Sloe Times

No. Who's playing first. -- Abbott and Costello

I've posed the following questions to a small group of bloggers:

How often do you figure you go on card rushes?

When you do, would you say it's something that just happens, or do you try and make them happen?

Feel free to answer them for yourself before reading on. Last month I can recall going on quite a few card rushes and having a real good month. As this month is winding down I'm looking back through poker tracker and not really seeing anything more than break even for the most part. Closer analysis showed that I'm not playing as many hands per hands dealt as I did in the previous month. Then like someone lighting a candle in a dark room, it hit me.

I'm playing on Pacific (I already withdrew my deposit, just playing on the bonus and the winnings) when I get KK and take down a decent pot. My next hand is J5s and I fold it away. My next hand after that is KQs and I take down another decent pot. For the record, the J5s would have taken down another monster and cracked AA. I wondered for a long time why I didn't play the J5. Not more than a month ago, I would have without hesitation. I missed out on a decent card rush that would have netted me at least 3 nice pots (maybe more) instead of 2.

Ok, so why would I have played a marginal hand like J5s and what does that have to do with rushes? I'd play it because Doyle told me to, and by not playing I'll never catch even half the rushes that I should. If you are using Poker Tracker and have the patience to, go back through and find every hand you've won in the last month, and then look at the next hand. Did you play it? If you didn't, would it have won if you had? That's tough to say if you didn't get to see all the community cards, but personally in looking back over my month there were quite a few times I could have seen the next hand cheap enough and won with it despite how raggedy the hole cards looked. How much money did I leave on the table by not following the aggressive sage advice of Doyle Brunson? There is of course the converse question of how much money did I save by not doing it? The answer to that one is easy though, not as much as I would have won.

So based on my limited experience in researching my play thus far, I'm standing in the camp of making rushes happen as opposed to just catching a nice string of great cards. The reason I think this is important is because there is a psychological shift of the players during card rushes and why it seems that in tournaments, or ring play, a big stack just seems to get bigger. I try to play the cards I'm dealt but some of those low-middle pairs don't look so good when going up against a guy that's just tearing a table up. It's this psychological advantage that I really want to explore and exploit. However, rather than make up my own lame interpretation of what this means, I'll quote from the good book:

...if I win a pot, I nearly always play the next pot as well, within reason. Although the cards will break even in the long run, card rushes do happen. A card rush means more than that you're winning a lot of pots. It also means that you have temporary command of the game.

He's specifically talking about no-limit games with this quote, but in my experience I've also seen similar behavior in limit games with reasonable (no real calling stations) players. It all boils down to taking command of the game and exploiting that temporary status for maximum return.

In home games it's pretty easy to take command without ever really doing anything. If you've built up a solid reputation there's going to be a certain group that just don't play their best against you, because they know you're better than them. Online, everyone realizes you're actually a 12 year old tabby with chronic hair balls and a cat nip addiction you just can't kick. So, naturally when you sit down at a new table, you get little to no respect. I think that a key factor in building that temporary/short term solid reputation is to seek and exploit the rushes. It seems to me the only way to make rushes happen is to do as Doyle says and play the follow up hands after a win and roll with it. The key to not getting punished for trying to make your rush is to get away from the hand if the flop misses you. Assuming you were able to limp in cheaply then you're out 1 BB. If the flop hits you though, more than likely you're going to be scraping more than 1 BB and that should more than make up for the misses.

The following comment(edited) is offered up by DoubleAs

Trying to make card rushes happen always fails. After losing several big pots, I sometimes push too hard and just compound the losing. You can't make cards happen and trying to make people fold won't work for very long. It seems that people quickly pick up on the fact that you've become a betting machine and will think you're out of line. They'll play back at you with mediocre hands or call you down with bottom pair guessing that you can't possibly have a good hand AGAIN. That mentality on your opponents' part is what makes card rushes so profitable. It must be ego issues on their part. I believe that poker is best played without emotion or ego by staying analytical and letting the cards work for you.

I think this supports the point of getting away from the hands when they don't hit. You can't force a rush, either the cards are with you, or they are not. Remember the point of what I'm suggesting is that by just playing the cards you're dealt, you may be missing out on the other hands you could, should, have won not so much because you played any two cards after a win, but because you're working to build momentum that will win you more chips with the monsters you do hold or draw.

This probably isn't too applicable to low limit games where the money just falls into your lap because your opponents are a sitting mistake. I can see however where this would be much more applicable in long term no limit games, tournaments, and higher stakes limit games.