The Rush For Rush Poker
The unsurprising announcement came into our inbox yesterday heralding the arrival of Sprint Poker on the iPoker network. Starting with Bet365 this feels like the 365th such announcement with the world and his wife now offering some variant on the Full Tilt Poker – supposedly patent protectable – ‘classic’ that was Rush Poker.
Microgaming launched Blaze Poker just recently, now we have Sprint Poker and once Ongame have given a thesaurus to their programmers you can expect their version to follow shortly. By our reckoning this just leaves Party, 888 and Merge without some kind of ‘fast moving ring game product’ to quote Pokerstars prior to their launch of Zoom Poker.
While we’re quoting Pokerstars we’re always amused to remember a source definitively telling us that they’d never develop a Rush type product because it meant that the bad players would lose, lose everything in fact, and lose it quickly too. So remember that while we might love Pokerstars and you probably do too they’re still after your money like the rest. In developing Zoom it seems that they’ve decided that a big profit right now is more important than an even greater, steadier one over a longer time period.
One of the largely unmentioned issues with Full Tilt’s shutdown is the longevity and lifetime value of a regular Rush Poker player. Full Tllt would’ve known whether players were getting destroyed at those tables as Pokerstars theorised. They would have had months of figures to run over and see whether or not bad players were going broke and if so at what rate. As the only poker firm able to compile such results how do we know that they weren’t bad?
Most networks are now splintering or taking some kind of action to keep parasitic skins away from the contributors but could the increasing prevalence of Rush variants make such moves irrelevant? Perhaps the final legacy of Full Tilt, beyond all the previous headlines and unsavouriness, is to have planted a slow burning bomb in the midst of all of their previous competitors.
Your comment about ‘losing quickly’ is not as simple as you described here.
Assumption is that recreational players are net losers anyway. It can mean either number of hands they play, or simply the time they spend at the tables.
If a decent recreational player plays 1-2 tables of normal ring games, the biggest risk to him is a boredom. The player gets bored while folding trash, keeps on waiting for decent hands, becomes impatiencent and ends up to make stupid mistakes and eventually loses his money.
In rush/fast/zoom/sprint – recreational players are more likely to stay focused at least same time or perhaps even a bit longer than in standard ring tables because quicker pace of the game they have playable pocket cards more often and they get action they need to stay focused. This means they actually play more hands (but in shorter time), they have more enjoyable playing experience and thus are more likely make a new deposit and return to tables in the near future.
Super-donk fishes who have no clue about the poker are totally different question – they will lose they money quick anyway- despite what type of game they play.
Fantastic reply, can’t believe no one commented on it.
Very interesting points that I would desperately love to see the stats on. Especially as I am one of those players who gets bored with the grind of playing against cash game grinders when i just want to play some actual poker.
Seems live poker or higher stakes is the only place nowadays where you can play some real poker, apart from the Enet poker network of course.
‘Fast Fold’ poker does help me to play less rubbish hands and I get more folds pre flop to my gayest of gay raises.
Does Fast Fold poker also teach you to raise/steal more pre flop?
Does Fast Fold poker also teach you to 3bet preflop on the assumption that averagely they are stealing with air, even if you have never having played a hand against them before?