subject: Rush Poker: How To Play The New Breed Of Online Poker [print this page] What are the key differences between Rush Poker and traditional poker? We outline a few things to keep in mind below.
1. Playing in a vacuum. Rush poker is a new hand every time you click the fold button. Because of the pool style system in picking opponents, your reads on players are much less specific than they normally would be in a typical cash game. The button reraises you preflop from the button; is that a move? Its much harder to judge, because you have no history with the player. Because of the lack of history from hand to hand, players generally play a lot more straightforwardly than normal. This also causes a bit of a tightness to develop; remember, instead of playing a bunch of weaker, trashy hands, you can simply click fold and get another hand within seconds. The effect of the player pool and the vacuum effect causes a naturally tight game; just think of how your first hand at a fresh table at your casino feels like, and thats rush poker, every hand.
2. Expectations per hand. You wont have quite as many players taking flops as you would in a normal ring game. Because there is a reward for folding in this game; a brand new hand immediately, instead of after the hand plays out, players arent looking for that mediocre set of hands that theyd normally play if faced with a wait. Those tend to be limping hands and calling hands, so by eliminating them, you reduce the players per pot that youd normally have. This makes hands like 67s and J10o drop in value, so keep that in mind. You also will see a tightness postflop, as well. Because players are aware of the tightness of most players when it comes to rush poker, players taking flops generally have strong holdings.
3. Specific strategies. Tend to scale your opening amounts down a little bit, compared to usual. If you normally open 3x, 2.5x will serve you just fine in rush poker. The natural inclination to auto fold means players are either folding without a thought or playing the hand through. Attack from the button if folded to, as well; stealing blinds is a bit easier in rush poker than in normal poker, given the structure. Try to take notes on players that open; they stay in the same pool, so youll play them again over time. Frequent raisers are likely players taking advantage of the tendencies discussed in this article; you can three bet against them liberally. Be sure you are very comfortable playing in heads up pots, because there will not be many multi-way pots with rush poker. Dont make as many continuation bets as you normally would; peoples ranges are going to be tighter than normal, but once they do play a pot, theyre likely to want to play past the flop more often, so the success rate for your continuation bet will fall somewhat. Try to pick effective spots to continuation bet, and look to just let a card peel if you brick the flop more often than you usually would.
