Ring Game Play

Holdem Northwest hosts several ring games, or “live games”, throughout the week. Many venues have ring games before the tournaments, (The End Zone in Woodburn, Rock Creek Corner in Hillsboro), and most venues have ring games between the two tournaments. Every Friday Shonna’s in Hillsboro hosts a ring game from 6 or 7 pm until 1 or 2 am.

We are able to offer this kind of game because of the way we manage the players’ points. In Holdem Northwest there are several ways to collect points, and your points never go away until they are used to buy in to special events, including ring games. (See: How the Point System Works). We do not use the points as a way of keeping score. Your points represent not only how well you play, but how often you play, which has nothing to do with your level of skill.

One of our primary goals in Holdem Northwest is to increase the level of skill of all our players, in both tournament and ring game play. Toward that end we will from time to time offer short articles, like this one.

To be consistently successful at ring game play one must become familiar with the differences between ring game and tournament structure. These differences are critical, and they require different strategies. If you play the ring game the same way that you play the tournament, you are most certain to do very poorly at one or the other.

Here are the key differences:

Re-buys. In ring games the player may restore his chip stack when he suffers setbacks in the normal fluctuations of the game. Tournaments do not allow for such recovery. With proper play, the best tournament players will commonly place in the top three only about 25% of the time. In ring games, better players will win most of the time. This is because the ring game allows the player to be properly bankrolled, enough to absorb the normal fluctuations of the game.

The absence of a clock. In a ring game the blinds never increase. They stay at 1 and 2, (in the case of our ring games), throughout the entire course of the game. This means the player may enter and leave the game whenever he wishes, and is never under threat of being blinded into oblivion, (providing he is properly bankrolled). Take a break. Have something to eat. Step outside and clear you head. Shake off a bad beat.

Chip values. In tournament play, the chips do not represent anything of value. They are merely a way of keeping score. In a ring game each chip represents a point. If you have five chips in a bet you are placing five of your points at risk.

Start time. Tournaments start at a specific time, and players are eliminated until one person has all of the chips. In a ring game, players may join the table whenever they wish, and leave or change tables at any time.

Because of these special differences, the strategies required to do well at a ring game are very different from those that are valuable in a tournament. Betting into a “dry pot”, for example, has none of the potentially harmful consequences of tournament play. Going all-in will not put a player at risk of elimination.

There are some critical points in a tournament when players must win most of the pots they are in. In ring games, however, the ability to sensibly surrender pots is a vital skill.

Tournament play values the ability to play inspirationally, and to avoid small mathematical advantages. Ring game play values stability, repetition, and small mathematical advantages.

Marginal errors are far more costly in tournaments than in ring games.

The biggest mistakes I see at ring games are from players who become aggressive for aggression’s sake. Better players will “hide in the bushes”. The overly aggressive player will amass a large stack, only to have it all slip away to the better, more patient, wise players. Slow and steady will win the stacks at ring games.

Another error comes from what I refer to as “feeding the bears”. Players holding marginal cards will call large over-bets from overly aggressive players. Don’t be afraid to fold in a ring game. Wait for the better cards to come to you. Hide in the bushes. Or, simply move to another table.

People play poker because they enjoy the game. If you aren’t having fun at your table in a ring game, move to another table.