So far this series she has cashed in Event #35 ($10k NLHE Heads-up), where she was eliminated by Vanessa Russo in the 4th round, and Event #56 ($2500 NLHE) where she finished 56th. Her biggest live score came earlier this year where she finished 71st at EPT Monte Carlo, just a few days after winning the ladies event.

Her online accolades include a 2nd in the Double Deuce on Full Tilt in May, along with a 2nd in the PS $215 Weekly Turbo 70k Guarantee tournament.

After the series is over with she plans to do more traveling to play more live events, along with continue her play on Full Tilt so that she can get the full benefit of her new status.

Congrats to Melanie on her new deal, and best of luck to her in her future endeavors.

MicroMania at PokerStars

PokerStars is targeting the small buy-in players, who will benefit the most from the “MicroMania” promotion. All month there are improved VIP benefits and added-value tournaments for players at PokerStars. Here are some of the features of the promotion

Better VIP rewards: Players at PokerStars’ low-limit cash tables can receive better rates for VIP Player Points. For no-limit and pot-limit tables up to and including $0.05/$0.10, and fixed-limit games up to and including $0.10/$0.20, players will receive VPPs at a higher rate — 10 VPPs for every dollar raked, up from 5.5 or 6 VPPs normally. The promotion lasts for the entire month.

Value-added tourneys:There will be four $1.10 tourneys every day that will have $1,000 added to the prize pool — at 10:20, 13:20, 19:20 and 22:20 Eastern. The tourneys can be found on the “special” tab in the tournament lobby.

Special sit & go’s: Everyone who wins a $1.10 “super sit & go” will win a share of a $100,000 prize pool that will be divided among all the winners. The tournaments consist of 50 players. You only need to win one to qualify for a share of the $100K, and you can only win one share.

Deposit bonus: The promotion also benefits people who deposit for the first time, with a 100% deposit bonus up to $600 when using the code “Mania.” Players using this code also get a free $1.10 ticket to play in a multi-table tournament.

Rush Week at Full Tilt Poker

If you haven’t tried Rush Poker yet, or even if you have, Full Tilt is giving you more incentives to try the new form of poker later this month.

Just by playing Rush Poker from July 12-July 18, you can earn $250 in cash and entry into a $50K freeroll.

Bonus time:By playing Rush Poker ring games, Full Tilt players will have an opportunity to earn up to $250. Here’s how the payouts will be made, based on the number of Full Tilt points earned playing Rush Poker. (Awards are not cumulative).

Earn at least 10 Full Tilt Points per day on any four days to receive $5
Earn at least 10 Full Tilt Points per day on all seven days to receive $10
Earn at least 100 Full Tilt Points per day on any four days to receive $25
Earn at least 100 Full Tilt Points per day on all seven days to receive $50
Earn at least 1,000 Full Tilt Points per day on any four days to receive $125
Earn at least 1,000 Full Tilt Points per day on all seven days to receive $250

The freeroll: Anyone who reaches a final table of a Rush Poker Tournament during the week will automatically be entered in the a $50K freeroll on Sunday, July 25th at 3:15 p.m. Eastern. Many of the regular guaranteed tournaments throughout the week will be changed to a Rush Poker format. See the lobby or Full Tilt’s website for details.

Want to try out Full Tilt Poker? Make sure to sign up with rakeback.

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Patrik Antonius is officially on a heater. Once the biggest loser on Full Tilt Poker at its high-stakes tables for 2010, Antonius led the weekly leaderboard last week. Read more here. After being down about $3 million for the year, Antonius has clawed his way back to $400K in the negative in 2010.

One more day left in FTOPS XVI, including today’s main event for a prize of $3 million guaranteed. Here’s what happened yesterday, including chip counts after the first day of the two-day event. The leader was Aditya “Intervention” Agarwal, who just came off a night where he final tabled two FTOPS events.

One tournament series ends, another begins. The Spring Championship of Online Poker is back at PokerStars for its second year. Play started Sunday, and continues for two weeks, with $45 million in guaranteed prizes. Get more details here, including a full schedule of tournaments.

