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This article was written by blackrain79.com contributor Fran Ferlan.
Cash games are arguably the best format if you want to win money from poker (somewhat) consistently.
Cash games are convenient because they allow you to play poker at your own terms. You can play them any time you want, and buy in at any stake you prefer.
However, they’re also a more challenging game format than tournament poker, for example.
If you want to get into poker cash games, you absolutely need to know these essential tips.
Let’s get right into it.
Cash Game Tip #1: Enter Most Pots With a Raise
If you are the first player to enter the pot, you should do so with an open-raise.
For example:
You have A♥️K♠️ in early position (first seat to act preflop).
You should raise.
Being the preflop aggressor is statistically more profitable than being the preflop caller.
If you are using a hand tracking software like PokerTracker 4, you can check these stats yourself.
Chances are, you’d be surprised by how much more money you win by raising as opposed to calling preflop.
Being the preflop aggressor gives you the opportunity to make a continuation bet on the flop (or c-bet for short).
C-bets are usually profitable, and you should make a c-bet on most flops unless there’s a very specific reason not to do so (more about c-betting in the next tip).
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Here’s why you should enter most pots with an open-raise
a) to build up the pot
If you have a strong hand, you should build up the pot with it as soon as possible.
The bigger pot you build preflop, the easier it is to ship the rest of your stack in the middle post flop.
In poker, most of your money will come from strong value hands when your opponent has a weaker hand that’s willing to pay you off.
b) to steal the blinds
At its core, poker is all about blind stealing. Without the blinds, everyone would simply wait around for pocket Aces to put any money into the pot.
The blinds stimulate the action, and if you open-raise preflop, sometimes you will be able to take down the pot preflop.
If you open-limp, on the other hand, you aren’t giving your opponents any incentive to fold, so you can’t win the pot outright.
c) to gain initiative
The preflop aggressor is the player that’s perceived to have the strongest hand. This gives them the opportunity to make a c-bet on the flop.
If you connect with the flop, you can make a value c-bet, where you expect to get called by weaker hands.
If you miss the flop, you can make a bluff c-bet (or a light c-bet) hoping to get your opponent to fold.
And since your opponent is just as likely to miss the flop as you, you can pick up a lot of pots when your opponent misses the flop (which is most of the time).
As for the bet sizing, the standard open-raise is 3 big blinds.
So if you’re playing a $1/$2 cash game, for example, the standard open-raise size is $6.
If another player open-limps in front of you, you can make an isolation-raise instead.
As the name suggests, the goal of the isolation-raise is to isolate the open-limper, and play a heads-up pot against them post flop (preferably in position).
Since open-limpers are more than likely to be recreational players, iso-raises allow you to take advantage of many mistakes they’re bound to make post flop, and try to take their stack before the other players.
The standard isolation-raise size is 3 big blinds, plus an additional big blind per limper.
So 4 big blinds for 1 limper, 5 for two limpers and so on.
Check out my other article on preflop bet sizing for a much deeper dive on this.
If another player open-raises before you, you can 3-bet (re-raise) them to get to the flop as the preflop aggressor.
When you’re first starting out, you should keep your 3-betting range value heavy.
This means 3-betting with strong starting hands like premium pocket pairs, Ace-King, Ace-Queen and so on.
As you get more experienced, you can start adding bluffing hands to your 3-betting range.
Check out my full guide on 3-betting preflop if you want to know all my 3-betting ranges.
If neither open-raising or 3-betting are an option, you can flat call against another player’s open raise.
Flat calling is usually the last option you should consider preflop, but there are certainly times where it’s going to be the most profitable one.
For example, if you have a speculative hand that wants to see a cheap flop. Hands like small pocket pairs or suited connectors may fit the bill.
But as mentioned, you should see most flops as the preflop aggressor, and only consider calling preflop as an exception.
For more, check out my recent video with the 9 preflop poker tips all beginners should know.
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Cash Game Tip #2: Make a C-bet on Most Flops
You should get to most flops as the preflop aggressor, because it’s statistically more profitable than being the preflop caller.
If you are the preflop aggressor, you have the opportunity to make a continuation bet (or c-bet for short) on the flop.
A c-bet is a bet made by the previous street’s aggressor.
C-bets are usually profitable, so you should make a c-bet on most flops unless there’s a very specific reason not to do so.
If you have a made hand on the flop, you should make a value c-bet.
For example:
You have A♥️Q♠️ and the flop comes Q♦️5♣️2♥️
A value c-bet means that you expect to get called by a lot of weaker hands.
Most of the money you’ll make in no-limit hold’em will come from your strong value hands where your opponent has a weaker hand that’s willing to give you action.
C-betting for value is relatively straightforward: you bet when you can get action from a lot of weaker hands.
