WEll I don't even like regular turbos, so that might color my answer somewhat, but you've got to think about what you're giving up versus what you're getting back here in looking to play super turbos.  It's my opinion that even the best players will give up too much ROI with these, they don't get over that much faster to make up for having the match quite a bit more of a crapshoot, at least the turbos don't end up being such a push or fold thing with small edges and such.  I think that the better a player you are the more you should not want to play super turbos, if you really want more action per hour I'd look at multitabling instead, at least the format won't be against you.  The other thing is that you're going to have to play smaller stakes than you normally would to make up for the variance, that will eat into your win rate a lot more than the reduced ROI in fact.

I know a few players who play Highstakes super turbos on european networks, and the biggest winner there (even has sharkscope leaderboard medal) has -2% roi on the super turbos :O)

Wow that's crazy, worse than I thought :) 

What type of rakeback are they getting? I'm sure they are turning a nice profit with that

I wouldn't really suggest anybody play super turbos except very experienced players.The Nash stuff is kind of misleading.  Yes, knowing Nash in even an advanced way is good for these, but the 10-25bb play mostly NOT using Nash in any way is so much more important and probably where a great deal of the small edge in these comes from.I would even go one step further and say if anybody can beat these at 3% ROI or so, they are a player that could absolutely have great success in mid to high stakes turbo speed games on FTP as well, as the 10-30bb play there would be very similar to what you're doing in Super Turbos, and a lot less players have those skills developed than 30-50bb skills.Essentially, this looks like a higher learning curve in the current heads up sng market for what is a very small edge, which brings about a great deal of new issues, some of which would be a higher liklihood of confidence loss both in your own play and in reading results as well as difficulty in seeing true edges.If you must play these and cannot control yourselves otherwise, I would suggest watching Mersenneary's first video dealing with end game, with example matches analyzed in the super turbo structure.  I would doubt there's anything remotely close in value dealing with heads up sng end game play published online.

@Aces15FullYeah, they get a huge rakebackdeal. A guy from another forum had -3% roi, but made 92% rakeback due to bonuses and promotions, so he lost like $3K in a month, but made $18K from promotions+some live seats.

Rush poker and now super turbos... ugh. What is it with the interest in games that have less and less skill involved? As players get better, the edges will be even smaller in these high octane and comparatively low skill formats. If you're preparing for that, don't you want a format that gives a better player more of an edge? In my ideal world, reg. speeds would be by far the most popular. :D I hope HUSNGs will follow the cash game trend of searching for higher complexity and bigger edges. This is a key part of why 6-max is now more popular than full-ring. 6-max is simply much more complex and has more marginal situations.

Well the ultimate is the all in HUSNG tourneys at Pacific where the players are dealt one hand and both put all in, as ridiculous as this seems it seems like there is plenty of action if you want to get in on these :) I agree with RyPac13, if you're a very experienced player against not so experienced guys you could crank out a small ROI but it's not for everyone and playing Nash optimally isn't going to get it done by itself, you're going to need a very good all around game.

Constantly adding new formats is a good idea for poker I imagine.As the skill level in keeps progressing, edges in traditional games will keep decreasing as almost every game has a cap edge within sight (though still very far off, as everybody can see the games are plenty beatable for obsurd amounts still today).So why add low edge games such as Super Turbos?  Well, it's a new skill that requires development, the best players will develop that skill faster, and hopefully by the time those games become unbeatable a new game will unfold.The best bonus is that the fish seem to really enjoy rush poker and super turbos.But there's still a lot of format options left to explore.  As long as they keep casual players interested in the new formats and the games are actually beatable for a comparable hourly to traditional games, I think it'll be a good thing.However, that's not to say we should blindly worship new games.  It took FTP a few months to fix the super turbo format to where it was actually clearly beatable.  And we saw plenty of evidence that regularly losing and winning players alike were happy to play that likely unbeatable structure before, so that's definitely something we need to keep in mind in the future and address very quickly when we see problems arise.

I think RyPac's concerns apply less to heads up though, not to dis full ring and 6 max but HU is a richer game where it's less formalized and there's a lot more potential for better lines.  I don't think this is even that much of a worry for us, I've watched the progression of online poker from the start where you'd see mostly clueless fish even at the higher stakes to where people are playing much better overall, but with heads up we really haven't seen this sort of surge, at least in the last 6 or 7 years that I've been playing HU anyway, sure players have improved but not to anywhere the same magnitude.  IMO anyway, the standard HU thinking is still a long way from getting to the point where we're getting close to optimal, in a lot of ways it's still an unexplored frontier, so for the thinking player the opportunities still should be there for a long time, maybe forever actually, and when I say thinking player I mean players who don't get caught up in standard thinking and are always looking to break free of a lot of the standard lines and on the contrary are looking to exploit them.  So you get to the point where you're still watching a lot of training vids but not to learn someone's style per se but to think about how to exploit it, there's so many things that aren't really being thought about enough and hardly anyone wants to even go there, you ask someone why they do something and they don't know and don't even want to talk about it either, I've tried to stimulate some conversations on other HU forums and pretty much got run out of town for daring to question some tightly held conventions.  That actually pleased me more than a good discussion would, I hope that never changes :)

