Yesterday, I was asked about Rush poker by someone who reads my blog but who doesn't play poker. They had seen an advertisement on TV promoting it, but they didn't really understand it. I did my best to explain its unique dynamics, but I soon realized that it isn't the easiest of poker variations to explain to someone who has never played online poker. I concluded by saying that I felt it was a great variation of the game for someone like me with limited time to play poker.

The conversation reminded me of a link I had saved months back regarding one website's opinion of Rush poker and my desire to debunk their comments. Now that we have 9 months of Rush poker to observe, I feel reassured with my initial assessment.

Their points...

 5 Reasons Why Rush Poker Will Not Stand The Test Of Time

1. Fish Lose Too Fast

2. Fill Up With Nitty Regs

3. Less Regs In Other Games

4. Death By Rake

5. Novelty Wears Off

My comments are based off my experience with low limit Rush PLO, but I think pertain to Rush NLHE as well.

1. Today's player likes action and speed of play first and foremost. The speed of play may intimidate the complete noobs, but most players prefer more action and hands in less time. The sense of getting strong hands more frequently because you fold poor hands and get new hands instantly is pleasing to players. With the rake, it may not be optimal to play so tightly, but it gives fish the sense they can play their good hands more often, or just play more hands.  They aren't as focused on losing a stack if they are enjoying the experience.

2. Players have learned that to keep ahead of the rake, you can't be too nitty. Sure, some marginal hands are folded pre-flop in Rush because they will see another hand immediately. In full ring or normal paced games, they might be played because players are impatient to play a hand. Without a doubt, Rush action is attractive to new and experienced players alike. I notice a healthy dose of both types of players, months later, just as I did in the early days.

3. As each new poker variant comes along, there will be those that are drawn to it.  Not everyone likes Rush , or heads up, 40 BB tables, ante tables or whatever. The pros play where they feel they have an edge.  There is an equilibrium where they spread out to master a profitable niche in the poker world. If there are too many pros in one area, they generally re-adjust.

4. The rake is proportional to the number of hands you play. The rake isn't any more than any other form of poker.  It's just that the hands come faster so the rake per hour is higher, but not the actual rake per hand.  you can see 250-300 hands per hour in Rush NLHE and 180-240 hands per hour in PLO. If you have rakeback, you are making more rakeback per hour too. With the recent shift to contributed rake, more active players will benefit at the expense of the nittier players who benefited under the old system.

5. Roughly nine months into the Rush poker era and it seems to be going well. I haven't watched the numbers of players closely, but they have seemed to remain steady for months now.  They will increase around a Take 2 type promotion, but the games are running consistently, especially at the lowest limits. The numbers playing NLHE are much higher and proportional to the overall numbers of NLHE players. On the PLO side where numbers are smaller, I've found the Rush games seem to run best when over a minimum player pool of 100 players.

I agree that Rush poker isn't for everyone.  The pace of action is fast and the dynamic of constantly shifting opponents requires a different approach to the game. There are less read based and poker tracking history influenced plays available, but it is a fast paced action filled game that is not a fad and is here to stay.

Isn't that a big question? Our lives are driven by our answer to that question, whether it is in our relationships or our professional lives. As a poker player, we face that decision each time we sit down to play.  When should I quit?  Most poker players naturally want to quit ahead.  But how far ahead? Do you book a few buy in win or press your advantage and risk losing it? Are you satisfied with an upward sloping results line or do you go for the jugular, trying to max out any possible advantage?

What do you do when you are having a losing session? Most established players recommend a stop loss of some kind.  Establishing a number of buy-ins you are willing to lose in a session then quit regardless. This can be a prudent measure if losing will tilt you or affect your mentality and playing poorly. Other players will keep grinding trying to dig out of their hole, putting in long hours to fight booking a loss.

Some players take a middle road and use a time measurement to determine a length for a session. They try to not focus on the results, but rather their imagined win rate and simply putting in X hours a week. Others will play as long as they are fresh.

