FULL TILT POKER BLOG

Posted by Editor | Filed under Poker Strategy, Rush Poker

During my first several sessions at Rush Poker, I jotted down notes about features, consequences, and lessons. These observations are presented in no particular order.

YOU ARE FREED FROM THE USELESS AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE ACTIVITY OF SEEING MEANINGLESS CARDS. Because you are taken to a new game as soon as you fold, you don’t put yourself through any meaningless “what if” analysis. So, for example, if you fold T-9 to a raise, you don’t torture yourself after the flop comes 6-7-8.

This also keeps you from getting the wrong kind of feedback. Whether or not you made the right decision does not depend on that particular flop. If you could run the cards a million times and total all your wins and all your losses, that would be meaningful. But your mind doesn’t work that way. Your mind is likely to focus disproportionately on the pot that you saw someone else win the most recent time you folded what would have been an improbable winner.

In short, ignorance, in this particular instance, is bliss. First, you don’t kick yourself over something irrelevant. Second, you are forced to learn your lessons through something other than biased, anecdotal memories.

NO COMPLAINING. If you put a bad beat on somebody, you don’t have to be distracted by the almost inevitable whining that follows. Likewise, you don’t waste your time and misspend your analytical energy focusing on telling someone else how bad you think they are.

GAME SELECTION IS NOT AN ISSUE. For players who gain some advantage from keeping track of their opponents’ tendencies over a large number of games, this is a disadvantage.  On the other hand, there are two positives: (1) you are freed from the burden of having to chose the right situation, and so is everyone else. It may be an edge that you lose but you don’t lose it “to” anybody. (2)This is a great feature for less experienced players, which paradoxically makes it a great feature for those who like to play AGAINST less experienced players. If you are an experienced player, this feature could round up more inexperienced players for you to feast on; you just have to find another way to get your edge.

ADJUSTING TO OPPONENTS IS NOT PART OF THE GAME. Similar to what I said to game selection, the constantly revolving cast of characters makes it impossible to benefit from exploiting the characteristics of particular opponents. Again, this is a bad thing to the extent you benefit from this skill. But it also makes the game more enticing and less intimidating to players who have not yet developed that skill. That’s good for poker, as is anything that makes the game easier to take up.

CONSPIRACY THEORISTS CAN RELAX. If you are uncomfortable playing cash games because you worry about the possibility that your opponents are old buddies communicating by cell phone or Skype, that is no longer an issue.

RUSH POKER REWARDS UNDERSTANDING HAND VALUES. Because you are neither creating a table image nor reacting to your particular opponents, you are rewarded for your understanding of pure positional poker. This means that the Andy Bloch/Chris Ferguson type of calculations about which hands to play in which positions take on greater importance. Understanding the basics of positional play is a necessary foundation to learning and improving at poker. Rush Poker requires either that you (a) know it, or (b) learn it through expensive lessons.

CERTAIN LOUSY PLAYS DISPLAY THEIR LOUSINESS. I’m thinking of three in particular here: limping, playing ace-rag, and playing too many hands in the big blind.

A lot of players get in the habit of limping because they are bored and/or want to play more hands. They can stop doing that in Rush Poker. The way to play more hands in this game is to FOLD MORE. In addition, if limpers don’t get the message that way, they might if they spend a disproportionate amount of their time having to play weak holdings out of position.

I think ace-rag shows up as often as it does for the same reasons. In general, however, you get in trouble with ace-rag because, if you hit an ace, you are most likely to win a small pot (if no one else has an ace) or lose a big pot (if someone has a better ace or a hand good enough to call with an ace on the board). The name of the game in low-stakes NLHE is to win big pots. You don’t make much by stealing and you don’t get any “table image” benefit from playing weak hands. So why stick around to watch everyone fold to raise with A-4o in the cut-off, or why call a raise in such a situation? It’s better to fold to get a better hand. And if that doesn’t convince you, playing ace-rag over and over again with negative results should.

The same is true with defending your blinds. You don’t need to play back at raisers to send a message because you can’t send it to the hundreds or thousands of opponents in your game. It’s so much faster to Quick Fold and try to get a better hand.

All these situations are reminders of how Rush Poker is like an endless mulligan. It’s like you’re sitting at a table (of constantly changing opponents) and you are allowed continuous “do overs” until you find a hand you feel like playing. And with Quick Fold you can do it as many times as you want and you can do it quickly.