Poker players make lots of random tweets during the week. Here’s the best of them, and our favorite: “@LaceyJones: Mooned a full intersection filling my car w gas. Windy day + summer dress. Will I ever learn?! ”

A date on the minds of many poker players is June 1. That’s when the rules for the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act are supposed to go into effect in the United States. It’s still unclear just how much of an effect this will have on the online poker. Anyway, story here on some sentiments on the Web, as we’re a month away from the date.

In a bit more positive news for poker, Annie Duke will be appearing on national TV to teach people poker. She’ll do a segment with George hardtospellname Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America” on ABC. In it, she’ll be teaching the co-anchor of the show how to play poker. Obviously something you can cover well in a few minutes on a morning show.

The European Poker Tour just named its player of the year. It was Russian player Max Lykov, who rode his win in the first EPT event of the season, Kyiv, to the overall title. The best robbery in which the robbers were eventually caught went to EPT Berlin.

Interview with Jason Mercier below, after he busted out of an EPT event. Hard to feel real bad for him, since he wins just about every tournament on the planet:

There’s a new promotion over at Party Poker that could win you up to a million dollars. Get more info on the promotion here.

With CardRunners, you learn from the best poker players online. With PTP, you can get CardRunners for free. Find out how.

Annette “Annette_15″ Oberstad is the newest red pro for Full Tilt Poker. Check out a story about her signing here.

We can’t believe we’ve been writing about the “durrrr Challenge” for four days straight. The match between Tom Dwan and Patrik Antonius, which ends after 50,000 hands, is now up to more than 38,000 hands after the latest session. Lots of big pots played, but in the end Dwan ended up about $40K, and Antonius still trails by more than $1.5 million. There’s some video of the session below:

Three more events are over in Full Tilt’s FTOPS XVI tournament series. You can read about the latest happenings here. Notable from last night? Aditya “Intervention” Agarwal made two final tables, finishing third and sixth. And a PTP member took down event No. 24, a $322 razz tourney. Read a thread at PTP’s forums here.

Season six of the European Poker Tour is officially in the books after the close of the Grand Final’s 25K Euro high-roller event, and it was won by someone named Tobias Reinkemeier for almost a million Euros. You can read about his triumph here; Sorel “Imper1um” went out in eighth place. EPT Grand Final recap below:

And here’s an interview with Reinkemeier, the winner:

From earlier in that tournament, Tony G, who has some sort of relationship with mysterious Swedish player Isildur1, was at the same table as the player generally thought to be Isildur1 — Viktor Blom. Tony, who thought he had lured Isildur1 to make his first live appearance earlier this year before he backed about, blogged about playing with Blom here. Some of what he said: “I have my own observations and thoughts on poker players, especially after spending table time with them, and I have to be honest here. Viktor has talent but he is really raw. He’s not a favorite in MTT events. He has a long way to go to even be near the top and have a fighting chance in MTTs.”

More news out on the ‘07 Absolute Poker superuser scandal from Haley Hintze, a former reporter/writer for pokernews.com who covered the scandals. Here’s our original story, and here’s her latest update at her blog. The new information she has up alleges that the number of accounts that could be linked to the cheating at AP could be upwards of 100, instead of the smaller number of around 10 or so. She doesn’t say there were 100 superusers or cheating accounts, just that more accounts could have been involved than was previously thought.

Did you know you can earn free CardRunners memberships by playing on Full Tilt? Get CardRunners free of charge from PTP.

A sensation when she burst on the online poker scene, she was once a rarity — a female teenage player. She won the World Series of Poker Europe’s main event in 2007 and won over $2 million.

Oberstad is now 21 years old and will be playing in her first World Series of Poker in Las Vegas this year. Oberstad has more than $3 million in live earnings and $2.2 million in online winnings in her career. Even at her young age, the Norwegian is considered one of the top dual-threat (live and online) multi-table tournament players in the game. Oberstad has also made one big live final table this year, at the Aussie Millions Main Event. And she finished ninth out of 64 players in the 2010 Heads-Up Poker Championship.

