Joined: May '08
Location: Canada
Age: 42 (M)
Posts: 22
Playing Full Tilt Rush, I've recently tightened up my poker strategy with very conventional means. Primarily my pre-flop play has become tighter than ever, only playing AQ and up and JJ and up(With some exceptions for playing on the button and blinds). It's resulted in consistent winnings but this is usually made up of small pots. So I've been trying to come up with a way of winning bigger pots now and then. Though I still need to get more hands to put together some solid stats, early results are great.
The strategy: Act like a complete fish on the flop when you hit a high ranked hand.
Occasionally I'll see players over-bet a top pair on the flop. Rather than simply raise they'll be so defensive of a player calling to catch the turn that they'll go all-in. And often they'll do this with someone who has already put in a raise pre-flop. So I'll see players calling them and turning up an over-pair. So my goal was to goad people into playing that over-pair by perceiving my hand as top pair.
For example, the last hand I just played:
I'm on a .10/.25 Rush table. In the BB I'm dealt 99. Early position raises 3xBB, table folds over to me, I call(Usually I wouldn't bother calling with 99 since Rush players usually only play their best hands and I'm likely behind. But aside from being in BB and it not being a very large raise, I also want to try out this strategy).
Flop comes 2,4,9(rainbow).
Usually this would happen if the board remained in my favour:
I'd check, he'd bet, I'd call. On the turn I'd repeat this. On the river I'd put in a value bet in, he'd call and I'd win a decent pot.
Instead I'm trying to take his entire stack so I did this:
All-in on the flop. Likely thinking that I'm over-betting in an attempt to protect a pair of nines, he calls and shows KK. I end up winning the hand.
Simple. Stupidly so because you're doing what you shouldn't do. But people have become so accustomed to so many players on the net that there's a lot of experience playing fish. And when someone goes all-in on the flop when a large raise would do well enough, they're usually over-protecting. We're used to that and we're used to winning most of those hands by calling them when we're playing an over-pair.
This might not work on all tables. With Rush I have the advantage of moving from one table to another so that no one gets a read on me. Even better, the game is so tight that a lot of the times when you finally get into a hand, your opposition is holding a pair. So far it's worked great and the returning profit from this all-in grouping has been much better than that of the slow-play grouping.
