[* newly edited with an addendum [!another new one!]- scroll to bottom]

Cash games are an anxious enterprise for some. Ergo of paramount importance is the stakes at which you play. Finding yourself hesitant to limp in or even to make a slight raise in early position is a sure sign you should not be at that table. Obversely if you find yourself calling down draws or even that your competition push aggressively over the top with the slightest of hands, it is likely you are playing at stakes which are not deigned as serious. One must divest themself of these distractions, for verily if you need compute these additional variables- and extra affairs likewise, such as loud music, dogs barking, doing laundry- these will all enter into your decision making process, even if merely to efface their effects. To offset what seems no more than a minute or nettlesome yet ubiquitous condition of the external world consumes more ergon than we might credit. The noetic aspects of your participation are wont to function to a far greater capacity so long as they are irenic, for demotically speaking, poker is a thinking game.

Secondly I would stress patience. If you are going to enter a cash game be prepared to spend at least 20 minutes and go through 4 big blinds. Hopefully in that time you will see 20 to 40 hands, enough to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and take arm against them. A personal gnomic of mine is to deem Luck a correlate of patience. Certainly in any aleatorical random walk the path is indefinite, though- we must stress- never infinite. One must have a nominal fealty if not in themself in mathematics. The deviations of the cards may be fall like the eddies of a plotted Feigenbaum equation but what the cards symbolize, videlicet their valorizations, are staunch. A pocket pair will always beat a small pocket pair if they are juxtaposed sans a community. Could this ostensibly be high falutin argot masking what is a rather quaint aperçu? I might agree, yet would add that analysis will always yield simple and essential qualities. To know is to know that you know, to remind yourself, reflectively of what you are aware.

Now I shall didactically aver there is only a singular schema to pecuniary benefits but I will highlight a single perspective. The diagenetic, id est, The Rock. Patience is but one mote of his composition. The other is his inertia. To prosaically state this applied metonymy would be to say that objects at rest tend to stay at rest, and objects in motion tend to stay in motion. On a roll, so to speak. But to continue in this metaphor, we might not be chary of the mountain. It is peaceful. Sedate. One is almost unaware of it's great strength. Nearly dialectic in haecceity it's presence sublates its imposition by its effect. But it's destruction- though quiescence be its qoutidian aspect- is profound. Of what I here, perhaps turbidly and turgidly, allude to is maximization. If you are the type who are tight, and play few hands you need to be well aware of how to maximize your winning hands. I suggest always giving your opponent options. Eg you have what appears to be the nuts and your opponent has bet into you on the river. You have dismissed calling and folding as an option and have decided to reraise. But what should you do? It is easy enough to push all in and hope for a call. But you have just eliminated an option of your opponent. You have now forced his hand to either call or fold, fifty fifty you have not maximized. But if you were only to reraise, perhaps even the minimum, you have allowed him to think himself into a corner. Perhaps he simply calls your minimal reraise. But just as well he might think you are bluffing, or showing weakness. He might come over the top. You have allowed him this option. You have allowed him to think himself smart, to THINK. More times than not you will profit from this maneuver.

Concommitanlty with the preceeding discursive exposition on The Rock I would add that bluffing is an apodictic admixture for your play may be suspect by its parsimony and reticence. This need not mean you show your bluffs, nor that you play loosely. Watch preflop who only will limp with weak hands and never call a raise. If you find yourself in position with these people you can steal their blinds. Or watch who never bluffs post flop, who gives up to any meagre raise. These are people who are waiting for cards and not playing cards.

Enough for now.

Addendum

There are two salient points I elided.

One: always study your opponents prior to entering the game. I usually watch at least two full rounds before I buy in- if I do not find a weakness, if I do not identify a weak player, if I do not see a lot of showdowns then I will not play. Here is a tip: Always note the minimum of the table and then see who is down from this. Usually it will be both the tighest of the tight players waiting to catch a great starting hand, and thus ones you should avoid explicitly, and yet also the ones who are all over the place. Remember the game is about available information and if you scorn this with some preconcieved schema you may overestimate your ken as pandemically utile.

Secondly: Always leave a winner. I do not mean every game will be a success. But if you leave up even 10 cents you will feel better. It is better to leave too early than too late. Allow the inertia to guide you but allow yourself to take a break the next time the blind gets to you. Once more, do not inflate the conception of your own skills to the deteriment of your bankroll.

Addendum the second:

The choice is yours. Crucially you choose where to sit in cash games. You get to make your home where you desire. True you might have to wait longer than you care to but you cannot complain if without scouting the table you sit on the right of a loose player. You should always sit with the tight player directly to your left and the loosest to your right. This way you can steal blinds and pots from the tightest, for truly you need not overbet to bluff them and what you lose when they have a hand will be easily recompensated.