You can dis full-ring all you want, I don't know why anyone still plays it. :D As for 6-max, I think it's plenty complex too. While you're not in as many marginal situations (except for blind battles), there are additional considerations like ranges by position, relative position, squeeze plays, simultaneously dealing with many player types and having to consider your history/game dynamic with them etc. Having more players adds richness too - up to a point. For example, I've had a hand against a fish and a nit where I knew the nit had me beat but that I could push him out with heavy pressure and still get called by the fish with a worse hand. I'm sure the presence of the fish in the hand convinced him I would never be bluffing and helped me get the fold. I've heard many excellent players claim deep-stacked HU is the most complicated form of poker but I don't think it's that clear cut. Each format has its own richness. Although, I agree that HU play is probably more creative, mostly because you spend more time developing history and understanding your opponent.Anyway, you're probably right that optimal play is far from achieved. However, formats like super-turbos are a botter's wet dream (just like Rush Poker) and there are already profiles developed for them (mostly at micro-stakes). They play NASH perfectly and approximate the rest. The lack of significant history due to the reduced time makes their standard lines much closer to optimal than say in a regular speed game. Super-turbos are much more mathematical in a sense and should be solvable far more easily than turbos or regular speed games. This will matter in the future.

KingCobra,I didn't mean to imply there was a "countdown until games are dead" type thing going on with heads up sngs or anything like that.  I do not believe that there is.My suggestions are more directed at keeping the games maximally profitable and the playerbases larger than preventing them from becoming dry/dead.The more new games with new edges to find and explore are created, the more opportunities there are for truly smart players to adapt and make money, so I think that's a good thing, but like you said, perhaps not necessary.

The super turbos provide a reduced edge, but equal or even greater than hourly for players that are very good at adapting to the structure.The games aren't good for a majority of players, but for those with a strong end game that are willing to put in the work to figure out some lesser known advantages in these games that don't come up nearly as frequently as in regular games, the profit is definitely there.There's also aspects such as the big swings that come with playing these games that will make them a bad idea to play, even for people that know what they are doing.Mersenneary and Mientjeuh are two players that benefit from this structure that come to mind.  I'd suggest watching Mersenneary's super turbo end game video for some insight into some of the things that can make a player take advantage of this new structure.  The difference in how you should play in these in order to maximize your edge is much different from the other husng structures offered by most poker rooms. 

RyPak13 - understood, I think though that we have an opportunity to stay ahead of the pack or even increase our edges if we can get our games to continue to evolve, this is going to take a committment to it though and if all we're doing is grinding out the matches then players like this may find their edges reduced, unless you're playing low stakes and are beating up on all the newer HU players.  Of course if you manage to master a new format ahead of the curve you're going to have an advantage that may be worth going after, ideally this would be in a format that rewards skill to enough of a degree, formats where the results come down to a flip a lot counterbalance this but sure why not I guess if it's working ;)  I never liked even regular turbos though so I'm not going to be a big fan of this stuff personally but it's all about chasing the money and if this road gives you a better return per hour why the hell not ;)  

Yea, a big thing is that the edge in Super Turbos is kind of hidden to all but the top players (at least imo).A lot of winning regulars just write them off as "luckbox games" when in fact people are winning at 2-4% ROI, dealing with a lot of variance, but getting in a sick amount of games per hour, with tons of rakeback and making hundreds of bucks an hour in a format that has tons of action and honestly a lot of "standard" decisions, as the games are short, reads are small and stack sizes go from 10-25b, rather than 10-50 or 10-75, so there is less variation I think.I'm not saying it's the perfect "addition" for good regs, but it's certainly one enough dont' take advantage of right now.  It'll change soon enough I'm sure, and the games will dry up somewhat (super turbos that is), but hopefully by then there's another new format that a majority of players just write off to being unbeatable or don't realize where the edge really is.

I get what you're saying, I feel confident in my end game but I guess I just don't like the variance, if you could pump out a higher earn rate though it's worth checking out I guess, if I had rakeback then it would make more sense, old time players like myself missed out on most of that though, I opened an account at FTP when they opened the doors and rakeback wasn't around for instance, they are hurting themselves by not being more flexible here by the way, yeah maybe you can tell I'm a little pissed off at this and felt the need for a little tirade :)