Oberstad hinted at a “big announcement” on Twitter, then posted this after the announcement that she was joining Full Tilt was made: “So, as I’m sure some of u have seen already, My name is Finally in red on ftp! Sooo excited to be part of my favorite online site ”.

It’s the second recent defection from online site Betfair.com in recent days. Both Oberstad and Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi were signed on with Betfair, but Mizzi announced that he was joining Titan Poker earlier in the week.

Oberstad, who got her start playing freerolls, is famous for an online tourney she won in which she looked at her hole cards only once. She kept a post-it note over her cards for the rest of the tournament, and won.

Full Tilt wasted no time in putting their newest pro to good use — she’ll be hosting the main event of FTOPS XVI on Sunday, a $640 buy-in hold’em event with $3 million in guaranteed prize money. That tournament starts at 6 p.m. Eastern.

Want to play in FTOPS with Annette? Sign up for an account at Full Tilt and get rakeback today.

Files for loading the HUD into Hold’em Manager (along with the files for the custom pop-ups) are linked at the end of the article.

Tip: Get software like HEM free with PTP Rake Rewards.

Jump to the download links.

To be honest, you could probably use your standard NLHE HUD and get along just fine in Rush Poker, but there are enough small differences between Rush and standard NL that it’s probably worth tweaking your HUD just a bit. This article focuses on a HUD for 6-max NL, but the core concepts extend to full ring as well.

Why Have a Custom HUD for Rush Poker?

I think there’s one main reason: Unlike standard NLHE, you don’t really develop a history with your opponents, and most of the history you do develop is focused on preflop and flop confrontations. Because Rush tends to play shallower and a bit nittier in general, turn and river play tends to be a good deal more straightforward, and people are a bit more likely to be making plays preflop and on the flop than on later streets (which is true for standard poker as well, just even more so for Rush).

How Should a Rush Poker HUD Differ?

The answer’s pretty loudly suggested by the two reasons above. Namely, a Rush Poker HUD should focus more on preflop and flop play, and worry less (in fact, very little indeed) about turn and river play.

There’s only so much space on your screen for stats, and something’s got to give. I argue that you just don’t get into too many sticky spots on the turn and river in Rush Poker and that, even if you did, it would be really difficult to acquire a large enough sample size to feel confident about making a decision based on those stats.

The HUD in this article is also designed with the belief that Rush requires a more streamlined HUD than a standard NL game. With new opponents appearing every hand (and with the HUD sometimes taking a second or two to update), you just don’t have the time to re-scan a ton of stats each time a new name appears. The same concept applies to pop-ups – in a standard game, your HUD use is more efficient because you can familiarize yourself with the details of your opponent’s history during game down-time or over the course of multiple confrontations. In Rush, you need the big picture, and you need it right away.

There are also custom pop-ups for this HUD; they’re noted in the description and the files are provided at the end of the article. A pop-up is a window that appears with additional information when you hover over a specific stat on your HUD.

Specifications for a Rush Poker HUD

Here’s what the HUD looks like in action:

A note about color-coding: The colors run red, yellow and green depending on how likely aggression (on your part) is likely to win you the pot. Green’s best, red’s worse and yellow’s … not bad. You should adjust the color ranges based on your experiences, and regard the defaults provided as starting points only.

As always, this HUD is a work in progress (as all HUDS should be). Feel free to leave comments and criticisms in the comments.

The First Line:

• Name: Easy enough.
• Number of hands: Hard to tell if a stat’s valid without a sample size. Some stats converge pretty quickly (50 hands is a reasonable starting point for basic VPIP and PFR stats); others can take much longer. I color code so that the number shows purple if the sample, just as a quick reference to know if looking at the rest of the HUD is even useful.
• VPIP (Voluntarily put money in the pot): Still a great measure of a player’s overall looseness and, when compared to the PFR stat, passivity.

Pretty standard first line. This line uses the standard HEM pop-ups for these stats.

