If you're not familiar with Rush Poker, it works like this. You join a pool of players who've all agreed to play the same game at the same stakes. As soon as you fold your hand you are moved to another table where the cards are about to be dealt. There is a Quick Fold button that will instantly move you to another table even if the action hasn't come to you yet.
After due consideration, I realized this might appeal to the MMIAs, the action junkies who want to do nothing but make decision after decision. It could potentially move them to Rush Poker and leave the regular ring tables for those who like to concentrate on the game and get some feel for their opponents.
Today I decided to give Rush Poker a try. I have to admit, it is a rush. Perhaps too much of a rush for me. I'm not a child of first person shooters and other sensory overload games. I like to occasionally take a breather, give my mind a couple seconds off. The only way to do that in Rush Poker is to sit out.
Aside from the breakneck pace, there are a couple other things that bother me. When a new table is formed, the player who has not played the big blind in the longest amount of time is the big blind. If you're first joining the game, you're the big blind. That part's okay. The problem is the remainder of the seats are assigned randomly. My first three tables I was BB, SB, SB. In theory, you can get stuck playing the SB position several times in a row. You can be UTG far more times than you would at a regular table. Of course, you could be on the button more often too.
I understand they can't make the positions work out perfectly, but I see no reason they can't ensure you aren't the SB any more than you should be and that distribution of seating at the other positions evens out. You might still be UTG three times in a row, but over 100 hands you'd be UTG one-sixth or one-ninth of the time, according to the size of table you're playing.
There is also the issue that this game makes it virtually impossible to play the other players with any intelligence. You are reduced to playing the cards and guessing about the other players' actions based on almost no information. OTOH, the other players have to play this way too. If you're a good technical player but have trouble with the people side of the game, this could be a plus for you.
I found a number of times I was curious about how a hand turned out, but I was whisked off to another table as soon as I folded and didn't get a chance to see the results. If I fold before the flop, I usually don't care. If I fold on the river in a game with three players still alive, I'd usually like to see what happens. No joy on that. It would be nice if there was an option to continue monitoring tables where you've folded.
On the plus side, this seems to be a great game for clearing bonuses. Points are awarded exactly as they are in regular games. If you're dealt cards and the pot is raked, you get points -- even if you've changed tables because you folded. You can effectively earn points on multiple tables without playing multiple tables. Playing a tight game of Omaha where you fold the vast majority of initial holdings, you could easily be earning points on a dozen tables at once while concentrating on just one.
I've yet to determine if Rush Poker will clear the MMIAs off the regular ring games. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Addendum: I just finished a short session playing Rush Limit Hold'em. For the tight player, this may well be the ultimate limit experience. Except for the occasional mad man or calling station, I'm not sure how much benefit there is to tracking player tendencies in limit, at least over the short haul. If you're willing to play a purely technical game against whoever happens to be seated, this game will keep you hopping.
It has been my experience that I can make a fold/no-fold decision pre-flop in about one second for 75% of my hands. (I don't have stats on the percentage, it's just a gut feel.) With maybe 10% of them I need to see what happens before me to make my fold/no-fold decision. With the rest I'm almost certain to stay.
In Rush Limit Hold'em, that means on about 75% of my hands I can click Fold and be playing another hand in about two seconds. Twenty hands a minute would not be out of the question. Of course, that rate is only when I'm folding. Actually playing a hand clearly takes longer, though most of the players in this particular limit game were pretty fast with their decisions. The longest of hands didn't take but a minute or so. The overall pool average is 200 hands/hours. I think that's on a per table basis, not a per player basis.
The other thing here is that the whole game just moves faster because everyone is paying attention. You're either actively making a decision on a hand or in a hand waiting on other players to decide at all times. There's no waiting because other players are on 27 other tables at the same time or somebody has run off to get another beer.
I'll have to time it with PokerTracker to know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me to see a 500 hands/hour rate at this game.