Two highly visible poker players made comments this week on this subject that I thought I would share. Phil Galfond made a comment in response to his co-host on his On The Table podcast, Vanessa Ragland. She indicated that he should "quit when you are ahead." Phil said "You don't quit while you are ahead when you are a favorite."

The other comment was made by Gordo16 in his latest long delayed blog. He claimed that his biggest leak as a poker player was in "insta-quitting sessions, even against terrible opponents, simply because I dropped a few buy-ins really quickly and was afraid that my meta had gone out the window and I was just going to endlessly spew off buyins." He was referring to his latest hot run where he battles a player who ran hot at the beginning of each session but who he considered he had a big edge over.  So as long as he had an edge, he should keep battling, whether he was down or not.

Both comments are highly specific, both to poker and the high stakes heads up matches that these players play. When you play high stakes, there aren't an endless number of opponents to play.  When you find an opponent who you feel you have a big edge over, you need to press ahead when they decide to play you.  You don't know when or if they will play you again.  Sometimes asking for a break, or just sitting out for a few minutes will be enough for them to leave and not return. Players are very impulsive and emotional.  When you are involved in these epic grudge matches, momentum, mentality and capitalizing on your edges is key. The best poker players are best for a reason. They press the lines of what is enough harder than the rest of us. Sometimes they press too hard and we see that in their epic variance laden results.

The very big caveat to either of these players comments and recommendations is that you need to know yourself.  Most poker player's play does worsen with fatigue and when suffering losses.  Under those conditions, edges are lost quickly and ending a session, even against a player who you feel is inferior, is wisest.

Each player must decide each session how much is enough.  Enough win? Enough loss? Enough play? Enough.

Motivation and inspiration can be drawn from so many areas of our lives. Today, I found it in the form of the diminutive 18 year old 4 time Olympic medalist gymnast Shawn Johnson. The world watched her win Olympic gold at the Beijing Olympics on the balance beam at the age of 16. She vaulted into the American celebrity limelight with her cute smile and positive outlook. She started endorsing dozens of products, appearing on numerous talk shows and attending countless premieres. you can see her on Coca-Cola bottles and McDonald's merchandise.  She even won the Dancing with the Stars show and has a life-size bronze statue in her home town of Des Moines, Iowa.

Now she is delaying college, putting off all entertainment requests so she can prepare for the London Olympics in 2012 in what many are calling an impossible task.  It is a task made harder by the fact that she tore knee ligaments while skiing in the last year. She trains six days a week. She admitted in the BBC interview that this week she was feeling really sore and hurting a lot, but "you have to push through it."

When asked why she is putting herself through this, she says "I like the challenge."

"I want to have that feeling again of walking through the arena and wearing red white and blue and representing your country, that pride."

When asked what the hard parts of her comeback are, Shawn mentions being tired, being sore, not being able to hang out, be with friends, watch TV. She's in a lot of pain as she recovers from injury and pushes herself to return to top form.  She admits the hardest thing is not knowing if she's going to make it.

Shawn Johnson's mother comments that the little bit of lack of confidence she sees in her daughter this time, that she didn't have at all last time, worries her. Her current coach says she has to let go of the past and her glory.  She needs to just be a kid enjoying gymnasts and trying to be her best. Her former teacher was always impressed by Shawn's insistence on having big dreams in life.

Summing things up, Shawn said "Not many people know what you are going through, but if you can get to the end, then it's worth it."

Having just interviewed one of the best young poker players in the world and talking to my daughter, who is also on a path to excellence in her field, about the demands and sacrifices necessary, I drew both inspiration and motivation from Shawn Johnson and wish her luck in her comeback, whether or not she is destined for gold or not.  As the old saying goes, it is better to have tried and failed, than to have never tried at all.

Poker, much like life, is one of finding edges. When you find an edge, you want to exploit it.  The trouble is if you sharpen your edge too finely, it can be turned on you.  The blade can cut you, too. Let's take some real life examples.

Example 1

I went to Les Schwab yesterday.  They are the largest and most successful tire seller in the Western US. They have a reputation for fast reliable service and they also do brake and alignment work. So yesterday I brought in our minivan, as my wife had mentioned the brakes seemed to be a bit off. The conversation went like this...