The Second Line:

• Preflop Raise: The first critical stat for determining whether you should call, fold or raise when faced with a preflop raise. The numbers in the parenthetical are PFR from under the gun and PFR from the button, respectively. That way you get a quick, efficient snapshot of whether a player is aggressive from all seats or weights their aggression more heavily toward the later seats (the latter also providing a clue that the player is likely to at least be a competent player who is aware of position). It’s good to know that a player raising under the gun raises 25% of the time preflop; it’s better to know that they only raise UTG about 7% and have skewed their average by making the majority of their raises in the later seats.
• Fold to Three Bet: Some people are more likely to abandon a pre-flop raise in Rush than in standard poker. Unfortunately, not all are. This stat gives you awesome insight into whether you should consider playing aggressively preflop versus a habitual preflop raiser or perhaps be more selective in your attempts. For example, let’s say you’ve got an opponent who’s raising UTG about 20% of the time. You’re in the BB and they raise again. You want to three-bet, and can make a case for doing so profitably, but your life will be much easier if you attempt the bet against an opponent with a F3 of 70 or so, as opposed to opponents who are defending their raises more than half the time (those opponents you can abuse when you’re in position and can maneuver better post-flop).
  .
  Boost your read by using the four-bet stat on the next line in conjunction with this stat.

This line uses the standard pre-flop pop-ups that come with HEM.

The Third Line

• Three Bet: The amount of times they three bet. Again, the parenthetical breaks things down quickly by position. Why three numbers? It’s probably a matter of preference, but I believe that people allow themselves to be far more habitual about where they three bet from than they are with some other common actions. I also think the three bet stat out of context is a pretty dangerous thing when you’re considering playing back light (as you’re going to have to do from time to time if you’re active in late position, or, in some games, even if you’re aren’t). Most people, for example, feel a lot more comfortable three betting from the big blind than the small blind because they get to close the action; some people hate three-betting out of position, and so on.
  .

  Having this stat handy can let you know not only whether you should be opening light preflop. A sea of green to your left means fire away; lots of red means tighten up. This stat also works well in conjunction with the steal stats on the next link.

• Four Bet: This one’s not color coded only because it can be tough to get a good sample size, but even at a small sample size it can aid the predictive power of the Fold to Three Bet stat (it’s a good tiebreaker for players who you’re on the fence about re-raising light). At a larger sample size, it obviously gives you great insight into who you should play for stacks preflop with hands like nines and AQ and who you should focus on playing smaller pots preflop with.

This line uses a custom pop-up that details only three bet-related stats called RUSHThreeBet.

The Fourth Line

• Fold to Steal: FTS is when players fold to an opening raise coming from the CO, Button or SB. This stat is a little redundant in the face of the Three Bet and VPIP stats above, but since 6-max in general (and Rush 6-max specifically) has you challenging the blinds from these seats, it’s a nice number to have in order to get a fuller perspective on the merits of a late position steal attempt. It’s also a nice number to have when you want to quickly ID folks who are apt to select the ‘Quick Fold’ button, as they often have very high FTS numbers.
• Steal: How often your opponent attempts to steal. The numbers in the parenthetical are they amount they attempt to steal from the button and the SB, respectively. Again, these stats may seem redundant in the face of the PFR stats, but they provide a much clearer picture of whether or not playing back light is going to be a winning proposition or a steady leak. They also allow you to quickly ID people who are looking to take advantage of other player’s propensities to use the ‘Quick Fold’ button in the blinds.
• Squeeze: A squeeze just always looks bluffy. This stat is to help you resist the temptation to play back at a squeezer based on nothing more than the fact that they’re squeezing. Rush opponents tend to meld into a single opponent after a bit, and it can seem like everyone’s squeezing every time you flat. The reality is that they aren’t (check your overall opponent stats), but it’s frustrating when you can’t tell who’s who.
  .

  This stat also allows you to gauge when calling with a hand you feel comfortable shoving with preflop against a loose opponent is a better strategy than re-raising. Let’s say you have tens on the CO and UTG+1 raises 3x. You have two players behind you with high squeeze numbers. If you flat and they squeeze, there will be 6BBs plus their raise, which will probably be 13-16BBs. You can safely play for stacks (assuming the original raiser folds) against the squeezer, because the amount of times you’ll win the pot uncontested plus the times you’ll win when they do call outweigh (in most conditions) the times you’ll lose.

