blonde poker forum

"Sexton told us mere mortals that the WPT felt very strongly that the introduction of this new facet of play could improve the live tournament experience, but understanding that ‘it’s the players money’ felt it was important to pose the question to the men and women who are at the heart of this magnificent game.

A survey was therefore produced and handed out to players who participated in the recent LAPC, and 80% of them voted in favor of having some sort of short clock at future events."


http://calvinayre.com/2014/03/06/poker/are-the-wpt-about-to-change-the-face-of-live-tournament-poker/


Canvassing blonde opinion

In favour? For all of an event, or before the money? Or when?

Downsides?

I don't play live much these days but i'm in favour.

Depends how long you get. I would be happy with 60 seconds but say having three occasions per tournament where you could play a card or token or whatever that got you an extra minute. I need to tank every now and then!

I sometimes take a long time over big decisions, but nothing silly. The problem I have is when people have a routine like Michael tureniec does and spends 20 seconds to make a fold. When action is on him he goes through the same motion of looking at his cards, placing them in front of him, pausing and then throwing them in the muck. It's worse when he opens because he takes the chips out reallllly slowly, holds them out in his hand at maximum reach and freezes for what feels like a whole few seconds.

The problem isn't people taking a long time over a big decision, it's people taking too long over every decision and you can't really do much about that unless you play the speed poker thingy where you get 15 seconds every decision or something crazy. Wait, isn't that just online poker? :)

This....its usually the same culprits being slow over and over again, pretty sure most of the time they have nothing to think about, but for whatever reason like to pretend they have a significant decision to make every other hand.

yes so as my above comment. give a set time for every decision but allow people so many time outs per tournamenet for the big decisions.

It wouldn't really work though. About 90% of the time I make my decision in under a second or so, it probably takes me a further second to make a fold or around 3 seconds to make a raise. I'd say I play fairly fast but not Mat Frankland fast. Out of the other decisions I probably take 20-60 seconds to make my decision, so what do you think you could impose from this?

30 seconds max per decision doesn't stop the dwellers who use this time up for every extremely simple decision. I played a live satty at DTD 2 weeks ago (my first ever live satty) and I was around 20/23 with 21 seats so H4H had not begun. I felt really guilty timing down every fold (but I had to, it was the difference between £1100 or not) but I told the table I was just going to wait 30 seconds and fold every hand. It felt so painful, like it was eating away at me from the inside.

Thinking about it, something should be done about live satellites in this way, the dealer told us that there was nothing stopping us from taking as long as we wanted and it was in everyone's interest at the table to not call the floor over.

You get 3x10 second timebank which can be used. Fr the duration of the tournament you get an extra 10 second every break.

Would be perfect.

But for every tourny? Fair enough do it for specific "speed" events and make it a novelty, but this seems pretty short. It can take me more than 10 seconds to work out if I'm going to raise, then how much, and do it. For the most part, I'm pretty quick, I've never been called out for being too slow and as soon as I know I'm going to have to think about something I apologize to the table. I agree with Lucky Scrote though that the issue is that there are people who use up more time than is reasonable to check their cards and make their decision, which can get pretty aggravating. It is almost always people who would consider themselves good players who are responsible for this. Perhaps you'd be better off explaining to them in a language they would understand (talking about fish, whales, hourly rates, cold 5bet bluffing, how soft the field is etc) that they are screwing up the game for everyone, pissing off the regs because they're eating up time unnecessarily hence cutting into their hourly, and pissing off the recs because you're taking up their leisure time.

Tom Dwan has actually been called out for it before on tv, but I don't mind what he does so much, because often when he starts thinking he starts shovelling chips into the pot. His trivial decisions take very little time.

I also want to point out that this might be difficult to police. The responsibility would fall to the dealer to count 10 seconds for every player, which I don't think is very fair on standard dealers. They've already got a fair bit to be concentrating on, and I'm sure it would be pretty tough to make sure you've timed every single players decision, and I'm equally sure that it would cause no end of arguments at the table from players who find they've just run over the time without knowing it, or players that try and angle others by wasting their time, or telling the dealer that they've timed it wrong and the other guys hand should be mucked. Imo, this would not be practical.

This thread is making me want to call the clock on someone already and I haven't played live in months.

In truth it is very hard to have practical solution to this, as Luckyscrote says the true time wasting in live poker happens in accumulative way not big chunks. More proactive dealers and players bound within a framework of new rules that excessive time wasting is punishable offence, but that still is hard to police and will no doubt lead to some horrible rulings either way.

Terrible idea. Punish the wrongdoers, rather than the majority.

No rexas you have 30 seconds then the additional 10 seconds.!v rarely should it take you more than 30 seconds and you accumulate 10 seconds tokens every couple of hours.

I apologize, misread your post :)

Think the solution to this is:

a) Incorporate "timely action" in the good practice/ethical play section of the rules with the option of a penalty.

b) Get the TD to warn players like this that they are in breach of a) and will have to speed up their routine or they will be penalised.  (It works in golf.)