BLUFFING IS DIFFERENT. A lot of players don’t realize this (which causes them too bluff too infrequently) but the decision of whether or not to bluff doesn’t depend solely on whether a particular bluff succeeds. Some bluffs win you chips, and some cost you chips. But the process of bluffing improves the likelihood that you will get paid big on your big hands. This is because your opponents don’t know if you really have it. That attention to your overall table image also affects continuation bets and general aggressive play. Because, in Rush Poker, you are essentially a blank slate to your opponents, you should not make plays that have, as a component of their profitability, an improved likelihood of wining you money on some future hand. In general, you should think about bluffing less and making fewer continuation bets.

Don’t kid yourself about Rush Poker. You can’t play it “casually”. You can’t play it while eating, (I tried and nearly choked) or paying bills, or instant messaging. But if you absorb yourself in the game, you can have a lot of fun and learn (or re-learn) the first, simplest, and most important lesson in poker: Wait for a good hand.

Popularity: 2% [?]

• No Related Post

Permalink | January 23rd, 2010 Play Online Poker at Full Tilt Poker

8 Responses to “#952 – Rush Poker, Part II – Observations & Analysis”

1. DLeeCT Says:
   January 24th, 2010 at 11:08 pm

   As you noted, the no whining is best part for me. Bad beats/bad plays happen – at least now we’re not subject to the spewing from people that drags on interminably

2. Rush Poker Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 5:55 pm

   This is a serious great article about Rush Poker, One of the best most informative articles I’ve stumbled upon. I will tweet a link to this blog post.

3. mustang0104 Says:
   January 25th, 2010 at 10:09 pm

   If only limit hold ‘em was incorporated into rush poker.

4. Larry Says:
   January 26th, 2010 at 12:11 am

   I disagree with your bluffing analysis. I found that my three-bets preflop seemed to get much more respect in Rush poker than in a normal 6 max game. Like you said, most players are just folding their hands out of position so they can play in a better position the next hand. Maybe there is meta game profit to be made here?

5. Adalberto Chev Says:
   January 30th, 2010 at 10:21 pm

   Rush poker is awesome, i am a regular cash game player and i think this brings back honesty and character to online cash game play which means no more worrying about colluding, gives you instant gratification, also not to worry about constant whining about bad beats, and most of all you dont have to worry about waiting for the hand to be done especially when ppl lose connection or slow ppl waiting that last second to act. Remember i think rush poker is absolutely positively the best thing to happen to online cash games i definitely feel safe to play online cash games at all levels that is offer. Also please dont ever take away the rush cause i supported it 110 %. And for those who dont play rush i might just be alittle weary about them and will use my better judgement to carefully watch them but otherwise rush is completely the way to go for everyone who likes cash games or interested in trying cash games so for those who havent trusted cash playing online all i can say get aboard and feel the RUSH!!!

6. Dan Says:
   February 4th, 2010 at 2:26 am

   Hey, a question. I play micro holdem on the Mach 10 game, and whenever I am the big blind and the hand is folded around to me; instead of getting 15 cents I am only getting ten cents. Is this a bug? Or , a new undocumented feature?

7. MarkT123 Says:
   February 7th, 2010 at 3:35 am

   Mach 10 is a Rush Poker 0.05/0.10 NLHE table. If you are the big blind and everyone folds to you, you net 0.05 (the small blind’s money) and you get your big blind back.

   The software tells you that you win a pot of 10 cents because when it calculates pot size for a person who wins a pot due to an uncalled raise (which is technically what happens when your big blind wins – nobody called or raised your “raise” of the small blind), the amount of your raise which went uncalled does not count towards total pot size.

   So the total pot you win in this case is the 5 cents from the small blind and the corresponding 5 cents from your big blind, for a total of 10 cents. The extra 5 cents in your big blind wasn’t “called”, so it did not figure into pot size.

   But note that this is merely a sort of bookkeeping thing: you win the five cents from the small blind no matter what you call it or what the software claims the “pot size” is.

8. paul Says:
   February 22nd, 2010 at 11:03 pm

   where can i find the andy bloch / chris fergison chart of positional ev’s of each holdem hand – ? this will be useful for rush

Leave a Reply

Name Mail (will not be published) Website Comment