While tournaments attract attention with their huge prizes and worldwide fame, cash games offer a number of undeniable advantages for those who seek stability and freedom.A tournament player becomes a hostage to the event schedule. The desire to participate in events with specific guaranteed prize pools means being strictly tied to a specific start time.
I prefer tournaments, mainly because I like the feeling that every decision can have a bigger impact on the whole session. There’s also more variety: stack sizes change, blinds increase, the bubble creates extra pressure, and you constantly have to adjust your strategy. Cash games are great because you can play deeper and the structure is more stable, but sometimes I find them a bit repetitive. Tournaments also give me that competitive feeling of trying to build a stack and eventually reach the final stages. Of course, the variance is much higher, so I don’t always love the swings, but overall I find MTTs more interesting and rewarding.
I've switched to grinding MTTs for a few years, but when I've started playing poker 10+ years ago I've played pretty much only cash games (especially online)... From my experience, nowadays it's getting tougher and tougher to beat CGs - the field at all stakes is full of good regs, at least at the sites I play, while the recreational/weak players seem to have moved to playing tournaments... Also, as a (serious) recreational player - that treats poker as a hobby, I kinda like the way MTTs work - closer to a 'game' - more interesting/entertaining...
It’s not that I definitively prefer one format over the other; the choice between tournaments and cash games depends strictly on the time and money I have available to invest in the games and, above all, on my risk tolerance. My emotional state at the time of playing also influences my choice. In short, I enjoy both formats and opt for one or the other depending on the context.
I like to play both. If I don't have much time to spend playing poker I will play a short session of cash games. Tournaments take longer so you can't play tournaments if you have time constraints. You need to make sure you can take the time to make the best decisions and play your best.
