How Does a Poker Cash Game Work?
How a poker cash game works: chips equal real money, blinds stay fixed, you buy in and cash out anytime, and the house takes a rake. With a sample $1/$2
On this page · 6 sections
The fastest way to understand a cash game — also called a ring game — is to see it next to the tournament it’s usually confused with:
| Feature | Cash game | Tournament |
|---|---|---|
| Chip value | Real money at face value | Points only, not cashable |
| Blinds | Fixed all session | Rise on a clock |
| Entry | Buy in within table limits | One entry fee for a set stack |
| Leaving | Cash out anytime | Play until you bust or win |
| Rebuys | Top up between hands | Only during a rebuy period, if any |
Read down that “cash game” column and you have the definition: your chips are worth real money at face value, the blinds never move, and you’re free to buy in, reload, and walk away whenever you like between hands. The rest of this article is just those three ideas unpacked.
A chip is money in disguise
In a cash game a $5 chip is worth exactly $5. Stand up between hands, hand your stack to the cashier, and you leave with that amount. There’s no chip leader, no prize ladder, no bubble — your result is simply how much more or less money you have than when you sat down. That single fact drives everything else about how the game feels.
Buying in and reloading
Every cash table sets a minimum and maximum buy-in, almost always quoted in big blinds. A common no-limit standard runs from about 40 big blinds at the bottom to 100 big blinds at the top. At a $1/$2 table that shakes out like this:
| $1/$2 no-limit table | Amount |
|---|---|
| Small blind | $1 |
| Big blind | $2 |
| Minimum buy-in (40 bb) | $80 |
| Maximum buy-in (100 bb) | $200 |
Lose some chips and you can top back up to the maximum between hands — you’re never forced out just because your stack shrank. This is table-stakes poker: in any single hand you can only wager what’s in front of you, and you can’t reach into your pocket mid-hand to cover a bet. If you run out during a hand you’re all-in for your remaining chips and a side pot forms around you. Adding chips only happens between hands, never inside one.
The blinds hold steady all night
This is the real dividing line from a tournament. In a cash game the blinds never rise — a $1/$2 game is $1/$2 at 8pm and $1/$2 at 3am. No clock is pushing you to gamble, a deep stack stays deep, and the cost of folding is identical every hand, so you can wait patiently for good spots. That’s the opposite of the escalating structure in tournament rules, where rising blinds eventually force action. The forced bets themselves work the same in either format — the mechanics are covered in blinds and antes explained.
Inside a hand, nothing changes
Once cards are out, a cash game is just ordinary poker. In no-limit Texas Hold’em the two players left of the button post the small and big blinds, everyone gets two hole cards, and betting runs preflop, then after the flop, turn, and river. Best five-card hand at showdown wins, or the last player standing after everyone folds. None of that differs between cash and tournament play — only the money structure wrapped around the hand does. The full Hold’em sequence lives in the Texas Hold’em hub.
The rake
In a cardroom or online, the house takes a small cut of each pot called the rake — commonly around 5% up to a fixed cap, say $5 maximum per pot. That’s how the room pays for dealing the game. Because it’s charged per pot, contesting fewer but larger pots costs you proportionally less rake than splashing into many small ones; in a capped game the fee on a $400 pot is the same as on a $100 pot. Home games usually take no rake at all, which is a big reason a kitchen-table game is cheaper to beat over a long stretch.
Coming and going
Cash games are built around freedom of schedule. You join an open seat between hands — either by posting the big blind or by waiting for the blind to reach you — and you leave whenever the current hand ends, with no minimum number of hands to play. Two small etiquette rules keep it fair: you generally can’t cash out and instantly rebuy for less to dodge posting a blind, and you may owe a blind when you first sit if you take a seat past the button. Beyond that, session length is entirely yours. That come-and-go freedom, paired with fixed blinds and chips that equal cash, is what a cash game is — and it’s precisely the freedom a tournament trades away for a shot at the prize pool.