Rush Poker (FullTilt) strategy

So I must confess to loving Rush. I'm a fixed HE low limit grinder. My big leak is boredom, which opens up my hand ranges. I two table FL HE on Rush and make my 100 full tilt point daily allocation in just about 1 hr, unless it's double points time.

Play tight Obviously if you play a tight strategy you're in good shape. Nobody is reading you all that carefully unless they HUD (which you should). I play very tight preflop, taking early position raises seriously, and steal in late position.

Steal the blinds, but don't call a bet on the flop with nothing I don't recommend floating the flop with a call. People fold so easily in this game that if they've got something and bet it, you've got to give them credit. However if you're the aggressor and it's checked around to you in late, that tight play on their part means you take down more pots than normal with a continuation bet.

Bet into blind stealers if its Heads Up To add a little meta to that, because you so often see it fold to the late position players, and because they're often stealing the blinds so much, you often can call a raise in the BB with a weaker hand than normal. If you hit a board that's not too scary, you can take the pot.

For example say you call a button steal raise in the BB with QT, and it's just the two of you to a flop with JT4. Your hand is pretty good normally, but pretty strong in this situation. A check (or check raise) on the flop plus a bet out on the turn will take you the pot. In most low limit games, your opponent is going to ride AK or AQ all the way down the river. Here you can get them to fold.

Small pairs don't have pot odds I still don't think the small pairs are worth much in Rush, as you often don't get anything near the pot odds to see a flop, or to call a raise without the entire table joining you.

I actually think playing looser and stealing more would be a better strategy, since players are going to be more prone to folding and waiting for hands. Don't be one of those guys, try stealing pots, odds are 1/2 the players aren't even watching the game anymore as they fold.

There are a few changes one needs to make to their strategy. A lot of people seem to think its balls out all in ATC poker gambling like crazy...

1) Play tight, you can see many many hands so playing tight is not as boring as full ring, nit it up and set mine. The consequences of passing your hand along almost don't exist, and the fact that the game is an All-In fest will mean that you do get paid when you make the best hand, so passing on the blinds is no biggie.

2) Use a Rush HUD, its the only way you'll know anything about your opponents.

3) Use nitty Bankroll management as you'll experience high variance when you run into other set miners.

4) Remember that position is less important if you're intending to get it all in right away.

You need to have a stronger fundamental game. I don't think it's possible to have a strategy that exploits rush in particular. Sure, you may pick up on trends, like people folding a lot to 3bets or something similar, and thus adjust your ranges a bit. But "Playing tight" is just fundamentally sound poker, has nothing to do with rush in particular.

So actually rush is easier than normal poker, cause there are less variables (as in history/reads/meta). Less variables means less edge though, cause there is less room to be better than your opponents.

Its practically impossible to have a decent stratagy for this game. You may as well be pulling the arnm on one of those poker slot machines. Its just a way for FT to increase their rake by increasing the number of hands/hour. You want to play poker, stick to proper tables. You want pure chance gambling, stick to roulette/lottery...or rush poker...