Recently, I have been playing on Terminal Poker when I have the time.
For those not familiar with it, it is speed poker, just like Rush Poker was on Full Tilt.
You get dealt cards and as soon as you fold you just move instantly to a new table, new opponents and new cards.
The result is that you can player 4 or 5 times as many hands per hour than on standard tables.
With us you get 30% rake back PLUS a non-deducted deposit bonus that adds another 40% on top.
That’s the plug out of the way………
What I really wanted to put out there, as a theory, is the idea that playing a few sessions on Terminal Poker can actually improve your game.
As an example, I used to take it personally when the same guy on the button would raise my Big Blind time after time and eventually I would make a stand with an extremely marginal hand, only to run into a monster.
That’s poker, of course, but the leak in my game was that I was letting the personal feelings affect my play. (Tilt, in other words.)
With Terminal Poker, that particular situation does not really arise.
There is a different player in that Button seat each time so you are less inclined to think that you are being targeted.
Another thing I noticed myself, and have had pointed out by other players, is that I am less likely to play marginal hands from any position.
A lot of players tell me that the great thing about Terminal is that they don’t get chance to get bored and play a hand just to relieve the monotony
They just keep clicking the ‘fold’ button until they see a hand that they are happy to play.
If a player is ‘happy’ to play every Ace-rag offsuit from under the gun, well that’s another problem entirely but for a normally solid player he will have the luxury of being able to fold his way through the majority of the rubbish until seeing a playable hand.
I remember reading a comment a few years ago by a particularly well known pro, who’s name escapes me, that basically said he likes to play some online Limit Holdem, rather than his usual No Limit, just to inject some discipline into his game if he felt it was needed.
I had a couple of sessions multi-tabling at regular NL recently and found exactly that.
It was as if I had conditioned myself to only play the right starting hands.
In the most part I ended the sessions happy that I had played some good poker, backed up by some mainly solid starting hands.
I am of the opinion that the stints I had on Terminal Poker had a beneficial effect when I reverted to my more usual game type.
That being said, I hope Terminal gets a large player base soon as I love the format and the players there are astonishingly bad.
It’s as if they are playing some sort of Hyper-Turbo Rebuy tournament, rather than regular cash.
I would urge you to give Terminal a try and see if it has the same effect on your game.
Just a couple of hundred hands should do it, which will take about 10 minutes…
