Playing in a texas hold'em poker ring game, also known as a cash game, has in many ways a different set of strategies than a texas hold'em poker tournament. This is because every hand is played with chips that represent actual money and not chips as in a tournament that do not have any actual monetary value. Because most online poker rooms refer to cash games as ring games for the rest of the article cash games will be referred to as ring games.

Because a great many of the strategies that work in texas hold'em poker tournaments do not work in texas hold'em poker ring games you have to have a different skill set developed. We will try to illustrate some of the differences and some ring game strategies.

First and foremost the focus of texas hold'em poker ring games is not the same as texas hold'em poker tournaments. In texas hold'em poker tournaments your focus or objective is to increase your chip stack, but mainly to outlast other players. In texas hold'em poker ring games every hand individually can potentially make you money. It doesn't matter if you play for 5 hours or 5 minutes because each hand is played for actual cash. Because of this the usually texas hold'em poker tournament bluff which if called only puts you out of the tournament, which cost a set amount to enter, in a ring game a bad call results in a loss for what ever the amount is that you put in on the hand.

Secondly because of the nature of texas hold'em poker ring games the amounts you can win or lose can quickly get out of hand. For example lets say you sit down at a texas hold'em poker no limit ring game. The level of the table is $0.10-0.10 no limit. You buy in for $10. In a few hand you get some hands you win and your soon up to $25. Now players can make $5 or $10 bets to quickly double up. In addition if you lose your original $10 you can just cash buy in for another $10 or more. You should always sit down with an idea of your limits. By this I mean If you lose all $10 then you get up from the table and when you reach $30 for example you get up from the table. If you still want to play sit down at a new table with $10 and try to do it again. If you do not determine these limits prior to sitting down to play some texas hold'em poker you will often times be getting up feeling like had you only gotten out when you had x number of dollars you would have been so much better off.

I would like to take a minute to talk about texas hold'em poker limit ring games. In a limit ring game there are set amounts that are bet and raised. So for example if the limits of the table where $0.10-0.20 then the bets would be limited to those amounts. I do not recommend players play at low limit tables. What happens at low limit tables is it is impossible for any players to bet any other players out of hands so you have players catching hands late and no real ability to strategically play. Often times they just become "luck of the draw" tables with players staying in with any 2 pocket cards. It won't take long for you to play a nice pocket pair of kings get beaten by a 3, 5 off suit that makes a straight on the river. Higher limits cure this problem for the most part.

I would like to take a a minute to talk about how much cash to allow for ring game play or what amounts you should expect to play with on what level of tables. I would say at the lower end you can play with a set amount of $3 or $5 that you sit down with at each no limit $0.10-$0.10 table. At a more medium level you could have your set amount be $20 at a no limit $0.25-$0.25 table. At a higher level you can site down with $100 at a no limit $1.00-$1.00 table. So effective amounts for a starting bankroll for these three levels of players would be around $30-$50 for the lower level, around $100-$200 for the middle level player, and around $500-$1000 for the higher level player.

One great thing about texas hold'em poker ring games is the time involved. In a texas hold'em poker tournament you can expect to play for at least 3-4 hours if you do well. Often times it can be difficult to clear ones schedule for that long of a stretch of undisturbed time. In a texas hold'em poker ring game you can play as long as you like. You can sit down play one hand then get up and go somewhere else, or sit at the same table all day long it is up to you.

An additional benefit of texas hold'em poker table games rather than texas hold'em poker tournament is that texas hold'em poker table games can be a great deal more profitable for the time spent. Often times you can buy into a tournament for $20 or $30 and play for 2 or 3 hours only to finish with a little more than the buy in or worse. In a texas hold'em poker table game just by playing the pocket cards with high starting hand strength you can pretty easily double or triple your buy in amount in 20 or 30 minutes.

Another huge advantage to playing texas hold'em poker ring games are player points or comp points which almost all online poker rooms use. Player points or comp points can be used to achieve bonus money, free tournament tickets, and many other things. These points are warded to players as they play real money games. The amount of points a player is awarded is based on tournament fees and game rakes. A player playing in ring games can make drastically more player points or comp points than a player playing texas hold'em poker tournaments. this is because the player playing in a texas hold'em poker tournament is awarded an amount only for the tournament fees. So if he buys into a $10+$1 tournament the $1 fee is what is used to determine how many points he gets for that tournament no matter how he places. In a texas hold'em ring game points are awarded to players that contribute to any pots that are raked. A small amount is taken, "raked", from pots in texas hold'em poker ring games when they reach a minimum amount. Over time these little amounts add up to a nice amount of player points or comp points for players of ring games. This can be a good thing to know if your playing to clear a bonus of some type.

In closing texas hold'em poker ring games are very different in many ways than texas hold'em poker tournaments. Knowing the advantages and disadvantages to each along with some of the other aspects of texas hold'em poker ring games should give you the knowledge needed to move forward, and know how to proceed in the arena of texas hold'em poker ring games.