Poker

There has been a lot of talk recently about Full Tilt’s new Rush Poker. If you’re not familiar with it, basically the idea is that instead of waiting for hands, the moment you are out of a hand (it goes to showdown or you fold) you are whisked away to another table where you are immediately dealt into a new hand.

Well, I was having a beer fueled conversation with my good friend Hilly who had been in Bangkok less than 2 hours and he said that he thought that Rush Poker was quite possibly the single biggest innovation in poker in the last several years. That’s a pretty serious statement from someone of his caliber.

I couldn’t quite agree with him though. Even when I first heard about Rush Poker I was a little cautious about being overly positive or negative about it. Initially my view was that it would have an initial surge as people checked it out and got addicted to the crack-like nature of it but that most serious players would figure out that the edge that they lose in having data on their opponents or even knowing if someone just took a massive bad beat the last hand and was steaming would be too great to overcome simply by playing more hands per hour.

That was then, now I have even more concerns about how Rush Poker will impact players.

I do think that some players will be able to get in more hands with Rush Poker and thus may opt for it if they can play break-even poker completely based on math. If they’re on a rakeback deal the extra hands could make it more profitable for them in the long run but they will likely be giving up some BB/100 due to sitting down to a new group of players constantly.

But there are two potential problems with Rush Poker. The first is that it could tighten up the games. I notice that I don’t even get that little twitch to play KQo from EP that I might when I’ve sat there for half an hour folding hands. You can wait for good hands instead of playing marginal hands just to break the monotony. And since Rush Poker will have an initial appeal to action junkies even they can afford to wait around for good hands rather than playing any two.

The other potential problem is exactly the opposite of tightening up the game. It may burn out players too quickly. Players who don’t adjust and tighten up will blow through their deposits in a shorter period of time. I haven’t played enough to gather reliable stats on how many more hands you see but let’s just say that you get twice as many hands per hour playing Rush Poker as you do at normal poker. If you’re a losing player then you’re going to lose your money twice as fast.

Now, for a room the size of Full Tilt that may not be a problem because they have enough new players coming in that it may not have a huge impact but Full Tilt is pushing Rush Poker pretty hard (offering bonuses for earning just 10 points) so they may be pushing their players towards something that could hurt their poker ecosystem 6, 12, or 18 months down the road when their retention rates decline and their attrition curve accelerates.

Then again, the tightening of the game may offset the effect. You might find that more players get better more quickly than if they played regular poker because the biggest leak for most new players is starting hand selection. If they tighten up their starting hand selection they might end up losing less and thus playing longer before losing their money.

It’s hard to say and I’m fairly sure Full Tilt isn’t going to volunteer that data anytime soon so I guess all we can do is speculate.

I will say that how they’ve designed Rush Poker is impressive. Everything happens pretty seamlessly and stuff happens as you would expect it to. I can imagine all of the work that went into it from the time someone cooked up the idea until it was ready to go out the door and I have to give Tilt some kudos for doing such a great job on executing the vision.

If you haven’t tried Rush Poker you’re missing out. It’s like crack. You’ll have a hard time ending a session.

Check out Rush Poker on Full Tilt

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