Rushes!

[Yawkey]

After being in nearly a month long slump, I went back to some of the books that I thought made me successful in the first place. The one that I feel helped me break out of my slump (I cleaned up in the most difficult game I play in last night) was Doyle Brunson's Super System, and in particular his writings on Rushes (pages 450-451 for those following along). The first thing I though was, here's a concept that has been lost due to the scientific approach people are learning from playing online, especially to multi-tablers. So I thought I would present this topic and see if we can get a good discussion on pros and cons, success stories and maybe some disasters.

Concept:

To summerize DB (note: the section this is found on is specific to NL Texas Hold'em), after he wins a pot he plays the very next hand no matter what two cards he gets, until he finally looses. This gives you the opportunity to set yourself up for a rush (winning a bunch of hands in a row).

Some of my thoughts:

Seizing Luck:

As a moderatly superstitious person I will do things to improve my luck. Now lets say for sake of argument that there is luck and a person can have it at some times and loose it at others. Then playing for a rush is really seizing luck when you have, similar to seizing the opportunity to play pocket aces.

Table image after a successful rush:

Lets pretend we had a good rush of about ten hands, and we show everything from pocket kings, 9 3 off, suited connecters, Q 6 off, the works. Hopefully with a ten hand rush we have taken a good number of chips from most of the people at the table and have a menicing stack in front of us. At this point we have a table full of people who think we just got lucky and want vengence. Once the rush is over we tighten up and play monsters against a table full of people on tilts who have grossly underestimated us. Now we've done two things here, we've made a table image that can be used to our advantage, and we've mixed up our play from tight to loose, to tight again, keeping our oppenents off gaurd.

Net vs. B&M

This is really a concept where you can shoot yourself in the foot if you are not careful. I think more so online because of the shear nature of online where a slider bar can put your whole stack in, in less than a second where as in the real world you need to actually pickup and count the chips you are putting in. All around I think this is a better play in live games, and it simply comes down to people paying attention to what's going on. If I win ten hands in a row online two people notice, however if I win just three hands in a row in a real game everyone at the table is aware of this fact. This makes for a psychological factor that really helps progress your rush into more than science and mathematics says it should be.

Let me know what you think about this topic, does this make sense or am I not quite playing with a full deck of cards.