Shot Clocks in Live Poker. The way forward?

[TightEnd]

"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?

[millidonk]

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

[Junior Senior]

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!

[lucky_scrote]

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?

[Woodsey]

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.

[Junior Senior]

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?

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.

[lucky_scrote]

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.

[pleno1]

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.

[Rexas]

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.

[Longy]

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.

[Tal]

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

[pleno1]

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.

[Rexas]

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

[doubleup]

The problem I have is when people have a routine like Michael tureniec does and spends 20 seconds to make a fold.

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.)

[Boba Fett]

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