The problem with an actual shot clock is that people who normally act quickly might start using the whole shot clock.

What scrote said, it's the incessant pointless time wasting from the people that know better that needs to be focused on.

It will just punish and disadvantage those less experienced recreational players whatever you want to call them. if you've played millions of hands online then your decisions in a lol live fest really aren't going to be that mentally challenging yet if you're new to the game suddenly having to act quickly every time it's on you is just going to put you off and lead to you making mistakes and not enjoying yourself.

I like my dealers to deal and my shot clock to stay in the NBA. Its just impossible to police. Gimmicky and trying to fix a problem that isn't really there imo.

This.

As an aside, why is it, that when 'clock' is called we have to wait for the TD to arrive and then give the player another minute?
Why not give the dealer a timer for this, and make it another 30 seconds? Players under the clock will often take the full minute out of spite which just exacerbates the whole thing.

As Lucky Scrote said this is not a solution to the actual problem. There are genuine times when you need to think and shouldn't be pressured, especially for players new to the game. It's the players that Hollywood over every preflop decision that ought to be subject to some sort of sanction

Getting rid of the stigma of calling the clock would also help. A villain at the recent UKPC tanked a full, unexaggerated 8 minutes over a raise I made on the turn. I've never called the clock on someone as I was taught it was bad etiquette but I think this is wrong.

The bad etiquette in this situation was the mouthbreather wasting 8 minutes of the whole tables' life and going through the full amateur dramatics. I was negligent in not calling the clock after maybe 3 minutes and in future I will do.

It's rare IMHO that a decision cannot be made within 30 seconds so if we could get rid of the stigma of calling the clock and reducing the time allotted to 30 seconds I think this would have a dramatic effect.

I'm all for a shot clock with a couple of timebank tokens. This is the main reason why I don't enjoy playing live poker.

I must admit my one experience playing with live shot clock was a positive one. It was used (still probs is) in the cash games in Adelaide and if anything players deliberately didn't dwell close to the time limit, as they were worried their hand would be declared dead without warning (which was always given by the dealer counting down from 5).

I suppose you always get some clever dick, being all anti authoritarian who will deliberately do it but that is probably easy to spot with a shot clock than without one.

Not the way forward IMO.  As has been said the main drain on any clock are the players taking too long over simple pre flop folds.  Yes there are the odd occasion when a player put in a spot takes too long, I agree that MOST of the time you know what your going to do within 30 seconds or so, calling the clock in these instances is solution for this if the need is felt.  A shot clock however will not replace the time lost by the player who takes 5 seconds, to look at his cards, 3 seconds to put them down, 5 seconds to pick them back up and look again, before eventually folding a good 20 seconds after they could of. I experienced this the other night again and it is very frustrating.  Something should be done about this if anything, but a shot clock is not the answer.

Great idea, think this could be the way to go. The only draw back is the quality of the dealer, I've come across both dealers that are 1) Think they are the Gestapo or 2) Very badly trained and have no confidence or table presence. A bit of focus by the card room on making sure the dealers are trained to the highest standard and also have some confidence without being confrontational would go a long way to policing the table, backed up by the TD of course.

* Not all dealers fall into these two categories, some are fantastic. Anyone who frequents the G in Luton will have seen all 3!

Was playing cash last weekend, and an old bloke at the table took ages on every hand, had to be told it was on him, how much the bet was, etc.  Then he would moan and berate other players when they had a decision they needed to think about.

I tend to play pretty quickly, no amateur dramatics or unecessary dwellage.  However, I played one hand (old bloke wasn't involved) and had the nuts on the turn and the worst card fell on the river meaning I now was probably chopping or even worse had gone behind.  A decent player made a big bet on the river and I had a decision that would cost me a few hundred quid more to call (with already a lot more in the middle). So I was replaying the hand in my head to work out if he could have the one hand that did indeed beat me. 

The old bloke calls the clock on me.  Yes, the player who was slowing the game up every hand decided he wanted to speed things up at that point.  The dealer, who knows I don't piss about generally called the floor over and agreed that I'd had a 'reasonable' amount of time to make my decision and so the clock was enforced. 

I agree with what others have said, the problem is with those who slow up the play every hand - not those that need a bit of time for a big decision.  In cash, I'm not sure someone who isn't in the hand should be able to call the clock unless it's a ridiculous amount of time gone - and even then they probably should still remain schtum.

You've never seen the double smoke timebank? Guy waits a minute, wanders off to smoke, comes back and just says fuck it and goes out again <3

The problem is people copy what they see on the telly. Generally people on the telly can be attention whores or want to look like super complex thinkers. It requires a real behaviour change so it's important that all the cool poker players act quickly to drive the trend forwards. Obv I play super quickly to do my bit ;)

Bang out of order to have the clock called on you in a cash game IMHO, and personally do not think it should be allowed in cash.

