Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Rush Poker from Full Tilt

Not so sound all bold and pronouncement-y, but anyone involved with online poker should give Full Tilt a big, wet sloppy kiss on the lips for rolling out Rush Poker. That seemingly simple little idea just extended the shelf life of online poker at least a few years despite the ever-increasing onslaught of training sites, HUDs, and software tools.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Why? Because you play elusively against semi-random opponents? All meta-game is stripped away, and the game creation is no longer a typical game of Poker.

hell, you cant even tell what your opponent has after folding!

i think your angle is off-base. It just a way to increase volume and play situational poker, imo.

ScurvyDog said...

Champ,

Online poker has really struggled the last year or two (since the UIGEA really) to attract casual players. With training sites and HUDs and tools like PokerTracker and HEM proliferating, the long-term winners are sucking up too much of the liquidity out of the system. So the games get tougher each year, and winning players rely more heavily on data mining and HUDs and situationally abusing (aka bumhunting) bad players the instant they sit down. Bad players go broke faster and have less fun in the process. That's bad for all players, winning and losing players alike.

Rush Poker has the potential to erase a lot of the damage data mining tools and HUDs have done to the games the last few years. Casual players don't care about meta game concerns or about abusing the 60/40 fish who plays too many hands. They're there to gamble and play some cards. Let them do that (and eliminate the down time when they boredly sit there watching a hand they aren't in) and you've got a winner.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if within a year or two 90% of the online NL games that are spread are a format similar to Rush Poker. The operators rake more, data mining and HUDs are largely useless, and it's more enjoyable for the casual player.

Unknown said...

I hear what your saying...and eventually anonymous tables might be a way to go...but this isn't Poker, not in a traditional sense.

It certainly isn't a replacement or revolution either. It's just the new Wheel Of Fortune machine of the week.

I have played about 1500+ hands of rush poker, and i enjoy the heck out of turbo SnG's too, but that's just the gambler in me. I'm not confusing it as Poker 2.0.

I give it two weeks, before HUDs and PTR catch up this new game. While I might not be able to sit next to a fish per se, I will be able to hammer in a similar fashion.

With that said, it is fun, and if it gets more casual players to the field, I'm all for it. I don't think its a dooms day for poker either, like some of the skeptics out there.

-Champ