Full Tilt’s Rush Poker: boom or bust?

These days, the online poker world is abuzz with Full Tilt’s newest (copyrighted) invention: Rush Poker. It looks like everyone I talk to has already tried the new game, and they’re all delighted with it. They’ve all won at it too.

Now, that leaves several possibilities open. It’s either that all my friends are excellent poker players and they have all indeed taken cash off the Rush Poker tables, or that they’re just a bunch of liars, or that everyone playing Rush Poker wins. That however is highly unlikely as it raises an even more unsettling question: if everyone wins, where the heck does all the money come from?

Anyway, let’s stop the jest right here and let us take a serious look at the things that Rush Poker has going for it and at the things that it doesn’t. A few days ago I read a poker forum somewhere where a poster said something like: this will either be a huge success or a huge bust. Which one will Rush Poker be?

 

Most players who’ve given it a go and most professional players who have expressed an opinion about it, seemed to love it. After all, what is the most annoying thing in online poker as we know it today? The down-times, of course. You pick up an 8,2o, you fold it and then you’re forced to sit there and watch those lucky enough to have picked up better starting hands, play. While this may be great to establish reads on your opponents, everyone will agree that it’s boring as hell.

Rush Poker eliminates all these downtimes. Don’t like your hand? Click “quick fold” and off you go, to another table where the prospect of a monster starting hand awaits you. This allows players to log an unheard-of number of hands each hour, forever changing the face of promotions like sign-up bonuses, rake races, and that of the bog bad wolf itself: rakeback. Rakeback and poker rake are the key words in Rush Poker and I’ll get back to why that is the case shortly.

What other advantages does Rush Poker offer though over its traditional counterparts? In addition to the change of pace (that’s an understatement if I ever saw one), it offers players more privacy, not to mention protection against data mining. Don’t shrug that off…the Isildur1-Brian Hastings incident has drawn a lot of attention to data mining and to its negative effects on the industry lately, and some poker networks have already begun implementing anti-data mining measures to prevent such incidents from ever occurring again. Rush Poker deals a devastating blow to data mining through its very nature. Whisked from one table to another at the speed of light (well, at the speed allowed by their internet connections anyway) players have no time to create profiles on opponents, and not too many reasons to do so either: after all, they’ll be playing their next hand at a different table, so what’s the use of reading one’s current opponents?

 

This “advantage” that I just presented above, is Rush Poker’s biggest shortcoming in the same time, and it’s not a small deal at all. It’s not just a grain of sand caught up in the cogs of the mechanism, it’s a big piece of dirt, one that may end up derailing the whole project. Why? You may ask… Simply because the fact that you’re continuously jumping from one table to another kills the very essence of poker. Poker is supposed to be a game of skill, based on a combination of math and psychology. Take away any of these two components and you’re left with an empty shell. That’s exactly what Rush Poker did. It took away the psychology aspect and left people with a math-based shell that’s relatively easy to abuse within the confines of its own rules. No longer will skilled players be able to make use of their prowess, and skill will once again take a back seat to luck.

Some worry that Rush Poker, as attractive as it may be for beginners, might turn into a trap for them. Weaker players who can barely handle playing at two tables, are definitely not ready for Rush Poker, yet right now they’re over there jumping from one table to another by the thousands.

Since optimal Rush Poker strategy is extremely simple (think one of the simplest, most radical versions of ABC TAG poker), there’s another danger: once everyone catches on, the Rush Poker tables will turn into a hopeless give and take, and not even the best players will be able to wring any juice from them. What that would mean is that the only way to make any sort of money at Rush Poker would be through rakeback.

That takes us to another hidden pitfall that Rush Poker comes fitted with: the poker rake.

Players love the idea of logging as many as 2,500 hands per hour. It’s awesome: it takes the downtimes out of the game, it kills the boredom, and it takes the money out of your pockets through the rake at a never before seen rate. I bet you never considered that. The increased speed of the game will mean that the edges successful players will be able to exploit will get ever smaller, which in turn means that the poker rake will become a bigger and bigger enemy.

Whatever direction Rush Poker evolves in, in its current format, “playing the player instead of playing the cards” as advised by the pros, will be quite impossible.

