Rush Poker Review

A few days ago, a software upgrade notice fluttered across my computer screen for a new feature on Full Tilt called RUSH poker.

Soon afterwards, I got an e-mail explaining the point of said upgrade, and what RUSH poker was.

Instead of having a lot of isolated table at a certain level, with the same players through each hand, RUSH will keep moving you from table to table, as soon as you fold a hand. It is designed to keep you ALWAYS in a hand - as soon as you click "Fold", you are taken to another table, with a different group of players, for the next hand which (so far) begins with no delay at all.

I opened up one of these RUSH games last night. There were about 1300 people on a 0.05/0.10 NLHE game. I sat down, and played through for about 50 hands to get a feel for it.

My thoughts:

GOOD: More hands, more experience
GOOD: Easier to build up points and/or rakeback due to the volume of hands (if I'd stayed a full hour, I could have racked up 300 hands easily)
GOOD: Simpler Decisions on playing hands
GOOD: Players will probably not be able to get a read on you.
GOOD: Can exploit simple, ABC-type players

BAD: You can't get a read on other players - reinforces simple thinking by just playing what you have without being able to evaluate the table
BAD: Extremely difficult to put any notes down on any players due to the speed and the constant switching of players.
BAD: No chat or communication. At all. It's just not possible.

The main impression I got from this type of game was that it could easily be exploited. Most other players are strictly playing their cards, without much thought to position and obviously NO thought to how others might play.

I played 53 hands, and won about 20 of them. Most of them were due to raising pre-flop and taking down blinds, or c-betting a flop and inducing a fold. Most folks will be scared off by pre-flop raises and simply move on, or are not willing to go to war without what they believe is a good hand in this format. This can easily be exploited to rack up a LOT of orphaned blinds. It seemed possible to steal from ANYWHERE in this game, since most folks will just fold and move on.

I only had two hands go to showdown - one, a winning flush, and one, QUADS against two pair. The rest of the profit came from just being heavily aggressive pre-flop, as most folks just wanted to get out of the way and move on. With almost no pre-flop re-raises from anyone else, it seems easy in this format to play the bully.