If you are in Taiwan for a series, or staying a while and looking for a game, the format most clubs here run is not a cash game and not a freezeout. It is a time-limited tournament — locally called a TLT — and it is the format behind most of the Taiwanese court rulings in the legality post.
Same deck, same rules, same hand rankings. What differs between the three formats comes down to three things: what a chip is worth, when you are allowed to stand up, and whether your stack gets shallower as the night goes on. This post puts the three side by side, with most of the space on the one you are least likely to know.
1. What a time-limited tournament is
The entry works like any tournament: a fixed buy-in, the same starting stack for everyone, blinds that go up on a schedule, and chips that cannot be cashed out while play is running. Re-entry is usually allowed inside the time window.
The ending is where it departs from what you know. It does not play down to one player. It stops at a fixed clock time, and everyone still seated has their stack converted into a prize by whatever formula the organiser published. One concrete example, taken from a ruling of the Taiwan High Court, 111 Shang-Yi No. 1071: an entry fee exchanged for a fixed number of scoring chips, a two-hour limit, and prizes computed by ICM on the stacks left when time was called.
So a TLT has a known finish time before you sit down — which is a large part of why the format exists — and no final table in the usual sense.
2. The three formats side by side
| Cash game | Tournament | Time-limited tournament | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What a chip is | Money, at a fixed rate | A score; no cash value | A score; no cash value |
| Money in | Your choice of buy-in, top-ups allowed | Fixed entry, same stack for all | Fixed entry, same stack for all |
| Money out | Cash out any time | Prize by finishing position | Prize by stack when time is called |
| When it ends | When you decide | One player left | The clock |
| Leaving early | Take your chips | Stack is blinded off | Stack is blinded off |
| Stack depth | Roughly constant | Gets shallower | Gets shallower, plus a clock |
| What a hand is worth | The chips in it | Its effect on your finish | Its effect on your finish, plus how many hands remain |
If you play the first two columns already, the third column is the whole post: same entry as a tournament, same conversion problem as a tournament, and one extra variable.
3. What the clock changes
Early on, it plays like a tournament. Blinds rise, stacks get shallower, and the same preflop ranges you would use at similar depth apply. Below fifteen big blinds or so, postflop play disappears and the decision becomes shove or fold, exactly as it would in a freezeout.
The ending is different. In a freezeout the last stage is a final table, and the bubble is a moment. In a TLT the last stage is a countdown. With ten minutes left, the chip leader can stop playing hands and wait; a short stack has a fixed number of hands to close the gap and knows roughly what that number is. Hands remaining becomes a variable in every decision, and it is one that never appears in a cash game or a freezeout.
The conversion happens to everyone at once. When time is called, every remaining stack goes through the organiser’s formula. In the ruling above that was ICM, the same non-linear conversion that makes a chip worth less the more of them you hold — so a coin flip for your whole stack that is clearly right in a cash game can be wrong here, and it stays wrong right up to the buzzer. That is the concept only; the arithmetic is a post of its own.
Leaving early costs the same as in a tournament. Your stack stays on the table and the blinds eat it. The difference is that you know in advance how long you are committing to.
4. What does not change
At comparable depth — roughly sixty to a hundred big blinds — which hands to open from which seat is the same in all three formats. The order in the preflop guide (seat first, then the action in front of you, then your cards) does not depend on the format, and neither does anything in the position guide.
What changes is what you do once depth drops and chips start counting toward a finish rather than toward cash. That is the format-specific skill, and each of the three gets its own post later.
5. Legal status is a separate question
You will hear a short version of the law from other players: tournaments are fine, cash games are not, TLTs are a grey area that keeps coming back not guilty. The rulings do not support that summary, and this post does not restate them. Is Texas Hold’em legal in Taiwan? goes through the three facts courts actually examine, format by format, with the case numbers.
Back to the three things at the top: what a chip is worth, when you can stand up, and whether your stack gets shallower. Every difference between the three formats grows out of those. The cards have not changed and the rules have not changed — what a chip stands for has.
If the rules themselves are still new to you, start at what Texas Hold’em is, which lays out the site’s guides in reading order.
Whichever format you play, the preflop decision is the same one. The preflop trainer drills it, and RushCraft turns your hand history into numbers so you can see how you actually play that layer.