Ed Miller Takes Poker Seriously, As A Game Of Skill. That's Why He Doesn't Play Tournaments
Ed Miller doesn't play poker tournaments. He plays cash games.
Ed Miller plays poker for money, not for status or trophies or praise. Ed Miller is a poker professional, not a gambler. In fact, he's relatively risk averse. Miller's not the guy who will win big at the poker tables and then take that money over play roulettes or go on a shopping spree. Miller makes money, he doesn't flaunt it. Ed Miller takes poker seriously, as a game of skill and as an income generator.
Poker tournaments* are not like tennis championships or chess matches. Poker tournaments are not good measure of poker skills. Poker is a game of both luck and skill whereas tennis and chess are almost purely skill. The luck factor is larger in poker tournaments than in cash games. That is, tournaments are riskier than cash games. Tournaments are worse bets than cash games.
Poker tournament players are like day traders while poker cash game players are like value investors. Tournament prize structures are long-shots, like the lottery**, whereas cash games are short odds, like investing in a mutual fund. This is why many tournament players do not invest their own money to play the tournament and instead are sponsored by big name poker businesses. (And why you see so many poker tournament players wear hats or T-shirts that promote poker businesses.)
Cash games offer more flexibility. Ed Miller has played a few tournaments in the past, and he's done well, but he hates playing them. He says they take too much time and aren't worth the effort. Miller started playing poker because being a professional poker player allows him to be his own boss, to set his own schedule, and to work fewer hours. Tournaments are the opposite of that. They have their own tournament schedules. Tournaments are often long workdays, such as 10 to 15 hour days. As a poker tournament player, you can't leave a poker tournament for a few hours to take a shower or go on a date, you must stay in the tournament. Additionally, many poker tournaments are run by people who do not have experience or skill in running poker tournaments.
To recap, poker cash games are better measures of poker competence than tournaments because:
- Cash games require more skill and less luck; tournaments require more luck and less skill
- Cash games are less financially risky than poker tournaments
- Cash games are more flexible than tournaments, affording the professional poker player more freedom to be his or her own boss; tournament players are often "horses" in big business bets and thus have less freedom as sponsored players
Related post: Ed Miller and Las Vegas World Series of Poker Tournaments:
http://edmillerfan.blogspot
*It should be noted that poker sit-and-go tournaments, which are short, highly structured tournaments, differ dramatically from most standard poker tournaments and are more similar to cash games than to standard tournaments.
**The lottery is not profitable. Even though poker tournaments are long-shots, they can still be played profitably by a skilled player. The differences between the odds of cash games and tournaments are over-emphasized in this article to make a point.
