Full ring or short-handed cash games?

Bloggers / Matthew Pitt / 08 December 2008 / Leave a Comment

Cash games are often the bread and butter of a poker professional simply for the fact they have the opportunity to win vast sums of money each and every hand they play, whereas substantial tournament wins are usually few and far between. For someone playing for a living cash games make more sense, but is it better to play full ring or short-handed games?

Full ring refers to games that seat nine or ten players in them. The vast majority of cash games in casinos throughout the world are in the full ring format. Conversely, short-handed is a term usually saved for games that seat a maximum of five or six players.

The popularity of short-handed games on the Internet has exploded in recent years as players realised it is possible to achieve a higher win rate compared to full ring. The main reason for this is a player will be dealt more hands per hour than someone sat at a table of nine players. Also, if there is a weak player at the table, short-handed allows a player to enter more hands per hour with this poor player which should result in profit.

Although it is possible to win more money at short-handed cash games, there is also more variance involved as starting hand requirements are usually lower and the play is, as a rule, much more aggressive. From my experience, players start to three-bet lightly as low as NL50 in short-handed games but this is a rarity in the equivalent full ring matches.

It is also easier to play multiple tables of full ring games as you are not involved in as many tough decisions as hand reading is a lot more straight forward and it is easier to narrow a player's range from the position they made the play from.

Full ring games are normally filled with tight-passive players. The older generation playing online will probably not have played much short-handed poker in their career and may be put off by the frantic pace of those games so choose to play something they have played all their lives in their weekly home games. You also find a lot of players who have been burned by short-handed return to full ring and play more timidly after losing some of their bankrolls.

The general consensus online is, if you prefer to play a tight-aggressive style (TAG) then play full ring but if you play a more loose-aggressive style (LAG) short-handed games may be more suited to you. So which is best for a player to play in? Like everything in poker, it depends! My advice would b to play what you enjoy and what you are most comfortable with and take it from there. It is much easier to get through losing spells if you actually enjoy what you are doing.

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