Whatta Rush

So the hot new action in the online poker realm is a new twist over at Full Tilt Poker, called Rush Poker. Essentially, Rush Poker allows a player to auto-fold hands they don't want to play, and the software then rushes you off to a new table in time for a new hand. Instead of sitting at a table (or 2 tables, 4 tables, whatever volume you play), you enter a pool of players, anywhere from hundreds to a couple thousand. And then, all those players simply go from table to table, hand to hand, and say, if you're in mid position holding that 92 offsuit you can't wait to trash, you can simply quick fold and move on.

There are three obvious main developments this leads to, the first of which is, a player can play many more hands per hour than otherwise. Whereas, in my limited ring game play, I may 2-table for an hour and see 150 hands, I saw roughly 2000 hands in my two hour experiment 2-tabling (or would that be 2-pooling) with the 10NL Rush Poker fish.

The next obvious development is this, you're not going to get reads on players, because you're leaving the table at the end of every hand. Now if you're in a pool for any period of time, you are likely to run into players now and again that you've seen, but unless you've actually played a hand out with that person, it's very hard to gauge things such as how they play position, level of aggression, whether they'll fold to a c-bet, etc. And because you're moving so fast, it's quite difficult (if not impossible) to take effective notes.

Finally, the third development is a clear economic boon to Full Tilt. After all, if hands are wrapping up that much more quickly, and more players are playing more hands so quickly, they're collecting that much more in rake. More power to'em, I suppose.

In my own experiment, I played roughly 2000 hands of 10NL, most of it at full ring tables. Around 250 hands of that came at 6-max, where I lost a full buyin, and I managed to win two buyins at the full rings. This was even with KK going down three times. Once to AA, once when 99 caught a set on the turn, and the other when I slow played a flopped set and allowed villian to runner runner broadway on me. Still, I managed to find around 5 BB/100 hands, when it could have been even better.

I think the idea is to play straight up, solid, semi-ABC poker. Bluffing doesn't really seem to work in Rush Poker, at least not at the 10NL level, but being the first to open raise will often cause everyone else to quick fold. What I've found in my admittedly small sample is that preflop aggression can work to pick up small pots, but whiffing the flop and c-betting often doesn't. Why? Because most players will quick fold the trash hands preflop and move on, so any flop with big cards is more likely than not to have actually helped your opponent.

Anyway, I'm going to play around with this some more as I get time, but I've been working 12-13 hours a day all this week, which is forecasted to continue for some time. I may be away from the tables for a bit.

In fact, I'm missing the entirely of the WBCOOP (thanks for the ticket, Stars, but do you have to always place such a bad beat on Mountain Time Zone by starting events at 4pm?!?!?)...

Good luck at the tables.