  Because of the above, the color-coding for squeezing goes against the color-coding for other three bets. Lower numbers get reds to alert you that the squeeze you’re considering playing back at probably isn’t as bluffy as you think.

This line uses the standard HEM pop-up for the Steal stats and a custom one (RUSHsqueeze) for Squeeze stats.

The Fifth Line
They can’t all be preflop, right?

• Flop Continuation Bet: It’s a post-flop stat but it also helps you make better decisions preflop. If you have an opponent, for example, with a high preflop raise and a low fold to three bet along with a low flop continuation bet, you can consider flatting and taking the pot on the flop as opposed to three-betting. Primarily, however, the stat gives you an idea of how strong an opponent’s range is when they’re continuing after raising preflop, helping you call, raise and fold more appropriately based on the tendencies of individual opponents
• Fold Continuation Bet to Raise: A stat that offers support for the FCB stat above. If you can find an opponent wit high numbers for both, add them to your buddy list pronto.
• Fold to Continuation Bet: You can get a general idea of an opponent’s passivity from other stats, but when you have a decent sample size (this one converges pretty quickly as far as post-flop stats go) this stat is a very accurate barometer of weakness. Again, if you can find an opponent with a high VPIP, a low three-bet and a high FCB, add them to your buddy list.

This lines uses two custom pop-ups: RUSHcbetasPFR for Flop CB and Fold CB to Raise, and RUSHcbetvsPFR for Fold to CB.

Download Rush Poker HUD Files

Hopefully you’ll find this HUD useful for Rush. It’s a pretty standard HUD in a lot of ways, but I think the tweaks and adjustments make it uniquely streamlined and useful for Rush. Feel free to leave any comments or suggestions in the comments below.

Rush Poker HUD ZIP (includes all pop-ups and .xml config file for HUD).

Rush Poker HUD config file only.

To install, simply paste the files into the config file of Holdem Manager (typically located at Program Files >> RVG Software >> Holdem Manager >> Config).

Don’t Forget: Software and other tools like this are available free via PTP Rake Rewards.

Rush Poker has certainly been one of the more interesting and talked-about innovations in the online poker sector over the last year. The format, which essentially takes a pool of players and moves them into new tables each hand, allowing for a much quicker game-speed, proved to be a hit for Full Tilt Poker.

For a more detailed explanation on how Rush Poker works, check out this article.

Now, Rush Poker is available for tournaments as well. The beta release of Rush Poker MTTs seems to have been a bit rocky for Full Tilt, so expect the roll out to be a gradual one, but the core is present and it shouldn’t be too long before RP MTTs are available at a variety of limits.

Some details, for those interested:

How do you find Rush Poker tournaments?

They’re listed in the MTT lobby with a black R symbol next to the tournament name. In the Standard view, you can either use the main filter (show below) to access Rush tournaments…

… or you can use the Advanced Filter, which now has a radio button for Rush Poker MTTs:

How do Rush Poker tournaments work?

At the heart of it, Rush Poker tournaments are the same as regular tournaments – whoever gets all of the chips wins the tournament. That said, the Rush poker format clearly requires some alterations. We may see these evolve over time, but here are the key differences at this point:

- There is no hand-for-hand play in Rush MTTs. Typically in a tournament there will be a “hand-for-hand” period near the bubble or big money jumps. This means all tables play one hand before any table moves on to another hand, and it stops people from stalling in an attempt to move up the ranks. Rush will lack this feature, but Full Tilt says they’ve got other mechanisms in place to prevent stalling.

- Tables will play down further before being combined. FTP says that when a tournament gets down to 30 players, tables will continue to run without combination until a final table is reached.

There are also some key differences between Rush MTTs and Rush Poker:

- When a Rush MTT reaches the final table, it reverts to a typical tournament, as there’s only one table left. This table can also, unlike other Rush tables, be observed by other players.

