1335 played out of 1800
Sorry for the delay guys my brother asked me to do some work for him and as he is my brother i couldnt say no. So its slowed it down a bit.
Think I will be done on wednesday ♦
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I wrote this when rush sngs came out and as i dont play them anymore i decided to publish it here for you guys 
Rush Poker MTT SNG Strategy
By James Lennon A.K.A Lennonac
The insane brains at Full tilt brought out rush poker and everyone was addicted. Then they took it a step further and presented us with rush Mtt's and Rush Mtt Sng's.
Now we are talking!
A few of the guys on the forum have been asking and suggesting a strategy for these and I thought I would write one up for you guys to follow, dismiss and disagree with
Remember this is just a guide to how I am playing these and what I see as being a solid starting strategy for the new variables rush poker presents us with.
Early blind play....(pre ante's)
As with all sng play yes even mtt sng's, tight is right. What I have noticed with these rush games is the fish although they can fold and get a new hand instantly...DON'T!
Okay they do to a small degree but I have seen so many of them playing complete trash, dominated aces and kings.
So my early play consists of this.....
I play TT+ and AKo.......That's it
I am looking to get the money in pre flop if I can with QQ+
I am always 3 betting this range and folding out TT,JJ and AK to a 4 bet.
Play these hands hard and fast, you will get paid.
Use the quick fold button as often and as quickly as you can, we want to see as many hands as we can while the blinds are low....This is key to this strategy.
Obviously if you are dipping heavily below the starting stack and are only left with 10-15 blinds then we need to open up our range a little. Notice I said a little, we are not in any danger with 10-15 blinds yet although the lower end of this I would start to worry.
I would open up my range to something like this....
Early and mid pos:
88+ AJo+ KQo+
co and btn:
22+, A8o+, A5s+, KTo+, K8s+, Qjo+, T9s
Small blind:
Shove these hands:
22+, Axo+, Kto+, K8s+, QJs+
Mid game (Antes )
Now this is where we must change our strategy completely, If we continue to “quick fold” every hand we will be blinded down to nothing by the ante's in a matter of minutes. This is very important! No more quick fold!
We should and likely have a decent stack by this stage in the region of 20-30 blinds and are sitting pretty. Now the ante's have kicked in there is more reason to open our game up a bit to take advantage of the dead money in the middle.
The shorter you are the more you are going to want to open up but restrict this to late position steals. Remember most people will still be playing tight at this stage.
Respect 3 bets and re-shoves!
Although the fish are still the fish they are still tighter than in a normal mtt sng.
Bubble:
There are two bubbles in these 135 man games.
The first is the money bubble that usually starts when we get down to about 20 people left with 15 paid.
This is where we are looking for good re-steal spots and the above rule “Respect 3 bets” is put on the back burner a little. Please note I have said a little as the fish wont be 3 betting with air only the good regs will be. Look for clear re-steal spots and not some marginal squeeze play. From my experience you will almost always get called when you squeeze as the fish just cant let go of their pocket 2's.
Okay so we have played a good bubble and we should be in the region of 20k+ in chips.
Now it is the final table bubble, this happens when there are about 12 players left and in many cases you wont notice much difference in the play from the money bubble, except for one massive factor
We are short handed! And I mean short! 6-4 handed seems to be the norm.
So what's our strategy now??
Steal, steal and steal some more! Remember with ante's you can push with a bigger stack than without, If you are in the small blind and its folded to you shove your A2o with 20 blinds!
If you are planning on making a raise from the button or any position, make a plan.
What will you do if player A pushes, what will you do if player B pushes. If the answer comes out as you would fold to anyone....what is the likely-hood that they will shove? If there is not a big chance your raise will get through then just dump it.
Remember no Quick fold still!
Start making your raises smaller, I usually go for 1.5x the big blind, although you give everyone stupidly good odds to call with any two no one is looking to play a pot at this stage in the game. They are looking to steal or re-steal nothing more.
Final Table:
Nice work! Your hands held up you gathered a few chips by stealing and now you are looking at full tilts over the top Final table skin!
I am not going to go in to much detail here as this is a big subject and I will probably save it for another article in the future.
Now we are at the final table our play has to change dramaticly, this is what separates the good from the great players 
Playing as the chip leader:
Steal, Steal and steal some more!!!
Playing as a mid stack:
Tight is right!!!!
Because of the flat jumps in pay for each place you move up you cannot risk your stack as a mid stack. You must play tight and raise as the odd steal, If you bust with a marginal hand like Ajo then you just spew all your equity to the short stacks
Playing as a short stack:
Now playing as a short stack and what I mean by that is you are the CLEAR shortest stack on the table. You must get your chips in, in a decent steal position. Don't worry about busting....why??? because you are flat last anyway! The equity you gain from doubling up is bigger then the equity you have in the sng right now! (In most situations)
That's all I will say on final table play as I already said it is a big subject and a really hard one to master.