Him: Do you know you need to replace three of your tires?

Me: That's odd, they are 50k mile guaranteed tires and I know they aren't even close.

Him: Have the tires been rotated every 5k miles?

Me: I don't know, it's my wife's car.

Him: If they aren't rotated every 5k miles, that voids the warranty and dramatically shortens the life of the tires.

Me: From 50k guarantee to 15k (which is how far they have been driven)

Him: Sorry, but yes.  We offer to rotate them for free.

Me: Who pays attention to the old receipt and remembering that strictly.  You should create Jiffy Lube type stickers for your customers that remind them to have their tires rotated.

Him: Yeah, tons of people mention that.

Me: So why wouldn't you implement something that would help your customers immensely to get value out of their purchases from you?

Him: (Long silence)

Me: I'm not happy about this development.

Him: How would you like to pay for the tires?

Naturally, they benefit from the present system where most of their customers neglect to come in on a strict schedule to have their tires rotated. It would take their techs more time to rotate all those tires, and they would have to honor their warranties and have less frequent repeat sales. The problem is that they alienate their customers. You hard sell the better tire, more expensive tire with longer guarantee, then don't create the proper environment for them to realize the value that you have sold.  Sure, I'll try to insist my wife pay more attention to having them rotated, but in our mid 40's we are busy and caught in old habits.  I may think again twice before buying their more expensive tires again.

Example 2

I detailed this example the other day regarding the online auction site.  They have found an edge where most people aren't clever about realizing that while the bid prices are quite low relative to the actual value of the auction item, that by having to pay .75-$1 per bid for an item you may not even win, you risk losing considerable money without showing anything for your money or effort. So sure you have found an edge, but will that eventual alienation of your customers when they realize it be worth that edge you established?

Example 3

The maniac poker player is a good example in the poker world.  The edge they develop is their aggression.  They continuously pound on their opponents. As most players don't have a strong hand, they acquiesce to the relentless aggression of the maniac.  The maniac wins lots of small and medium pots. But that same edge can be turned against them. As the players adapt to the aggression, they will trap and soft play big hands while the maniac continues to bet into them.  They can also start to become even more aggressive in response, putting the maniac in uncomfortable spots (assuming you do it with some decent values). If the maniac doesn't re-adapt, their sharpened edge has been turned against them and they spew off a lot of money.

Example 4

Another poker related edge common to newer players that can be turned against you is tight aggressive play. A tighter player will regularly benefit against looser players with worse kickers, flushes and straights. But if you only play a very tight starting range of hands, you can become quite predictable.  Sure you will gain value in top pair better kicker values or those chasing weaker hands, but your aggressive betting with those same hands will allow those playing more speculative hands to really punish you if you can't let go of that same top pair top kicker type hand when they hit their two pair or greater.  Mixing up your hands so you aren't so predictable or learning to let go of those types of hands in certain spots can keep your edge so it works for and not against you.

Conclusion

Obviously there is tremendous value in determining and exploiting an edge, whether it be in business or poker.  I recall the edge I had back when I owned my art gallery.  I traveled half way across the world to hand select and buy directly from the artist, thus giving me great quality and big margins. But that same edge was also negated if the customer perceived that I was taking advantage of the artists in any way.  So instead of hiding it, I tried to be as transparent and open about the process and educate them rather than just market the art to potential buyers.  Did I sometimes lose some sales because I didn't focus on pressing the marketing edge? Sure, but I kept my edge in balance, so it was sustainable (for 12 plus years) and didn't alienate my clientele.

I would argue that it is in your own interest to consider the effect of your edge on others. Maintaining an edge for the long term is often wiser than pressing harder with a short term minded edge. The negative consequence of having the blade turned on you can far outweigh pressing so firmly to cut your opponent deeply in the short term. Always be on the lookout for a good edge, but learn to manage the ones you do find well.

