In cash games you are usually playing with 100+ big blind stacks and can rebuy if you lose your chips. This has far-reaching implications for your strategy adjustments in terms of both the hands that you are going to win with when big pots occur, and the way more marginal hands should be played.

Ordinarily, if two solid players get a lot of money in the middle during a cash game hand, you can be sure that they either have something very close to the nuts or, occasionally, big draws and bluffs. Because of this, getting a lot of money in with marginal hands like top pair-top kicker is not usually such a good idea when the money is deep. And this is one of the principal ways that inexperienced players lose their chips in cash games.

Control yourself

For this reason, good players will often exercise with marginal hands, which consists of checking and calling, rather than betting and raising. This is done so that their decisions are easier as the hand progresses, and they are able to protect their stack. Similarly, because there is no pressure associated with being forced out of a cash game by going broke, your play should be more oriented to gaining value on your hands against opponents who are only likely to have a small number of outs at best.

You may have heard the theory of raising to protect your hand, but this strategy will often force an opponent to fold a worse hand or stay around with a better one. However, the most disastrous result would be if an opponent folded a bluff that they might have continued with!

Master of disguise

The decision whether to play a big or small pot is something that you should be thinking about from the moment you receive your cards. For example, in very deep ring games, you might want to play hands with high-reverse implied odds (hands that you stand to lose a lot with in the wrong circumstances) like A-K very slowly.

It may serve best to just limp in early position and then call a raise – or just call a raise in late position. This will disguise your holding well and if you flop top pair you may well gain value from a bluff or a worse hand. If you play small pairs the same way as well, you may also be able to represent a set against trigger-happy opponents if you miss and the circumstances are correct.

If you check-raise the turn on an uncoordinated board it will place serious doubt in the minds of any thinking opponent. By indicating a wish to play a big pot with this bluff, you will force many better hands to fold if your opponents are remotely solid.

You should also purposefully look for instances where a player is seemingly hoping to control the size of a pot and push them out of their comfort zone in order to force them to fold. For this reason, it is important that these ideas are implemented as part of a balanced strategy discussed in the last topic to ensure your hand ranges aren’t predictable and easy to target.