An analysis of the House Financial Services Committee hearing regarding online poker

While by now we all know that the House Financial Services Committee hearing that took place at the beginning of the month didn’t really achieve much in terms of actual results, and that Barney Frank plans to take up the issue once again before the 6 month deadline regarding the implementation of the UIGEA expires, it is still worth to take another look at the hearing and to dissect it a little.
There were a few issues that came up and that will obviously come up again when the Committee holds its second hearing in the matter. What this fist hearing made obvious was that these issues will eventually make or break the case for Frank, for the IMEGA, the PPA and – at the end of the day – for the entire online poker and online gambling industry.

In that respect, this hearing has indeed achieved a lot and it gave us a preview of what the real battle regarding Frank’s Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act and Reasonable Prudence in Regulation Act will be like. Here are some of the potentially decisive factors that were touched and that I personally consider of utmost importance for the case.

Rep. Spencer Bachus, who’s the staunchest opponent of legalization, brought forth a letter that FBI Cyber Division assistant director Shawn Henry sent him. In the letter, Henry wrote about how prolific a breeding ground online poker is for cheaters and how it is impossible to verify the age of those who play at these online poker sites. Henry also pointed it out that online poker sites were a haven for money laundering criminals. This letter is bound to pop up again at one point or another during the debate about Frank’s proposed bills. Fortunately though, Bachus didn’t quite do his homework as far as research was concerned in regards to Henry’s letter. The letter contained many inaccuracies and some of the facts it presented were downright fabrications.
For instance, in the letter Henry wrote that the online poker sites were well content with the showing of a credit card as proof of age, which is just not true. If you’re an online poker player you probably know that a copy of the ID is sometimes insufficient too and further documentation – like utility bills – is also required most of the time. The points Henry made about money laundering and cheating were also turned around by the PPA, as all such issues can obviously be apprehended much more effectively through legalization than through placing these sites outside the law.

A point that Bachus seemed to score came when he forced two of Frank’s witnesses, Parry Aftab – who proved to be the most efficient and eloquent of all witnesses – and Kevin Whyte, to “admit” that the organizations they represented (Wired Safety and the National Council on Problem gambling) had received funding from Harrah’s, a company interested in launching an online poker site provided the game does get legalized. The way Bachus “extracted” the confessions made it seem like he did indeed score a point there, but the fact remained: the funds that Harrah’s had contributed to the above named organizations – both tasked with safety and problem gambling prevention – only underlined the fact that it was concerned with delivering a safe, reliable and risk free product to its would-be customers. It was by no means a measure of corruption or vile intent on the part of Harrah’s or on that of the online poker industry.

The fact that Bachus failed to produce any credible witnesses and that his case was built mostly on Robert Martin, tribal chairman of the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, a tribe pushing for legal online poker in California, was definitely a huge win for Frank’s side. The chairman of the House Financial Services Committee was quick to pounce on Martin and to expose the hypocrisy of his testimony.
Despite the fact that all of the factors taken into account thus far were largely in favor of legal online poker, there were some more worrying issues as well. On one hand, taken by his Libertarian zeal, at one point Frank compared online gambling to booze and pornography. Placing the industry into the same boat with pornography and alcohol was by no means a fortunate move, despite the fact that Frank used the comparison to express his view on the government meddling with private affairs it should never be involved in.

Another, much more worrying issue that came up was state based legalization as opposed to federal legalization and regulation. Because it makes tons more sense than any of the other angles Bachus attacked Frank’s proposals from, letting individual states decide the fate of online gambling/poker within their own jurisdictions could end up as the biggest hurdle in the path of federal regulation.
Because online poker legalization is already under way in California, it could well end up setting a precedent in this respect, which would make federal regulation even more difficult to push through.

The issue of the credit card, raised by Republican Representative Chris Lee isn’t likely to develop into a deal-braking factor though. Lee expressed his concern about letting people gamble using their credit cards. He also said though that he didn’t have any sort of objections against allowing online gambling through debit cards. On top of the fact that gambling with money one does indeed have makes perfect sense, dropping credit cards would be a more than reasonable concession, especially given the fact that most credit card companies have begun to block online gambling related transfers years ago.

Whether any of these issues will prove crucial in the making or breaking of online poker legalization and regulation, remains to be seen. At the end of the day, it’ll be up to Frank and his supporters to convince the majority through well thought out and rock solid arguments.