My eyes burned. I wanted to close them to avoid any further smoke coming from the smoldering flames of the indoor fire. It was the only source of light inside the manyatta. The floors were mud and so were the walls and ceiling. I was in a Samburu hut deep inside the frontier land of Kenya. The Samburu family directly across from me didn't speak any English. I knew only a handful of words in Maasai. How was I to connect with the nomadic herding tradition bound family during my stay with them?

What I turned to was mimicry. When the young boy sitting across the room made a face or gesture, I did the same. They were initially puzzled, and then it turned to laughter. In those moments of humor, I broke the barrier of communication and made a connection. I allowed myself to find common ground to communicate when none existed prior. As the tension eased, we began to find new ways to connect and enjoy each others company.

This method of connection and communication is similar to the notion of "when in Rome, you do as the Romans." When you want to adapt and flourish in a foreign environment or culture, learn to observe, mirror and respect their ways. If you want to make people comfortable and have them trust you, you can use nonverbal imitative behavior to bridge the gap. People fear difference. Look to blend and fit in, rather than asserting your individual identity or preferred culture.

I do the same each summer when I head to the WSOP. When I'm at home, I'm not up till all hours of the night. I don't drink heavily or go out and party. I don't play credit card roulette. I don't go out for every meal. But each year when I go to the World Series I look to assimilate with the poker crowd.

For those new to poker who are looking to become entrenched and accepted in an established poker crowd, learn to speak their language. Study your new peers and find where you can find commonality. The time will come where you can assert your independence, but ruffling others right off the bat is unlikely to have you reach your goal quickly. Not properly assimilated, the poker smoke can burn just as badly as the Samburu smoke burned my eyes all those years ago.

I wanted to discuss a subject that really bothers me in business. I first noticed it when ChipMeUp went live a while back. Here was a site that allowed you to bid for a piece of other poker players in tournaments. For seemingly very little, you could bid and win pieces of poker players in certain tournaments, some who had decent results too. If they go on to make a big score, you could profit handsomely. If they don't you haven't invested that much. Sounds great until you realize that each opportunity to bid costs money. And there is the catch. Your greed for getting a piece of a player at a cheap price, combined with your competitive nature to get into a bidding war to come out on top can suck you in badly. If you aren't the winning bidder, you could have invested significant sums in nothing.

One massive problem I have is that these aren't really auctions. No real auction charges you for the right to bid. Your bid should be the amount you expect to invest in that item. The auction house can charge whatever reasonable percentage or fee from each successful auction. How many legitimate auction houses (e.g Sothebys) would survive if they charged their bidders for the right to make each individual bid?

Today, I heard of a new poker related auction website started by a well recognized poker player. You can bid for items like a poker credit or a tournament ticket along with other casino, sports and poker prizes. I'm not interested in personally badmouthing him or his desire to establish a web business so I'm not naming him or the site, but there are several issues that I have with sites like his. In addition to not really being true auctions, they are deceptive about your true costs.

The home page is nicely displayed and presented. Vivid colors and graphics present your bidding options. Each prize has a timer ticking down and some tiny bid in relation to the value of the prize. Each prize begins at a $1.00. The increments of bidding are only one penny. If it's a $50 poker account credit on a site, wouldn't you want to throw in some bids to win it? That's where they get you.

*** Unfortunately, pic/link insertion isn't working in blogs at the moment. The display picture is shown on the CardRunners version of my blog - http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/Zimba

After your initial 10 free bids they offer you when you initially establish an account, each bid after that is $1 (you can buy hundreds of bids for a slight discount). So in the cropped image I captured you can see the potential positive and negative situations. In the first example (at top left), someone won the $11 PokerStars MTT entry for $1.06. This an example of a steal, right? Assuming there was only one other bidder they were competing against (that was most common of the few bidding wars I witnessed),the winning bidder would pay $4.06 for that ticket. The losing bidder would have spent $3 and have nothing to show for it (i.e. each bid costs a dollar moving up in penny increments $6 = 6 bids plus the $1.06 that the winner must pay. I have no idea if they have the items donated, purchased at a discount, or bought at full displayed value.

