When you play cash pocker games regularly you can become completely adapted to that form of poker and when you make the switch to anything else you need to make changes. These changes can pose some difficulty for some players and without making the changes you won’t stand a chance. In this article we’ll take a look at the adjustments you need to make in your game when you go from cash games to tournaments.

* The first thing you need to acknowledge is that your stack isn’t infinite like it is in free games on www.PartyPoker.com. In a cash game you’re allowed to re-buy as many times as you’d like or until you’re out of money, whichever comes first. When you play in tournaments you’re given a starting stack that is equivalent to every other player and once you lose all your chips your out of the tournament. This means you will need to change your philosophy and play tighter poker because you don’t have the chips to waste. You’ll also need to choose your battles wisely and you should be less likely to call on draws unless you have a comfortable stack.

* The second thing that is different is that in tournaments the blinds go up on scheduled intervals that have pre-determined before the start of the tournament. In a cash game the blinds remain the same all the time and you don’t need to worry about anything, but in tournaments the stakes increase. This means that as the tournament goes along you need to change your hand selection and obviously play fewer hands then regularly. You don’t have the chips to waste when the blinds increase and it can make a huge difference in the gameplay.

* In cash games on www.PKR.com there isn’t really much point stealing the blinds in hands because there so low and it’ll gain you a bad table image which will make you a target. In tournament play however, stealing blinds becomes a huge part of your success. As the blinds increase in the tournament you need to make sure that you steal your fair amount of blinds or else your stack will suffer the consequences. You need to willing to steal blinds if not then you might not fare so well in tournaments.

* The final difference in tournament play is that you need to make a certain bubble point in order to make any money. For instance if there are 100 players in a tournament on PKR.com then you might need to reach the top 10 before making any sort of money. In a cash game you can get up and walk from the table at any point in time with your chips. Basically you need to be able to play poker for hours on end without losing interest, because once you do then you’ll throw your chips and tournament away.

There are some major differences as you can see in cash games on www.Betfair.com and tournament play and making the adjustments is going to determine how successful your move to tournament play is. It’s fun to play in tournaments when you’re use to cash games, you just need to make sure you make the changes.