In my previous post I was critical of one particular online room (network) for their announcement of “updates” - which put them just a few light years behind other online poker rooms, rather than many light years. But today I’ll be talking about an online poker room, Full Tilt Poker, who are the opposite, and who have just demonstrated once again how innovative and ahead of the game they are. That’s right, I’m talking about Rush Poker.

Rush Poker has been billed as “the world’s fastest poker game” - and it has certainly caused a lot of buzz in the online poker world. I won’t give a long description of the game, because you probably know about it already. But if not - in this new online poker format you join a large player pool and get moved to a brand new table to face different opponents from within this pool, each and every hand that you play. When you fold your hand, you get moved to another table and get to play a new hand. There’s even a ‘quick fold’ button for the truly impatient. It’s like multi-tabling, but all from one table. Andy Bloch (Full Tilt Pro) summed it up nicely when he said, “It’s the difference between watching TV and watching TiVo. You get to skip the commercials.”

Players at Full Tilt have flocked to Rush Poker. I’ve read many different views about Rush Poker, and I believe a lot of players are basing their initial impressions on whether they’ve won or lost at Rush Poker. For those who’ve started off winning at Rush Poker, they usually love it. For those who’ve bit hit by bad variance, they probably hate it. I’m sure there’s also a ton of players who loved it at first when they got lucky, then played a couple of losing sessions - and are left undecided. Poker players can be very results orientated, can’t they!

Well, I’ve played it a fair bit this past week, and have enjoyed both winning and losing sessions - ahead overall though, thankfully. I like a lot of things about Rush Poker, and some things I’m not so keen on. Let’s start with the positives. I really love the fact that you don’t have to worry about table image. In a regular game if you steal from the button a lot, players will notice after a while. That doesn’t happen on Rush Poker because you’re constantly switching tables and finding new players each hand. So you can steal everytime, without having to worry that you might be tagged as a persistent thief.

In Rush Poker you don’t have to wait for a hand to finish. Obviously this is just super convenient, but it also means you stop being so results orientated. Sometimes it’s nice to see how a hand played out among your opponents, but being less results orientated is a good thing - and helps keep the tilt-ometer from ticking too much. And anyway, you’ve folded so who cares if you would have won that pot, right? Let’s play the next hand!

Okay, so that’s just a couple of the positives (there are more). Now let me say what I don’t like about Rush Poker. Firstly I don’t like the fact that it promotes ratholing, because you can leave and buy-in again right away for the minimum. This is perfect for a short stack strategy, and I hate short stackers. But the good news is Full Tilt have increased the minimum buy-in from 20BBs to 35BBs.

One of the greatest thing about Rush Poker is the fact nobody can data mine you. But this is also one of the worst things too. I have no clue about my opponents, other than where they are from, their username and their stack size. Reads are an important part of online poker, and in Rush Poker it’s very hard to get reads. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t import hand histories of players I’ve never played with before (because that’s cheating!), but I do use a HUD compiled of my own personal history. Not knowing the fish from the regular, is a big drawback. However, the fact they have nothing on me either gives it some balance.

Problem the worst thing about Rush Poker is that it encourages the fish to tighten up, and wait for big hands. Of course some bad players just can’t help themselves, but in general - they can now wait for a good hand and at a rate of 300 hands per hour, they don’t have to wait too long. 

So, there’s both good and bad points about Rush Poker. I appreciate that I’ve not shared any Rush Poker strategies in this post, but that’s because I’m not yet convinced on the optimum strategy for success. Hopefully in my next post I will have come to some reasonable conclusions, and I’ll share my thoughts. But for now I’ll just say that if you’ve not yet tried out Rush Poker, then I recommend you give it a go. It could well be the future of online poker! 

Recently I’ve been playing more pot limit cash games in place of no limit hold’em. On many online poker sites there just isn’t the choice of playing pot limit hold’em, so it’s really just limited to the two big sites; Full Tilt and Poker Stars. My preferred choice at the moment is Full Tilt, simply because it’s the best site for cash games due to offering rakeback.

The reason I like pot limit games rather than no limit is quite simple. I find it more skilful and there’s less players who are willing to make huge pre-flop bets - which I like to avoid. Usually players who make pre-flop bets that are 20x the big blind, usually fall into one single category; maniacs. Don’t get me wrong it’s good to play these donkeys, but I prefer to commit chips post-flop, rather than pre-flop. Calling huge bets pre-flop without premium hands is far too risky. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve had QQ and faced someone holding AA or KK, who made massive oversized bets pre-flop. This just doesn’t happen in pot limit.