The second item shows the massive problem I have with sites like this. The winning bid was $2.85 for a $100 credit at a poker room. That means there were 185 individual bids before the winner was determined. Some combination of bidders invested $185 towards a $100 credit. If it was only two people in a bidding war, they could have each invested around $92, and one has nothing to show for it! If someone could swoop in at the end to just make a couple bids and steal it, it could possibly be a big steal for them, but leaving all other bidders having invested serious funds with absolutely no return!

The third item, with the red highlighted $58.50, was a furious bidding war as I watched. Two bidders kept upping and upping it. The red highlight means a new bid just came in. It would likely go significantly higher (free bid to buy bids go up in .10 increments). They were presently at $58.50, but going much higher for the $100 - 100 bid package.

Personally, the whole setup is what I consider an unfair business practice. It prays on people's greed, psychology and naivete. People are lured by the opportunity of what seems like a great deal, sucked in by the competitive bidding dynamic, and eventually fleeced, having nothing to show for their money unless they are the winning bidder.

I haven't even addressed the other massive issue that is readily apparent. The bidding system can be easily manipulated by anonymous identities false bidding, driving up the price in penny increments, but forcing legitimate bidders to bid again and again while they reap another $1 out of you for each new bid. Each new bid also adds time to the timer, so you can think you are near the end of a contest, but have a few late bids push it back up again giving time for others to bid it up further.

The entire setup really irks my equitable business sensibilities. I've always felt you should always get something in return for your expenditure of money, whether it be a product, service, or even a charity. I find any online sites utilizing this charged bidding auction dynamic as very questionable. Some may argue that this is simply some hybrid gambling entity where you take your chances with the rules established. I personally don't feel the costs and risks are clearly communicated, and it bothers me to see people duped into spending considerable sums of money chasing something and have nothing to show for it. But I suppose the old business maxim holds true, BUYER BEWARE.

Poker isn't an easy game.  Every time you sit down, the average poker player has about a 55% likelihood of having a losing session (not a math guy, so not sure how to factor in the 5% rake exactly). There is no escaping losing and the misery that accompanies it.  Even if you are a long term winning player, losing will continue to play a significant role in your daily sessions.  How players manage their losing and the frustration that accompanies it often defines them as players.

One of the well known adages, "Misery loves company" certainly applies to the poker player.  If you aren't the only one losing or suffering, it somehow makes your losses more bearable.  You can then rationalize that it has less to do with you or how you are playing and rather something beyond your control.

Look at the list of high stakes players having terrible results in 2010: (figures as of Oct. 8th provided by highstakesdb)

1. Gus Hansen -$3.68 million
2. Brian Townsend -$2.5 million
3. Matatuk -$1.5 million
4. Cole South -$1.45 million
5. ZeeJustin -$1.44 million
6. sbrugby -$1.4 million
7. howisitfeellike -$1.31 million
8. Esvedra -$1.3 million
9. Richard Ashby -$1.29 million
10. PixKim -$1.2 million

There is a current piece on Bluff Europe about Ziigmund being down $1.7 million, just in October. Last week, it was reported that Gus Hansen lost over $1.5 million that week alone.  These are long term highly visible winning players.  They have reached the highest echelons of poker and they are losing big.  Except for a couple of the names from the above list that I am unfamiliar with, all these players have had long term wins in the millions of dollars, so they should be able to handle these losses financially.  Mentally, it is another matter.

When you are losing, it saps your confidence, which is so crucial in poker.  We associate losing with failure. You can't help but expect poor results when you've run poorly, or perhaps played poorly too. You doubt yourself.  You doubt the game. You question your skill edge, or simply bemoan your poor luck. Each obstacle seems twice as large as when you are winning.

You can feign indifference or be resolute, but losing hurts either way.  Psychologically, being joined in your misery somehow makes it easier.

