Are cash games more skillful than poker tournaments?

The difference between cash games and poker tournaments are very severe; the most striking difference obviously being the increasing value seen in tournaments, where in a typical cash game the first hand is worth exactly the same as the last.

However, this isn’t what makes a cash game more skillful -if it indeed is more skillful-the argument is often made because as you progress deeper into a poker tournament your choices are diminished, often to the point of just one correct decision: All-in or fold. When a tournament begins the players are typically deep-stacked -just like a cash game-and as the tournament progresses and the blinds and antes increase, stacks become smaller and smaller; even if a player is constantly accumulating chips! So decisions because simplified.

On the flipside, cash-game players are constantly dealing with the same blinds, which make it unlikely that pots will exceed certain levels, except in the most extreme circumstances. This leads many to conclude that cash games require more skill since each hand is equally important and requires the same amount of thought process and decision making. But is this really true?

The trick to doing well in tournaments is to know when this change from deep-stack play takes place -not just for yourself, but also for your opponents-and how to adjust accordingly.  So theoretically a case could be made that tournaments are more skillful than cash games because you have to master the extreme situations of both short and deep-stack play, as well as everything in between!

This also puts a greater emphasis on deep-stack play, since the better you do during these stages of the tournament the longer they will last for you! And the longer the deep-stack part of the tournament lasts for you the more chips you can accumulate, which will prolong it even further.

Cash game players point to the fact that beyond the first few levels of the tournament you no longer need to play the Turn and River because most, if not all, of the money is already in the middle. And it’s difficult to say which school of thought is correct: playing deep-stacked all the time, or having to be proficient in every possible scenario?

Obviously tournament players feel they are more skillful, while their cash-game counterparts have the opposite interpretation of poker skill: I am of the opinion that neither is more skillful, they just require different skills! So it’s kind of like arguing what sport requires more athleticism, Soccer or Basketball? The truth is both sides have a strong argument.