The Never Ending Game

One of the beautiful differences between casino online cash games and tournament poker is the analogy of time. Cash games never end and tournaments do. So when you look at it from this perspective there is always time to catch up when playing cash games. But when you play a tournament it is over as soon as your chip count reaches zero.

But surely cash games end when the casino shuts?

Well let’s examine this shall we. The blinds never increase in a cash game. They remain constant. If you lose all of your chips you are not out of the game. You can buy back in at anytime. The players may have changed. But in a local game there will be at least one or two familiar faces week-in and week-out. Although the casino may shut. Once it reopens the game is the same. The stacks are brought out of your pocket, the blinds posted and the fun begins once more.

Thinking about cash game poker in this way gives you an advantage. Skillful players win over the long run. Believing that the each game is separate from the next develops a short-term way of thinking. So if you lose you can be quite hard on yourself and it can effect the way you play. But if you change your measures in line with your thought process, and only focus on the long term, then your emotions are less likely to get involved.

In a never-ending game, your emotions are far more content to just watch from the rail, leaving you to focus on playing great poker.