Growing up my parents played bridge.  I was always fascinated with the levels of sophistication to the game compared to other card games we played. When I moved from Philadelphia to Portland, Oregon during my late 20's, I found myself with extra free time and few built in friends and activities.  I noticed they had a bridge club near where I lived and one day I stopped in to check it out. I was the youngest person in the club, but everyone was pretty friendly. They were very welcoming and encouraging, both for new blood and for my buy in which increased the prize pool. What I quickly realized is that they weren't playing the bridge I was used to playing as a kid, but rather Duplicate bridge.  The concept really clicked with me.  Instead of allowing the whims of the cards to dictate who won or made a rubber, every player played a set number of pre-arranged hands and your scores were compared for how well you played each hand versus your opponents who also played the identical set of hands.

In the back of my mind, I have always thought that might be a great way to give a new dimension to poker.  It would take out the whims of running well or badly, and the overall luck factor. I did a bit of research and learned that Randy Peterson promoted a version of Duplicate poker in late 2006 and a small poker room tried to run Duplicate poker, but it was underfunded and closed in 2008.  They didn't fully develop the concept, but I thought the general idea should be:

1) Every hands you start with a starting stack regardless of how you played the previous hands.
2) It doesn't matter if you get strong or weak hands, because your goal is play the hands the best you can; winning the most or losing the least compared to your opponent playing the same cards.
3) After the set number of hands, you would compare your relative chip increase or decrease with your opponents who played the same hands. Even a player who loses chips overall can win the game if that player loses fewer chips than their opponents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6PK6EIqHB4&feature=related

There are some concerns of how it would run, practically.  If there is no chance element in the cards you receive, is it the luck of who your opponents are instead? Are you essentially playing against one player at each table dealt your same cards and board? Does it become like a freezeout tournament with the top scoring player in your position at each table advancing?  Regardless, I think its a cool idea that could even the playing field of chance, so skill could come more to the forefront.

Last night I was working on a new article on the value of sweating.  At the same time, I also had the pleasure to chat online with one of the hottest PLO players in the world right now. We were discussing my last blog concerning heroes and villains in poker. The thought that came to me during this process was how strong each of our personal poker prisms are.  Each person has one.  A poker prism is simply your perspective in the game.  It is formed by your education and experience in the game.  It influences all your decisions and strategy. Your poker prism is simply a smaller version of the prism that colors our lives.  Our goal should be to learn to escape from the prism of our lives.  The goal isn't to abandon our prism, but rather to gain perspective and some level of empathy and understanding of other prisms.

When you look through a quartz prism, you will see the world around you in a different light.  Your vision is diffracted as the rainbow of colors spreads before you.  Remove the prism and you can see clearly.  But if our is to understand someone else' perspective, it is not good enough to simply remove our prism but rather to learn to see through their prism.

Each of us has formed some understanding of how to play the game correctly.  Our natural tendency is to view anything that deviates from that understanding as inferior. That same poker prism affects how we look at other players.  Your hero may be my villain.  That doesn't change who the player truly is.  Your prism differs from mine.  What constitutes a villain may differ between us.  Your sources of information and history may differ from mine.

Top poker players have learned that in order to outplay their opponent, they often need to get into their head (i.e. understand their prism).  It is not enough to play a strong strategy. They must understand how their opponents view the game so they can exploit that unique prism. This is where the value of sweating comes in.  When we are playing, our attention is on our cards and the hands we are playing.  We are involved in the moment and our decisions and results.  When you are sweating other players, none of that matters.  You can abandon your own prism and begin to understand another players prism.

Some questions you might ask yourself as you sweat another player:

• Why, when, how often and by how much do they bet or raise?

• How do they react to their opponents aggression?

• How do they react when they suffer a bad beat?

• What are their motivations? To win money? To win the most pots? To create action? To beat you? To practice and improve their game?

There are many questions you can ask and try to answer as you sweat a player.  Each answer helps you piece together the rainbow of colors that your potential opponents casts from their unique prism.  Once you understand their prism, or poker perspective, you can look to take advantage of the added knowledge when you play them.  Stepping out of our own prism gives us a truer perspective.  We can begin to see our blind spots and distortions. Stepping into someone else' prism gives us insight that can help us to understand their motivations in a way that looking at it from your personal prism can't.