There are pros/cons to each. I started as a cash game player and have become mostly a tournament player, but there are definitely aspects of cash games that I miss. For one, I enjoy playing
hands all the way to the river. In a tournament, play tends to turn into shove fests and few hands ever make it to the turn. However, if you can't play often (like me, no internet poker in my state) and enjoy taking a shot at a big cash, then tournaments will probably work out better.
Cash Games:
- Flexible, start/stop when you want
- Blinds don't increase so you can wait for great hands and also call with most speculative hands to hit a monster
- You can generally play hands all the way to the river
- Bankrolls generally increases slowly. You aren't going to win a huge payout like in a tournament. Even on a great night, it's hard to increase your stack beyond 3X - 4X.
Tournaments:
- Must set aside hours, possibly over multiple-days
- Blinds escalate fairly quickly, causing you to make riskier moves
- Unless you happen to build a huge stack quickly, the game generally turns into a short-stack game where most of the action is either pre-flop or on the flop.
- Expect to cash rarely, but hopefully those cashes are big ones
- Play tends to be wilder since a players' loss is limited to their buy-in
