Something to keep in mind - most forum posters are too lazy to answer such broad questions.

You tend to get a better response rate if you ask specific questions.

I've played HU CAP for a couple of hours so I'm not too familiar with the way the games play.

That said, I will try to evaluate the differences (please call me out on my projection biases stemming from my to date baller micro stakes experience).

20BB poker is 20BB poker.

At a glance, the main difference between the formats is the structure.

In HUNSGs, the effective stack is dynamic and strategy can conditionally vary quite a lot.

In HU CAP, you will be playing every hand @ 20BB effective stack (unless someone doesn't rebuy when they lose some of their stack).

Additionally you will be playing together until someone quits. In HUSNG you play until someone has all the chips.

Accordingly, I would imagine that in HU CAP cash games, more emphasis would be put on your ability to work out your opponent's frequencies & ranges and whoever can adjust better should have an edge. That is, because you are playing every hand at the same effective stack depth against the same opponent, there will be more opportunities to observe, collection information and integrate that information into strategic adjustments.

In HUSNGs, player's ranges will vary as a function of effective stacks, but you will have less of an opportunity to work out specifically how they allocate their ranges because you simply don't play as many hands at each depth. Additionally there are a ton of players in the player pool who will only play you once and then swim off once you beat them or because you have shown some competence playing. Mind you, the same is probably true of HU CAP games => I doubt many players will hang around long if you are destroying them. I think in HUSNGs you are often relying on population tendencies to make decisions to a greater extent than in HU CAP cash simply because you haven't seen much of villain's game at S effective stacks. In a cash game format you should be able to build a more specific opponent model if you play with the same opponent for a while.

The corollary of this, is that your opponent will have more information about how you play and so strategically you must be more aware of:

- your perceived ranges in spots that you know your opponent has seen (your image), conditional of course as to whether you think your opponent is thinking about this.

- balance & exploitability => there are lines which we take over small samples with the view of exploiting the population's tendency to generally play poorly vs them until we have revealed enough information that they could adjust to what we are doing => for example light 3b suited crap early in the match because people generally give 3b too much credit and fold too much. In a cash game format where our opponent is afforded more opportunities to collect data on our frequencies and observe how we play, the extent to which we understand where we have exposed ourselves and can identify where villain has started to adjust is more important.

- gameflow => related to the above, we will rely on card distribution board texture and gameflow to randomise our bluffs in spots where we feel villain is competent and we want to build a defensively balanced range.

Given the above, if I had to summarise the differences:

=> Dynamic effective stacks in tournament formats lead to a strategic emphasis on exploiting static ranges

=> Static effective stacks in cash game formats lead to a strategic emphasis on dynamically adjusting and readjusting

Also, I've heard that the rake at HU CAP games is pretty high (maybe unbeatable) until you get to higher limits.

So it might be best to play HUSNG until you are rolled for higher stake HU CAP games?

Does anyone know at what stake the rake at cash games becomes comparable to playing HUSNGs?