- The way that the blinds are posted is different. Rush Poker tournaments will consider both the number of hands and the amount of time passed since the last time you posted the blind. Whoever has the biggest number gets the blind. Additionally the small blind is also tracked now, as opposed to just the big blind.

Rush Poker is only available at Full Tilt Poker. If you’re thinking about signing up at Full Tilt, make sure you read this first.

In that way, knockout tournaments are basically the same as bounty tournaments. The one key difference is that the funds for the prize in a bounty tournament are often provided by the room, while the funds for knockout prizes are provided by the players.

Here’s an example. Let’s say you sign up for a $75 knockout tournament in Full Tilt Poker. $70 goes to the prize pool, and $5 goes to the knockout pool. So, if a hundred players sign up, the total prize pool will be $7000 and the knockout pool will be $500, meaning you’ll get a $5 bonus for each player you knock out.

Knockout tournaments were first introduced online by Full Tilt Poker. PokerStars also offers knockout tournaments, and other rooms are sure to introduce them in the near future.

Play KO’s on Full Tilt and get free CardRunners. Click for info.

According to a Financial Times article, a Manhattan federal grand jury is probing Full Tilt Poker to determine whether the world’s second largest online poker site violated money-laundering laws in the United States and whether to hand out indictments to several high profile poker players, including Chris Ferguson and Howard Lederer. Read our story here.

In a bit of more positive news for online poker, the Poker Players Alliance continues to work to get the game excluded from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which is scheduled to take effect on June 1. Read more here.

Looking for a wrap of the Sunday majors? Here ya go. A member of parttimepoker.com — echaos — took fifth in the PokerStars Sunday million for $78,000.

And if you’re looking for a wrap of the action on the latest episode of High Stakes Poker, here’s that. Talks about a sick bluff by Phil Ivey.

Interview with World Poker Tour champion Olivier ‘livb112’ Busquet, with some strategy if you want to start playing heads-up games:

Blog post from Phil Hellmuth, who talks about the bad beat that put him in the fetal position at the WPT’s final table of the Bay 101 Shooting Star. He apparently thinks he behaved pretty well. We beg to differ. And Doyle Brunson’s blog here, where he doesn’t say much of interest, unless you love every detail of his personal life. He is returning to live poker at the WPT’s World Team Poker event in May, though, after some time off.

Learn from the best – for free. With PTP’s Truly Free Poker Training, you can earn Cardrunners memberships just by playing on Full Tilt. Learn more about earning free Cardrunners memberships here.

In the wake of PokerStars’ announcement of “The Big Game,” a high-stake cash game that will air on Fox, Full Tilt announced its plans for a show that is much like “Poker After Dark,” which airs early in the morning on weekdays on NBC. Right now, the show is not going to be aired in the United States, and will be shown on Channel 4 in Great Britain.

The format of the show is almost identical to PAD. Every player buys in for $20,000 to a six-player “sit and go” tournament, with the winner taking all the buy-ins, for a $120,000 payday. The big differences:
–There will be an online qualifier in each episode, sitting with five pros.
–It appears that the pros will be exclusively Full Tilt players. Full Tilt’s Web site confirms that both Phil Ivey and Gus Hansen will be involved.

The show is being filmed in London, and is set to air starting in June. Ten episodes of the show are planned, as of now. Here’s the schedule, which is Mondays at midnight, GMT:

Episode, Air Date
1, June 21st
2, June 28th
3, July 5th
4, July 12th
5, July 19th
6, July 26th
7, August 2nd
8, August 9th
9, August 16th
10, August 23rd

Players can try to qualify starting on April 4th, with eight $22,000 prize packages up for grabs. Players can try to qualify for as little as $10 through a series of satellites, or they can buy in directly to a qualifier for $640. Check out Full Tilt’s lobby and click “Touranments” and “Live events.”

This is the latest foray into television for FTP, which currently sponsors “Poker After Dark and “Face the Ace” on NBC, and World Poker Tour events on Fox Sports Net.

We’ll have more details on “The Poker Lounge” as they become available.

Want to qualify for “The Poker Lounge?” Sign up for a Full Tilt account, and get rakeback at the same time.