A microbonk RUSH poker survival guide (or lack thereof)
Hey guys, as many of you know it is currently the middle of RUSH week on Full Tilt. For those of you who haven't experimented with RUSH, the concept is pretty simple. You have a quick fold button instead of a standard fold button. Quick fold allows you to fold out of turn and moves you to another table so you can play another hand without waiting for others to finish.
Anyway, the last couple weeks I have been playing around with microstakes RUSH (5 and 10NL) because I was waiting for my new computer and still wanted to pump out high volume of hands. I've probably logged about 50K hands in the last two weeks @ RUSH and thought I'd write a brief synopsis of my experiences for anyone who is interested in trying out this form of "poker."
I started playing 4 tables of full ring without a HUD because 1, my computer sucks, and 2 it would force me to play extremely ABC which, consequently, is a pretty damn good idea even with a HUD in RUSH. I started out by quickly losing 5 buy ins while I got used to the speed of the tables and got used to playing so straightforwardly. After the first day or so of playing I finally beat it into my brain that folding in RUSH is extremely +EV when you don't have an extremely good hand. Once I got this through my head I went on a heater of sorts and won between 12-14 buy-ins over the span of about 2.5 hours. (Yikes)
I continued playing the same way and then quickly dropped about 6 buy-ins mostly due to running into the absolute top of everyone's range all the time. I began to experiment again and have since dropped all of my winnings and a little bit more over the last week but I have learned quite a bit as well. Instead of making this any more TL;DR I am just going to list a bunch of observations.
Plays fall almost exclusively into four groups.
-The nitty TAGG players who run between 2/2 and 10/10. I'd say these guys make up approximately 35% of the player pool and are best dealt with by flatting your pairs and other good implied odds hands. Do not try to bluff unless the board is exceptionally dry and uncoordinated as they usually have the goods.
-The semi-nitty weaker players who are kind of trying to play normal poker. Usually running around 18/6-14/9. These guys seem to think they know what they are doing but usually can't handle pressure unless they have a very strong hand. These guys are okay to 3bet kind of lightly in position and are pretty easy to move off hands post flop. They like to get to showdown but be careful not to value-town yourself by running a multi street bluff/semi-bluff. If they are calling down they usually have a pretty big hand.
-The Uber Passive. You will see these guys running anywhere between 30/0 and 5/0. They simply never raise preflop. If they raise postflop you are always behind unless you hold the absolute nuts. That said, these players tend to not raise post flop either. Be extremely cautious when betting into these players on multiple streets, especially on drier boards.
-The loose moron. May raise preflop and may not. Tries to play a lot of pots but generally sucks. These are really your most consistent source of money in RUSH. Play lot's of pots vs them in position and avoid OOP like the plague because even if they suck it's hard to call bets OOP in RUSH due to idea that people ranges going to be stronger over all in most cases.
3betting is the nuts
People suck at least with 3bets at these levels. Simple as that. 3bet pretty much all of the above player types with all kinds of suited crap and hands with blockers in position. Everyone is so ready to move on unless they have a very good hand and RARELY at these levels will you find someone 4betting you lightly to adjust.
People try to steal the BB about 99% of the time with garbage
In almost 50K hands at RUSH I have 3bet Any Two Cards in the BB vs a SB steal and only been 4bet a handful of times. I'd say an argument could be made for 3betting all your bad hands and flatting the very top of your range as people tend to spew quite a bit on bluffs. Also, ldfo don't 3bet the nits running 2/2 over 150 hands cause that's just not smart. It's also quite profitable to 3bet BTN steals from the blinds with hands that have blockers. You'll get a lot of folds and as stated before, most of them suck post flop really badly.
Never call a cold shove preflop without KK+
This actually maybe should be revised to just be AA. I can't tell you how many times I have seen someone shove over a standard open for 100B and thought, wow, during normal ring games that is usually such a tilt move. I'll call with QQ, JJ, or AK and almost 95% of the time run into AA or KK.
Thin value is almost always too thin in RUSH
Hands that you might bet for thin value during normal ring games don't have nearly the same value in RUSH poker. I can't even count any more how many times I'll flop an A on a wet board with a hand like AJ and end up betting on the river for what seems like sort of thin value only to be snapped off by AK that has been c/cing the entire way.
Anyway, this got super TL;DR as I expected so in cliff-note summary....
3betting is extremely effective, especially IN POSITION.
cbetting is also extremely effective but firing 1 barrel and giving up without improvement is usually the best idea.
It's totally acceptable to be a nutcamper but implied odds hands are exceptionally valuable vs the tighter ranges you will encounter.
Be extremely wary of any and all raises.
ABOVE ALL ELSE: Quit the second you start to tilt no questions asked. Hands come VERY fast and any tilt mistakes you are making will compound VERY quickly.
