A common mistake made by tournament players going into deep stacked cash games is that they treat it like a tournament, thinking they can just sit there waiting for massive starting hands and then get paid off. This is very rarely how it plays out. In a short stacked tournament situation you’re always going to be happy getting all the money in on the flop with an over-pair. However, if a stack of 200+ big blinds is going all-in on the flop in a cash game, you can be sure that your over-pair is not looking too good!
So does this mean I should avoid these hands in deep stack play? No, hands like over-pairs are still premium hands you always want to play, but you must be careful and be prepared to let them go on later streets if the situation demands it. It is often said that big starting hands will win small pots but lose big pots in deep stacked cash games and there is certainly some truth to this.
If a big starting hand comes up against a speculative hand, the speculative hand will often miss and the big hand will win the pot uncontested with a continuation bet. However, when the speculative hand hits a made hand, the big starting hand is in trouble. Without an extremely good read you can’t simply fold straight away or you make yourself very easy to run over, but at the same time you know the potential for bigger bets to come, so you don’t want to call knowing you will always fold the turn to a further bet.
Those normally focusing on Scratch Cards Online should note how this is what is meant by the difference in hand strength being reduced. The hands that are not very valuable in short stack play where you are all in very early in the hand now become very playable, because you have the potential to win an opponent’s whole stack if they get too attached to their big pocket pair.
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