Now you might be thinking the players must be better at pot limit. But this isn’t what I’ve discovered at Full Tilt. There are a lot of players “playing scared” so it’s easy to win. I am finding a better win rate at pot limit than I have been with no limit.

If you’re used to playing no limit hold’em then you’ll have to learn to adjust to pot limit play. Obviously you are constrained and can only bet the size of the pot. Slow playing monster hands down to the river is a poor strategy. Because once you get to the river pot may be so small that it barely becomes worth winning. But as with any successful cash game strategy - you should be building big pots for the big hands, and keeping pots small for the not so big hands. So pot limit hold’em suits players who like to play the correct cash game strategy.

Ever since the invention of automated poker machines, dealers have had good reason to fear for their jobs.  And why wouldn’t they since automated poker machines cut the dealer out of the picture and save casinos a bundle on the salaries that they have to pay dealers.  What’s more is that many casinos have started experimenting with automated poker machines to see how well customers will take to them.

The thinking behind this is that casinos can gradually phase these automated poker machines onto the floor and phase out some of the regular tables.  Also, many casinos believe that they can attract a younger generation of players by doing this.  Of course the argument against this is that many people enjoy keeping the dealer, chips, table, and other human players in the equation for the experience.  And it seems that the experience has won out over the automated poker machines in Atlantic City.

Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino became the latest place in AC to realize that automated poker wasn’t winning any of their customers over.  In fact, Trump Plaza has decided to remove every automated poker machine in their establishment and they have no intention of trying this experiment again.

I must admit that I’m quite surprised at the fact that automated poker machines have failed so miserably to the point where casinos are completely removing from the floor.  Obviously this is done to make room for more profitable machines, but I’m still surprised at the move.  I think people believe they also have a much better chance at making money in live poker too so that could’ve been a factor as well.  And the belief that one can actually make money with poker is what keeps people playing in the first place.

The world of underground poker has existed for decades as players from all over the world gather in stores after hours, back alley clubs, and even people’s homes to bet major money each week.  And, while all of this might sound like something out of the fictional movie “Rounders”, underground poker does exist and people are taking risks every time they play in one of these games.

But, unlike Rounders, the biggest risks don’t come from playing against mobsters that might kill you after a big win.  Instead, the main risks come from entirely different threats where people are taking legal and financial risks every day.  With the increased raids on home poker games by authorities, it is as dangerous as ever to hold a poker game in your house where people are playing for big money.  If you’re in attendance at one of these games you might be going to jail (depending on the state), and if you are hosting a game then you could be in even more legal trouble.

People are also at risk of being robbed when they attend these poker games since criminals often target them.  The reason criminals like to rob home poker games is because they know the players won’t tell authorities since they’re already engaging in illegal activities anyways.  And there are thousands of dollars around a home poker game so this just makes it even more attractive for robbers.

Of course, if the government was really concerned about any of this, they could always legalize poker so that people wouldn’t have to deal with these threats.  In legal poker, the government would be getting their tax money and they wouldn’t have to waste time and money raiding illegal poker games.  Plus, the players wouldn’t be at such high risk in terms of being robbed or having to go to jail since they would have a legal place to play. 

I know that it is illegal to host large poker games across America and some places like Oklahoma even go as far as to declare it a potential felony to host any type of game where money is exchanged.  So naturally authorities are going to keep cracking down on those who host the games (especially if they’re taking a rake) and, in many cases, those who play in them too.  But do authorities really need to be raiding bars and such that are located out in the middle of nowhere?

I recently saw where a poker game in the small town of Castalia, Ohio was raided by police after it was suspected a bar was running illegal tournaments.  Sure enough, all of the hard police work paid off and the bar was indeed holding illegal poker games as authorities confiscated $5,000 in cash, poker chips, and other gambling supplies.  In short, C & C’s Cold Creek Pub won’t be holding poker tournaments any time soon.

But to raid a bar in Castalia, Ohio - which has a population of under 2,000 people - goes a little far in my opinion.  Sure, the owners were probably getting some rake off of the games and the players were doing a little betting in the tournaments, but what else do people in a town of this size have to do?  Is robbing them of a venue to play poker tournaments really going to make any major impact in America’s war against gambling?

I think not and all the authorities really did in this situation was rob the residents of Castalia of a popular pastime.  Now I certainly understand raiding huge games where the hosts are taking big cuts off of the players and not paying taxes to the government.  But in the case of Castalia, Ohio, I don’t understand this raid at all.