Poker Cash Games
In poker cash games, also known as ring games, you play with the money on the table or with chips that are equivalent to the real money. You can re-buy, add-on or leave with your money in between any hands you are playing but never while playing a hand. You are in other words using table stakes in poker cash games. The blinds remain the same throughout the game. Various betting structures such as limit, no limit and pot limit can be used.
Poker cash games, unlike tournaments, do not aim to reach a conclusion and produce a winner. They simply run on and on in concert with cash and player flow. Poker cash games come to a halt when there are less than two players seated and continue as soon as there are two or more players seated again. To join a cash game you must make a buy-in. The minimum and maximum buy-ins are defined by the casino or online poker room. Casinos and online poker rooms charge a fee for hosting poker cash games. This fee is called rake and it is typically 5% of the pot and capped at $3 or 3 units of the currency used by the poker room. However, if a hand ends pre-flop in a Texas Hold'em cash game, or in the first betting round of any other poker cash game featuring face up cards, there is normally no rake taken from the pot. This rule is popularly called: "No Flop - No Drop".
Ring Games: Another name for poker cash games.
Add-on: Same thing as a re-buy except that you do it while you still have chips left in your stack.
Table stakes: When you use table stakes you can not stake more than what you had on the table when the hand began.
Rake: Fee charged by the poker room for hosting the cash game. Typically 5% of the pot and capped at $3 or 3 units of the currency used by the poker room.
No Flop - No Drop: No rake is taken from the pot if the hand ends pre-flop. This rule has become an industry standard. |
Poker Cash Games Example - Rake
You are playing a cash game and you have just won a pot of $10. The poker room takes $0.5 from the pot you won, leaving you with $9.5.
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Professional players who pay a lot of rake and/or tournament fees have normally negotiated (as a rule via affiliates) so called rakeback deals with the poker rooms. This means that every month they will get back a certain portion of all the rake they have paid. Most poker rooms use the so called contributed rake method to calculate how much each player has raked. With this method a player's rake is 100% proportional to the amount of money he has placed in the pot. Some poker rooms may give all betting players the same rake credit regardless of how much they have placed in the pot but the contributed rake method is more or less an industry standard. Entry fees for tournaments are covered by the rakeback system as well. The only difference is that the entry fees of tournaments are predetermined whereas the rake in poker cash games is highly dynamic.
Poker Trivia
Cash Games
Cash games have a broader connotation than poker cash games. A cash game in the broadest sense of the word is a game of skill where players compete against eachother over cash prizes. A game of skill is a legal definition that sets the game apart from a game of chance which may be subject to other laws and restrictions. The predominating element of a game of skill is skill, whereas the predominating element of a game of chance is chance. The skill element can be timing, speed, knowledge, hand-eye coordination etc. Poker counts as a game of skill in many jurisdictions worldwide. |
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