never go up and you can top your stack back up, so the stack stays deep for as long as you sit there. Nothing pushes you towards all in. That single fact is what makes this the only format on this site where the flop, the turn and the river all get properly played, and it is where the money is.
what a hundred big blinds buys
Three pot sized bets, and you are still not all in.
Follow the arithmetic of a big pot. You raise to three big blinds before the flop and get called, so there are six in the middle. Bet the pot on the flop and get called and it is eighteen. Do the same on the turn and it is fifty four; on the river it is a hundred and sixty two. Each of you has now put in 81 big blinds, which means a hundred big blind stack survives three full pot sized bets with nineteen still behind.
That is the whole difference between this format and every other one. After the flop you are looking at roughly ninety seven big blinds behind a six big blind pot, a stack to pot ratio of about sixteen. There is room for three decisions after the cards are out. In a tournament at twelve big blinds there is room for none, which is why short stack tournament play is mostly a lookup and cash game play is mostly a judgement.
why depth punishes one pair
Take the flop and give yourself , which is top pair with the best possible kicker and about as good as one pair gets. Against a flush draw that also holds two overcards you are ahead, but not by the margin the hand feels like it deserves. Against a set you are drawing nearly dead. Both numbers below are exact: every one of the 990 remaining turn and river combinations counted, not estimated.
Top pair, best kicker
Flush draw with two overcards
Top pair, best kicker
A set of eights
Sixty one against a draw sounds comfortable until you notice that you have to make three more decisions while holding it, and that the pot triples with each one. That is the real cost of depth: being ahead on the flop is worth much less than being right about what your opponent is doing on the river. The same hand at twelve big blinds simply goes in and gets resolved, and nobody has to be right about anything.
Two things follow. Buy in for the maximum the table allows, because an edge after the flop needs chips behind it to be worth anything, and the bankroll calculator will tell you whether the stake can carry that. And learn to price a call properly, because in a deep game you will face far more of them than in any tournament: the pot odds you are being laid against the equity you actually hold is the calculation you will repeat all night, and the pot odds calculator shows the arithmetic rather than just the answer.
One last thing that is easy to forget because it never shows up in a hand history. The house takes a share of every pot that reaches a flop, so the money on the table is slowly shrinking whether or not anybody is playing well. At small stakes that share is large relative to the edges involved, which is an argument for playing fewer and larger pots rather than many small ones.
next
Play a deep stacked table and see the turn arrive.
Everything above is about decisions that only exist when there are chips behind. The fastest way to feel that is to sit at a table where the blinds never rise and play a few hundred hands to the river. Play chips, in your browser, no account and nothing at risk.
questions about cash games
What is a cash game in poker?
A game where the chips in front of you are money. The blinds never rise, you can top your stack back up between hands, and you can stand up and cash out whenever you like. There is no prize pool and no finishing position, only the balance you leave with.
What is the best cash game strategy?
Play fewer hands than you want to and play them further than you are comfortable with. Because stacks stay deep, the money is made after the flop rather than before it, and the players who lose steadily are usually the ones who see a lot of flops and then have no plan for the turn.
How much should you buy in for in a cash game?
The maximum the table allows, if your bankroll supports it. Every skill edge you have after the flop needs chips behind to be worth anything, and a short stack turns a deep game into a push or fold game where that edge cannot be used.
Is a cash game harder than a tournament?
It asks for a different skill rather than a harder one. A tournament rewards knowing exactly what to do with twelve big blinds; a cash game rewards knowing what to do on the turn with a hundred. The second takes longer to learn because there are more decisions and none of them are lookups.
How does the rake affect a cash game?
It takes a share of every pot that goes to a flop, usually a percentage up to a cap, which means the house wins something on hands nobody wins much on. Check what your table charges before you sit, because at the smallest stakes the rake can be a serious part of the money moving across the table.
How many big blinds is a normal cash stack?
A hundred is the usual maximum buy in and a sensible default. It is deep enough that three pot sized bets after the flop do not quite get all the money in, which is exactly why the river still matters and why the format is played the way it is.
Back to all five poker formats, or go back a step and check the order of play on every street in the Texas Hold’em rules.