Rush Poker Preflop Strategy
If you want to be a
winning Rush Poker player, you need to pay lots
of attention to your preflop strategy. In a game
of regular-paced poker, strategy is more fluid;
preflop moves depend more on the reads you’ve
gathered on your opponents than the cards you
hold. However in Rush Poker, you can’t rely on
long-term reads. Thus a winning strategy will
focus on playing solid, card-based preflop
poker.
Rush Poker Preflop
Rule #1: Stay Aggressive
Aggression is important
in any form of poker, and in Rush it’s no
different. You will not win money playing like a
calling station; you will just bleed your
bankroll dry. If you want to play a hand, make
sure you’re leading with aggression.
For
example, say you’re dealt AK offsuit in middle
position. Everyone folds to you. What should you
do? Your options are:
A lot of players will
call in this situation. Their logic runs
something like this: “if I raise, everyone will
fold, and I won’t win any money”. This is
terrible logic. First of all, if everyone folds
to your raise, you win the blinds. As far as I
know, we play with real money in Rush Poker.
Thus winning the blinds is making a profit.
Second, by failing to
raise you actually give up potential profit. If
you throw out a 3xBB raise, and get a caller,
there is a very good chance your hand dominates
theirs. Thus you will have put money into a pot
in which you have a lot of equity. You will have
won long-term profit just by making the raise
(regardless of how the hand actually turns out
by showdown).
A lot
of players will call in order to give opponents
with marginal hands a chance to “hit the flop”.
This is results-oriented thinking and
essentially shooting yourself in the foot. First
of all, the only way you’re going to win money
with AK is by taking down the pot preflop, or by
dominating on future streets. By hoping your
opponents hit the flop, you’re taking as a given
that you’ll hit as well. This is far from a
given, and in fact, it’s highly unlikely that
both of you will hit. You risk having your
opponents outdraw you with significantly weaker
holdings, which is silly.
The
moral of the story here is this: be aggressive
preflop, as a rule. Pump money into your strong
hands like there’s no tomorrow. I have shown
above why aggression is correct, and why playing
a passive style will lose you money. All these
rules of aggression apply to any strong hand you
wish to play preflop, not just AK.
Rush Poker Preflop
Rule #2: Play Good Cards
Since
you want to run an aggressive game, and won’t
have reads on your opponents, you’ll need to
play strong hands preflop. Your opening range
will depend on which position you’re in. A lot
of Rush players have been saying stuff like
“position isn’t important in Rush Poker.” This
is both completely incorrect and very
irresponsible to say. Playing positionally-aware
poker is your bread-and-butter regardless of
what type of game you’re in.
Here is a rundown of solid
preflop ranges, listed by position:
- Early Position:
66+, AQ-AK suited, AK offsuit.
- Middle Position:
22+, AJ-AK suited, AQ-AK offsuit, QJ-KQ
suited. KQ offsuit if you want to be
dangerous.
- Late Position:
22+, A8s+, ATo+, suited one-gappers 67-KQ,
suited two-gappers 8T-KJ.
Rush Poker
Preflop Rule #3: Steal and Isolate in Late
Position
Late
position is unique among the positions in that
you get to watch everyone act before you. This
gives you information you can use to your
advantage. Every player that folds before you
increases your hand’s relative strength. You’ll
be contending with less opponents if you lead
out, and thus will have a better chance of
winning a pot.
If
you’re in the cutoff seat or on the button and
are folded to, you should attempt to steal the
blinds with a very wide range of hands (almost
any two cards). Since nobody will have any
long-term reads on you, it will be impossible
for them to say whether or not you’ve got a
legitimate hand. Thus they’ll have to take you
at face value, assessing you as having good
cards, and consequently you’ll take down a lot
of blinds. These blinds add up, and as we know,
any profit is good profit in poker.
If
you’ve got a bunch of limpers before you and
have decent cards, you should raise to isolate
one or two players. Remember, being in position
makes you the boss of the hand, as long as you
stay aggressive. No matter what happens on the
flop, players will look to you as the gatekeeper
of the action. You can get away with
representing strength even when you’re not
particularly strong.
Isolating the field of opponents increases your
odds of taking down a pot for two reasons:
first, folding out other limpers increases your
relative hand strength, and second, a smaller
field of opponents will connect with less flops
than a large one. Thus you can play on strength
you don’t necessarily have, all by using
aggression in position.
Join the Thousands of Players Who Have Made the
Switch to Rush Poker
|