If you’re playing small stakes cash games, this will often be the case, since a lot of players at the lower stakes tend to overcall.
To overcall means calling more often than what would be considered “optimal".
A lot of recreational players at the lower stakes will call just about any bet if they catch any remote piece of the board.
They will often call you with mediocre hands like top pair, weak kicker, second or even third pair, all sorts of drawing hands and so on.
Against these types of players, you should use a bigger bet sizing to take advantage of their overcalling tendencies.
For example, if you suspect a player may have some sort of a draw, why not charge them a premium for it?
Don’t let them draw out on you for cheap, especially if you have a vulnerable hand like top pair.
When you bet big against players who tend to overcall, this is known as exploitative bet sizing.
This is the opposite of balanced bet sizing, where you bet in a way that doesn’t reveal your hand strength in any way.
For example, if you always bet a half pot on the flop (both with your value hands and your bluffs), you’re using balanced bet sizing.
Against weaker or inexperienced players, it’s better to use exploitative bet sizing.
That’s because recreational players don’t pay attention to betting patterns, so it doesn’t make sense to try to deceive them.
This is why I have said so many times that GTO is literally the worst poker advice I have ever heard, especially if you play low stakes against players like this!
Against more skilled players, you can use balanced bet sizing, or mix up your bet sizing to always keep them guessing.
But even against these players in lower stakes games, GTO still loses massively to a simple Exploitative bet sizing strategy (alright, rant over).
Most of the time, though, you won’t have a strong value hand on the flop.
If you miss the flop completely, it doesn’t mean you should give up from c-betting altogether.
That’s because you can often get your opponent to fold to c-bets, even if you don’t have a particularly strong hand.
When you c-bet with the intention of getting your opponent to fold, this is known as a light c-bet (or a bluff c-bet).
If you only c-bet with your value hands, you may become too predictable over time.
Soon enough, nobody will be willing to give your hand any action, because they will figure out you only c-bet with your strong hands.
If you throw out an occasional light c-bet, on the other hand, you will always keep your opponents guessing, and they won’t be able to put you on your exact hand.
As a rule of thumb, you should make one light c-bet for every value c-bet.
This way, your c-betting frequency is perfectly balanced, meaning your opponents will always have to guess at your hand strength.
Important note: this only applies if you are playing against skilled opponents who are paying attention to your betting frequencies.
Against recreational players, it’s better to keep your flop c-betting range value heavy.
This means you only c-bet with your strong value hands, and skip the c-bet if you miss the flop.
An exception to this rule is if you’re playing against players who tend to play too fit-or-fold post flop.
A fit-or-fold player is usually a recreational player who likes to see a lot of flops, but gives up fairly easily post flop if they miss the board (which is most of the time).
Against this type of player, you can c-bet with a very high frequency, regardless of your hand strength, because they will often give up their hand without putting much of a fight.
Against a fit-or-fold player, you can use exploitative bet sizing, meaning you bet smaller with your bluffs, and bigger with your value hands.
If you bet smaller, you’re giving yourself a better risk-to-reward ratio.
The smaller your bet size, the less often your opponent needs to fold in order for your bet to be profitable.
This is discussed in much more detail in The Microstakes Playbook.
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Cash Game Tip #3: Always Buy In For a Full Amount
When you play cash games, you have the option of choosing your buyin amount.
You should always buyin for the maximum amount. This will allow you to maximize your potential winnings.
The maximum amount in most online cash games is 100 big blinds, sometimes more in live cash games.
Think of your chips as your ammunition. The more chips you have in front of you, the more options you have.
Skilled poker players always want to have as many chips in front of them as possible.
A lot of amateur poker players, on the other hand, choose to buy in for the minimum amount, because they are scared of losing their whole buy in.
But this isn’t the best approach to take.
If you buy in for less, you’re technically risking less money, but you’re also limiting your upside potential.
In poker, not winning as much as you could is also a form of losing.
For example, let’s say you are dealt pocket Aces, the strongest starting hand in no-limit hold’em.
Your opponent open-raises, you 3-bet, and your opponent 4-bet shoves all in.
You snap call and your pocket rockets hold up. Congratulations, you just doubled up.
Let’s say you only had 50 big blinds in your stack. If you double up, you won 50 big blinds (minus the rake, of course).
But if you had 100 big blinds in your stack, you could have won 100 big blinds instead of 50.
Some players may protest that they’re still not comfortable with risking the whole stack, and fair enough.
But when you play poker, losing some money from time to time is inevitable. There’s no way around it, so it doesn’t make any sense to try to “lose less”.
If you don’t want to risk losing money, the best course of action would be to stop playing poker altogether.
