Rush Poker

I don't like change.My latest Tesco shopping arrived yesterday and even my Shreddies ( my fav cereal) are now being made using a "scrumptious new recipe".If I hadn't liked the old recipe I wouldn't have been buying them for the last 20 years.My workplace is the same.Centralise one week and a new broom the next week decides the local approach would be fresh and innovative in a dynamic fast changing environment.( Is there ever any other type of environment in business?) He/she gets booted out 6 months later and it's back to the previous approach which is now seen as the fresh,innovative...blah blah blah.

Where's this going? Well I read Burnley Mik's thread on RTR re the new Rush Poker game on Full Tilt and decided to give it a wee go with little expectation.Tripjax has a great post covering Rush Poker and I'd highly recommend clicking the link and having a quick read.So great in fact that I hope he doesn't mind me copy/pasting the "how it works" bit from his post!

"Rush Poker is a cash game where you are added to a queue of a ton of other players. When you start play, you have one table of action. When you fold, you are immediately moved to a new table in the same room to begin a new hand. There could be upwards of 2000+ players in one room, so there are always new hands starting. Also, there is an option to quick fold, which means even if the action has not gotten to you, you can quick fold and move on to the next hand".

As it's been years ( a couple at least) since I was a $50nl 6max regular I fired up a Rush 6 max $25nl table and finally made it to bed at 4am after completing 2270 hands in just a few hours playing one table! The format is perfect for donks like me who struggle to play more than 4 tables without losing the plot.Stats wise I played an 18 vpip/13 pfr game and finished $88 up overall.( most of that profit came in the first 500 hands)

No reads,no HUD and yet I still love it.I love not seeing when I would have flopped a monster as I'm already playing the next hand if I fold.I think the dynamic when heads up in a pot is different to standard poker because if a pot gets heads up it's only the two players left in the pot who follow the action.( those who folded move on and are already playing another hand at another table) There's no table image to worry about and I'm finding strategies like donk leading into a preflop raiser are working better because if the preflop bettor had missed the flop he knows nobody apart from the other player in the hand sees him make a "weak fold" and he also knows that with one click he's on a new table with a new hand and his ego isn't hurt knowing the rest of the table saw him "back down" to a reraise.

I did suffer a few painful beats over those 2k hands, but as a turbo sng player I'm used to losing coin flips and enduring a ton of bad beats on every session so I found it quite easy to recover mentally when I did lose a buy-in.To be fair I usually have $66-$88 on the tables at one time when 3-4 tabling the $22's so perhaps losing a $25 buy-in isn't going to hurt much anyway.

It does feel more like a video game than poker at times such is the speed and the lack of reads can frustrate occasionally.Here's a hand I should maybe have gone with as I under represented my Aces by just cold calling the initial preflop raise.Folding did feel a bit nitty but my cash game is still rusty and obviously I would have had a better idea where I stood if I had reraised preflop...

Full Tilt Poker Game #17725334368: Table Warp Speed (6 max) - $0.10/$0.25 - No Limit Hold'em - 11:58:50 ET - 2010/01/19
Seat 1: Acornman ($59.11)
Seat 2: dardai784 ($83.95)
Seat 3: mapouille68 ($31.39)
Seat 4: uPayMyHyundai ($66.30)
Seat 5: Whos Da Pro ($51.17)
Seat 6: sfc21 ($33.64)
mapouille68 posts the small blind of $0.10
uPayMyHyundai posts the big blind of $0.25
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Acornman [As Ah]
Whos Da Pro has 8 seconds left to act
Whos Da Pro raises to $0.85
sfc21 folds
Acornman calls $0.85
dardai784 calls $0.85
mapouille68 folds
uPayMyHyundai folds
*** FLOP *** [6d Js 9d]
Whos Da Pro bets $2.75
Acornman raises to $6
dardai784 raises to $16.50
Whos Da Pro has 15 seconds left to act
Whos Da Pro folds
Acornman folds

Ok,I'm too tired to write anymore! Just time to say thanks to all who played in Sundays Bloggerment.It was good to see some more new faces too.I've linked up TheWookieWay as promised and if anyone else would like to swap links just let me know.

Back soon...