In part one, I discussed why tournament players might initially fail in a live game. Part two expands on the differences in strategy.
The successful tournament player usually has either a good preflop strategy or a good post flop strategy. Although one needs to do both reasonably well there are players who do well in tournaments when they are outstanding in just one of these areas and only reasonably good in the other. An example of a player who does very well with an excellent preflop strategy is John Juanda. He is capable of reading weakness in a preflop raiser and coming over the top even when he doesn't have a hand. There are other players who have a very strong preflop game other than John too. That is not to say that John cannot play a good post flop strategy too, just that his preflop game is outstanding compared to his post flop play.
Daniel Negreanu on the other hand excels in post flop play. His loose style allows him to See a lot of flops and outplay his opponent post flop. He can also get his money all in preflop when he has a huge hand like aces or kings as well. These all in situations are pretty easy plays though and do not require a strong preflop strategy.
Even Daniel has admitted that he is nowhere close to Juanda's ability in preflop strategy. Still Daniel's style and his post flop strategy does very well in structures where post flop play can be utilized, especially in the early to middle rounds of a large buy in tournament.
Daniel is able to make adjustments when the blind to stack ratio becomes smaller for all of the players stacks but generally he does not need to do this often because he is still able to see flops when he has the huge stack at the table. He can also bully players when he has a large stack as well. He is willing to gamble when he has a coin toss situation if he does meet some resistance against a small stack and the result is not going to make a huge difference in his overall lead should he lose a few of them in the later stages of the tournament. The ability to change gears is an important aspect to Daniel's tournament strategy.
Comparing these two strategies to a cash game one will see immediately that a strong preflop strategy just does not have equal footing because the stack size to the size of a raise or re raise still requires most players to play their hand beyond the flop. One rarely makes an all in move preflop except in those instances when two players have big hands like aces. kings, or queens and face a similar holding against another opponent. The only time a strong preflop strategy can be utilized is when one of the players is relatively short stacked. Anytime a player's stack is less than 40 times the BB then an all in situation can occur preflop (or after the flop at the latest). One hand that does not play as well in a deep stack vs. deep stack situation is A-K. One will see the a-k all in preflop play occur in max capped games where the stack sizes are relatively small compared to the BB. In fact, most capped games play very similar (if not exactly) to the early levels of a tournament and using tournament strategy to double up in these settings is the right strategy compared to the games where a max is not utilized. The very low capped games play very similar to a rebuy tournament. As this article reveals the strategy in a no limit hold em game can be very different depending on whether there is a maximum a cap and when a cap is not utilized. Not all no limit hold em games are the same!