If you’re not comfortable with losing your whole stack at any given moment (or a couple of them, for that matter), it’s a good sign you should probably drop down in stakes.
If live cash games are too cost prohibitive for you, you can try playing poker online.
In online poker, you can buy in for as little as 2 dollars.
Check out my ultimate guide on how to beat NL2 cash games for more on these games.
While the microstakes online may seem like a frivolous amount of money, it’s worth noting that there’s a big difference between live and online poker.
Online poker plays significantly faster than live poker. It also allows playing multiple tables at once (aka multitabling).
This means that you can play way more hands online than you could in a brick and mortar casino.
So while the buyin amounts are smaller, you can make up for it by putting a far greater volume in a shorter amount of time.
It’s also worth noting that there’s a big skill difference between live and online poker players.
If you were to play a $1/$2 cash game at your local casino, you would likely encounter a soft game with a lot of recreational players around.
But if you buyin for $200 online (this is known as NL200), you would go up against a number of semi-professional or professional poker players with very few recreational players around.
In fact, if you want to play in a game with the skill equivalent of a $1/$2 live game, you would likely need to play at the very lowest stakes online (NL2 or NL5).
Cash Game Tip #4: Learn Deep Stack Poker Strategy
If you truly want to excel at poker cash games, you should be familiar with the dynamics of the deep stack strategy.
Cash games have deeper effective stack sizes than, say, poker tournaments, which influences your starting hand selection and the overall strategy.
The standard effective stack size for cash games is 100 big blinds. Deep stacks refer to any stack size that’s bigger than 100 big blinds.
In cash games, it’s not uncommon to sit at stack sizes that exceed 150 big blinds.
In these situations, your preflop and post flop strategies can change significantly.
With deeper stack sizes, you have much more manoeuvrability post flop. This means you are often forced to play all the post flop streets.
The post flop mistakes get more costly, but the potential upside also rises dramatically.
There are a few adjustments you should make when playing deep stack poker.
First of all, top pair hands go down in relative value. That’s because one pair hands are vulnerable to getting outdrawn on future streets.
Also, a single pair hand is often not strong enough to extract a ton of value on multiple streets.
This means you’ll probably need way stronger hands post flop in order to completely stack your opponent.
Speculative hands, on the other hand, go up in relative value, due to their nuts potential.
Think hands like... A♥️2♥️, 9♣️8♣️, 4♦️4♠️
The nuts combination means the strongest possible combination on a given board.
Speculative hands include suited Aces, suited connectors, and small pocket pairs.
Suited Aces are especially strong in deep stack poker due to their ability to make nuts flushes.
When you have a suited Aces, you are always drawing to the strongest possible flush. This means you don’t have to worry about reverse implied odds like you would with other suited hands.
Reverse implied odds refer to the amount of money you can potentially lose on future streets if your draw completes, but your opponent ends up having an even stronger hand.
Suited connectors also have great nuts potential, but you do need to take reverse implied odds into account, since your opponent can potentially make a stronger flush.
This means you should be careful when playing small suited connectors, since there’s a number of stronger flushes that can potentially beat you.
Finally, pocket pairs also have great nuts potential, with their ability to make sets and full houses.
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Cash Game Tip #5: Attack Small Stack Sizes
When you’re playing cash games, you should pay attention to the player's stack sizes. If you find players with short stacks, this is usually a clear sign they’re a recreational poker player.
If possible, you should try to take the seat that’s on the direct left of the short stack.
This way, you’ll get to play most hands in position against them.
This means you’ll be able to take advantage of their mistakes and try to stack them before the other players.
When playing against smaller stack sizes, it’s important to make some adjustments to your overall strategy.
The effective stack size determines the relative strength of certain starting hands.
Some hands perform better with short stack sizes, while other hands prefer deep stack sizes.
The hands that perform best against short stack sizes are premium pocket pairs (pocket Aces through pocket Tens) and strong broadway hands.
Broadway hands are hands that can make the strongest possible straight post flop, like AJ, KQ and so on.
These hands perform best with a small stack-to-pot-ratio.
As the name suggests, stack-to-pot ratio (or SPR for short) is a ratio between the effective stack size and the size of the pot.
The effective stack size is the smaller stack size of the players involved in the pot, because you can only win as much as you put in the pot.
For example, if you have $100 in your stack, and your opponent has $50, the effective stack size is $50.
SPR is a metric that tells you how committed you are to the pot, and how inclined you should be to put the rest of your stack in the middle.
The smaller the SPR, the more pot committed you are and vice versa.
To calculate the SPR, you simply divide the effective stack size with the size of the pot.
For example, if the effective stack size is $100, and the pot size is $20, the SPR is 5, because 100 / 20 = 5.