Personally I think that players need to stop thinking they are on T.V and just get on with it, no one ever believes you have a hand if you are constantly dwelling up for time.

Also hate the fact players need to time bank 30 seconds to ponder their pre flop action, wtf

Yeah I don't really think it would help much tbh... it's the people that take 20-30 seconds over every decision that are the culprits... and they'll still get their 20-30 seconds, they'll just use it every time. I have no issue with anyone taking a minute or so to make a decision that is tough... even if it's only tough to them and to others it may seem trivial  -  it's their money.  Those that posture and use up time every hand to put on their own little show at the constant expense of others time are the ones who need to be targeted, no idea how though (it's fairly rare in my experiance)

Hate the idea, only people who call for this stuff is miserable pros IMO. Most people in live poker are kinda slow, that just the way it is, but then they've paid there buyin/reg fee like everyone else so gotta let em play as they want to. I actually think the problem is hugely exaggerated tbh.

This is true though;


Dwan on high stakes poker is where is started, taking forever over lots of decisions, to be fair to him though he came out and said "look I've never really played live poker much before and I jumped straight into $400/$800/$200 with some sharky old school live guys and $500k stacks, I had to take my time" which is kind of fair enough but it's still paved the way for some very bad habits.

Like beanie says, it's ppl who should know better who need telling!

it's all relative with dwan though, the nits are berating him saying omg these online kids, whilst the nits play 1 pot every 3 orbits beting 8k and the kids plays 8 pots an orbit betting on average 50k a hand.


the amount of time you have/get should be relative to the amount of monies you are putting into the pot.

Bottom line is, it ain't gonna work. There are just way too many variables to try and make it fair for everyone.

It shouldn't happen.

99% of people who complain are online players, leave live players to enjoy it and stick to playing online if it bothers you that much.

i agree totally with no clocks at all in cash poker. 9/10 its the guys who no one knows, or are there for a one off who calls it. having played in dtd/ gala games with mates/ regs who play alot, there seems to be a mutual respect/ unwritten rule that they wont call the clock on each other, does that make sense?
dont see how a shot clock could be enforced realistically, unlike snooker where there is only one game at a time, poker can have 300 people over 20 tables etcetc, be such a large scale thing to do. possibly enforced on final tables etc but dont see how that would be fair to the players.
I generally play quite quickly, only ever had the clock called once or twice, both huge decisions in crucial spots, that needed thought. Ive never had the guts to call the clock on someone haha
agree with the general consensus, dont think its realistic

Shot clock is enforced by the dealer obv, only need a stopwatch per table.

Calling the clock in a cash game is generally terrible no matter what the circumstances IMO.  I always saw it as an etiquette thing just not to do it.  Don't really like calling the clock at any time tbh, although there are the odd occasions decisions can seem so much simpler when not in the hand.  Only ever called the clock once, at the request of the player taking a minute himself.  Tomsom, he wasn't allowed to call it on himself, so requested someone call it for him.  Amusing for all at the table.

tomsom amusing a table hes playing at?  ;boltpp; ;sexybanana; ;sexybanana;
not sure i believe that!!

I've actually done that before, called the clock on myself/got someone else to do it for me :p

A nine way chess clock, players get accrue a minute every 10 minutes so you can work out how much should be on the clock for relevant structures. Run out of time and your disqualified. Players can then act fast to start with and slow it down at the business end. Bet out of turn and get a 30 second penalty. Kills loads of birds with one stone. Just gotta invent the bloody thing now :)

Winner.

Simple enough to do with a computer-controlled device built into the table and linked up to the tournament computer.  Definitely doable.

Look forward to seeing you on the next series of Dragon's Den :D

When your at the table and someone is taking the Michael time wise, if its a big pot nobody will back an eye lid because its important to make the right decision and people understand that, but the only thing is with players who don't take as long in situations as others.. they will start calling the clock on people all the time. Is there a limit to how many times people can call the clock or is it just a mutual thing at the table?

Of course u should be able to call it in cash. When someone takes forever every hand why should they waste my time messing about or tanking when they nearly always fold but don't want to? It's even worse if it's a timecharge game.

That's not when the clock is usually called though, is it?  Like in the situation I mentioned above, I had a big decision on one hand - and it was the player who was holding the play up every hand who called the clock on me.  Isn't that usually the case?

Also, it was a cash game at DTD - so not timecharged.

I don't think anyone is opposed to people taking time when facing a tough decision. Guy said u should never call the clock in cash. I disagree.

I think shot clocks would actually be a really bad idea as they would make the game too regimented. I think instead people need to clock call a lot more.

No time constraints in cash, and the long decisions are often huge pots. You dont need some bloke youve never met before calling a clock on you when you have a 1k pot to decide on. And its always the people who arent regs/ new to the table. Mates/ regs rarely call the clock ive found.