Home / Poker News November 2011 / The Poker Grapevine – Rush Poker Can’t be Patented
The Poker Grapevine – Rush Poker Can’t be Patented
Posted by: Randy Williams - Tue, 2011-11-29 14:03
Full Tilt Poker’s own contribution to the world of
online poker and a major result of the pre-black Friday arms race between FTP and PokerStars, Rush Poker took the online poker industry by storm. Often “praised” as the crack cocaine of online poker, Rush Poker was fast and it took the boring wait completely out of the game. It altered poker strategy and it allowed grinders to put in an unprecedented number of hands per hour, generating more rake, more rakeback and opening now money making opportunities at the virtual green felt. Now that Full Tilt poker has been swept out the US poker market, having gone offline months ago, some players are exhibiting Rush Poker withdrawal symptoms. Still other people are looking for ways to cater to the needs of these aforementioned players.
The InstaDeal Poker network is looking for a way to bring a rush-poker like game back to the public. According to Per Hildebrand, Chairman of InstaDeal, Rush Poker was never patentable, thus Full Tilt Poker’s Black Friday woes are not the reason behind his company’s move. The game format only ever fulfilled one of the three requirements of patentable concepts.
In other news: the WPT’s Marrakech Main Event is in the books and Mohammed Ali Houssam is the winner. Houssam took home a $267k top prize, after he disposed of Toufik Ourini heads-up. The interesting thing about the
poker tournament was that the heads-up stage pitted two relative unknowns against each other, despite the fact that the 9 handed final table was rife with high profile, ‘name’ players like PokerStars’ own Arnaud Mattern, 2010 WSOP Main Event winner Jonathan Duhamel and Bertrand Grospellier.
Of the notables, Mattern made it the furthest: he was bounced in 4th place. Grospellier bowed out in 8th place, and Duhamel followed him to the rail in 7th.
The final hand of the event saw Houssam’s flopped set best Toufik’s top pair.