Important note: SPR is a preflop and flop metric, meaning it tells you how committed you are to the pot at the beginning of the hand.
You don’t calculate the SPR on future streets (turn and river) even if you put more money into the pot.
If you are pot committed on the flop, you remain pot committed throughout the rest of the hand.
If you are not pot committed on the flop, you don’t become pot committed on future streets, regardless of how the rest of the hand unfolds.
When the SPR is very small (3 or less), you are automatically pot committed with a top pair hand or better.
This means you should be comfortable with shipping the rest of your stack in the middle, because you’ve already committed a huge chunk of your stack to the pot.
So what does SPR have to do with your starting hand selection?
As mentioned, certain hands perform best in small SPR pots.
Premium pocket pairs, for example, will often flop an overpair, meaning you will be automatically pot committed if the SPR is very small.
Similarly, broadway hands will often make a top pair on the flop, meaning your hand will be strong enough to ship the rest of your stack in the middle.
This is important when playing against recreational players with short stacks, because they will often give you action with weaker hands.
For example, recreational players are notorious for playing way too many junk hands.
They will play just about any Ace for the prospect of catching a top pair post flop.
If you get a hand like Ace-King, for example, your hand will dominate all the other Ax hands they could have in their range.
If you flop a top pair, top kicker, you will likely get action from other top pair hands with weaker kickers.
A dominated hand is unlikely to win against a stronger hand due to an inferior kicker. You always want your hand to dominate your opponent’s, instead of the other way around.
That’s why you should avoid playing mediocre hands with weak kickers.
Check out my other article on the 5 bad poker hands you should never play for more info on the topic.
Unlike premium pocket pairs and strong broadways, other hands prefer deep SPR and effective stack sizes, so they become less profitable when playing against short stacks.
Starting hands that perform better with deep stack sizes include speculative hands like suited connectors and small pocket pairs.
Suited connectors (like 9♥8♥ or 7♠6♠) have great playability post flop because they can make strong combinations like straights and flushes.
But they need to improve post flop in order to be played profitably, unlike premium pocket pairs that are often strong enough in and of themselves.
Since it’s unlikely to make strong combinations in no-limit hold’em, you want a better potential upside in those rare situations where you actually manage to make them.
This means that suited connectors prefer very deep stack sizes, because it gives them better implied odds.
Implied odds refer to the amount of money you can make on future streets if your draw completes.
Similarly, small pocket pairs (pocket Sixes through pocket Twos) can rarely be played profitably post flop unless they make a set.
The chance of hitting a set with a pocket pair is only about 12%, so you want to get paid off once you do manage to hit it.
Check out my article on how to set mine profitably for a much deeper dive on this.
5 Simple Cash Game Tips You Should Know - Summary
You don’t need to learn a lot of advanced poker strategy to start winning at cash games.
All you have to do is follow a few simple tips that are the cornerstone of the proven tight and aggressive strategy.
To sum up, here are 5 simple cash game tips every poker player should know.
1. Enter most pots with a raise
Being the preflop aggressor is statistically more profitable than being the preflop caller.
By entering the pot with a raise, you are building up the pot with your strong hands, you have the initiative, and you can often steal the blinds and win the pot outright preflop.
2. Make a c-bet on most flops
C-bets are usually profitable, so you should make one on most flops unless there’s a very specific reason not to do so.
If you connect with the flop, you can c-bet for value, where you expect to get called by a lot of weaker hands.
If you miss the flop, you can still make a light c-bet, since your opponents are just as likely to miss the flop as you.
3. Always buy in for a full amount
Buying in for a full amount allows you to maximize your potential winnings. It also allows you to fully manifest your skill edge over your opponents.
If you’re not fully comfortable with buying in for a full amount, consider dropping down in stakes until you find the limit you’re comfortable with.
4. Learn the deepstack poker strategy
In cash games, it’s not uncommon to sit at stack sizes that are significantly deeper than 100 big blinds. In these situations, you should make adjustments to your overall strategy.
With deep stacks, speculative hands with great nuts potential go up in value, while one pair hands go down in relative value because they are vulnerable to getting outdrawn.
5. Attack small stack sizes
Players with small stack sizes (anything below 100 big blinds) are more likely to be recreational players.
You should attack the small stack sizes when you have a made hand on the flop (top pair or better).
I hope this blog article helped you in your cash games!
P.S. - We just hit 10,000 members in my free private Facebook poker group.
Amazing job guys.
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This article was written by Fran Ferlan
Poker player, writer and coach
Specializing in live and online cash games
For coaching enquiries, contact Fran at email@franferlan.com
Or apply directly for poker coaching with Fran, right here
Lastly, if you want to know the complete strategy I use to make $2000+ per month in small/mid stakes games, grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.
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