Good luck......Lennonac
I don't understand why we shouldn't quickfold when antes kick in? surely if we have an edge we want to play as many hands as possible...
I've only played 2 rush MTTs before so I might be missing something
Very nice read lennonac, and pretty much spot on. You sure are an expert
@goldchess: no quickfold cause you can pretty much double your stack by stealing practically ATC first in. Well, oversimplified, but not that far away from the truth actually
@ goldchess
No quickfold, because you pay ante every hand. Quickfold ten of those without playing one in one minute, you just folded away 10x antes, which can be 20% + of you stack.
Take all your time when antes are around, particularly bigger antes, and hope that others are quickfolding and getting closer to busting.
Ok, so let's say you get dealt 93o in MP3.
Do you wait till the action gets to you, then fold, as aciddrop seems to be suggesting, or do you raise ATC first in, as fulja seems to be suggesting?
The former appears to be very bad, since the only reason we would do this is if we didn't have an edge over the other players. Obviously quickfolding and only playing TT+,AK+ would not work since we would indeed get blinded down, but if we quickfold hands that we will definitely not play to move on to ones that will be +EV, we will increase our equity by playing more +EV situations.
Of course you fold 93o...don't know about others but I don't wait to time out and fold, I still use the quickfold button ♦ But say you have 93o with 4-6 handed play with 10-15 players left....then raising 93o from the sb/bu/co isn't a mistake imo.
Pls lennonac just yell if we're hijacking your blog!
I completely agree with you fulja, we just want to take any spot which is +EV, and if that happens to be raising 93o then that's fine.
However from what I understand, Lennonac + Aciddrop are not quickfolding because they want to stall and wait for others to bust out, and not lose too much of their stack- this doesn't make any sense to me.
'Take all your time when antes are around, particularly bigger antes, and hope that others are quickfolding and getting closer to busting.'
If we have an edge then we can play hands +EV, so why would playing more hands make us closer to busting?
Sorry if we are hijacking 
I think 'what's better, take your time to avoid the antes, or quickfold to get a playable hand?' is a very interesting question, and that the right answer is not at all obvious. One of you chaps should start a thread in the MTT strategy section.
Well, I can find arguments for both sides. And basically think that its more villan dependent. The more better players around maybe then it's better taking our time and taking it slower. On the other hand, if players are fishier than stealing ATC is more profitable. You'll get a resteal every once in a while but still you'll profit way more by stealing a lot more than against regs that can adapt and resteal wider when they manage to figure out how wide you're raising.
All in all, this guide is spot on on how to get to bubble play with a healthy stack. After that it's all about how you adapt to other players till the final table.
my 2 cents ♦
Originally posted by jbpatzer
I think 'what's better, take your time to avoid the antes, or quickfold to get a playable hand?' is a very interesting question
Why would we want to avoid antes? They don't stop us from playing +EV poker. I'm somehow completely missing the other side of the argument 
Originally posted by goldchess
Originally posted by jbpatzer
I think 'what's better, take your time to avoid the antes, or quickfold to get a playable hand?' is a very interesting questionWhy would we want to avoid antes? They don't stop us from playing +EV poker. I'm somehow completely missing the other side of the argument
because if you are playing a TAG strategy (which is optimal in most games) the majority of your hands in the mid stages are unplayable. hence you are folding the majority of the time, if you reduce teh number of hands you play you effectively reduce your folding frequency while your opponents do not. that is the other side of the argument, not saying if its right or wrong because i can see benefits to the quick fold argument
also to slow down you can use sitout next hand and like this you will see the whole action on the table till the end, so instead of quick folding 3-4-5 hands you can see a multiway action with slow ppl, once I had a hand that took 2minutes while I was watching, 2minutes saves alot of blinds:)
Hmm, I kinda see where you guys are coming from, but imo this cannot be a good strategy.
MTTs are about chip accumulation, and playing to win. Sure, you will not lose so many blinds/antes, but you're not giving yourself a chance to win chips either. This strategy seems quite similar to folding your way into the money in regular MTTs, which no good MTT players ever do.
Secondly when the antes come in you HAVE to loosen up a lot. Cards are not super important, its more a game of stealing/restealing in good spots. You shouldn't be playing TAG anymore at this stage of the game.
I would just like to point out that this strategy is a guidline not a full blow step by step
Re: the antes
The "stalling" when the antes kicks in is vital to THIS strategy as we are not even playing TAG we are a NIT
I do understand the merits of continuing to quickfold but if you are playing this tight it is suicide.
If you play a looser more LAG style then I can see the benifits of quick folding as you will play more hands so the antes wont be as much of a problem.
MTTs are about chip accumulation you are right but this strategy is to get you to the bubble with a fairly high success rate. Once there then we are trying to gather chips. As the saying goes....you cant win the mtt on the first hand but you can lose it ♦