Planet Mark's Blog. Thoughts, News And Strategy For Poker Tournaments Of All Size

Super-Mega-Ultra-Turbo Games… Is Online Poker Going Too Fast?

Back when I was young (hehe) and grinding SNGs at Pokerstars , Turbo meant 5 minute blinds and games that were usually completed in 35 to 45 minutes. Since then things have been speeding up… and up… and up. Today I’d like to ask the question of whether things are getting too damn fast out there?

Many people declare the ultra-turbo games to be skill-less all-in fests, more akin to bingo than poker. While I see where they are coming from there is still a quantifiable edge to be hand in super-turbo SNGs (for example the 300 chip games with 3 minute blinds on Full Tilt). This comes from bubble strategy awareness as well as a sharp knowledge on equity vs the pre-flop ranges you’ll need to assign.  

Semi-skilled fun games such as the hyper-turbo satellites to the Sunday Million on Pokerstars are fine when taken at face value. My problem is really that there are just too many of them, and that they are taking the inexperienced poker players away from the slower more skilled satellites… making them correspondingly tougher.  Another question is where does it stop? Well of course some sites already offer first hand all-in satellites which are a fun lotto based on poker rather than the game as we know it. Multi-table tournaments with 300 starting chips are already attracting huge fields…  

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a complaint – the public gets what the public wants, I’d just like to see the poker sites slow things down a little… remember that they started for the poker and not for some semi-skilled push all-in pokeresque games.  Right, I’m off to relax with some 300 chip ultra turbo PLO SNGs…  

GL at the Tables, Mark

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