Start to reward quick decision making in poker?

OK, I will defer to your experience on this one because I honestly just haven’t seen this situation very often, but I also don’t really play any high stakes tournaments and have never played a tournament that uses time banks.

Typically, I haven’t seen serious stalling over minor pay jumps because it just wouldn’t be that effective. Once you are in the money, the field is either small enough that a player in unlikely to bust during the time you are stalling within a single hand….or the field is still large enough that the number of players listed on the tournament clock is unlikely to be accurate.

I certainly see people tighten up close to to a pay jump, but not literally stalling in the middle of hand they’re playing.

I do think what Brad did in the hand in question was unprofessional and embarrassing, and shows he’s still playing higher than he’s really comfortable with for the sake of getting YouTube views. In this case, I’m guessing the fact that he had a bunch of time banks essentially gave Brad the permission to act badly where he wouldn’t have tried to pull this in an untimed tournament.

Is it possible to call the clock on a player in a time bank tournament, or are they always allowed to tank as long as they want if they have the time banks to pay for it?

I am all for faster games. I think everyone benefits from faster games.

I am generally a very fast player. I am a dealer so I am usually naturally aware of where the action is and I always try and play as fast as possible. I am quite sure that if everyone was magically timed, I would be in the top 5% of fast players. I see no need to waste any time. As an advantage player, the more hands I play, the better my results. I love fast games.

All of that said, on really, really rare occasions, I will take a somewhat long time to make a decision. This is always when I am making an extremely strange decision. Whether it is calling a shove with a hand that can only beat a bluff or folding kings pre-flop, it is a hand that would cause many gasps if shown. This is really rare. So rare that I couldn't even begin to guess how often. On those instances, I know I am making such a crazy play that I want to take my time and make sure I am getting it right.

Also, when I say a long time, I am referring to taking maybe a minute. Two at the most.

I wish there was a way to build up a lifetime time bank by generally playing fast that could be used when decisions really matter.

Always thought they should have a blitz high roller tournament. Would be interesting to see which players come out on top. As it stands now some of these high roller donks even tank fold pre

You guys should start your own poker website, since you have it all figured out.

I am

I'm generally in favour of some form of shot clock, but it needs to be heavily different dependent on what street you are on. Nobody should ever need to take more than a second to fold 75% of the hands you're dealt, nobody should need more than a second to raise 20% of the hands you're dealt, there's a very tiny range where you might need to think slightly but if you're taking more than 10-15 seconds pre even in marginal spots, you're time wasting, pure and simple. Fine for it to be a lot longer post - flop is the major decision point and after that you've got a lot more data to mull over, so something like 30 seconds if not facing a bet or a minute otherwise doesn't seem unreasonable either way. If you think that's still too short then stop watching cats chasing squirrels on your phone and think about what you want to do before the action comes to you

Thinking about this, I have an idea. However, this idea (or something like it ) may only be implementable online; might be too much to ask of a an in-person dealer. I also think this is a grain of a potentially decent idea that would need some polish.

What I'm thinking is a total amount of time. Maybe something like 3 minutes per blind round? Maybe it goes up, deeper into the tournament.

Each action, the player who it's on gets some reasonable amount of time (10-15 seconds?) to act. After that, their "overall time bank" starts ticking down.

If you spend your entire time hollywooding (or not paying attention, or maybe having a legit tough decision) early in the round, too bad for you. In 10 seconds, your hand will be folded.

The unfortunate part of this is it might encourage stalling later in the level by those still with time, so one place polish is needed.

The idea is to have a variable shot clock, so each player can use their time as they choose, but each player gets what should be a fair (TBD) amount of time to play their hands.

In live, you'd need a function like where the dealer swipes you in, so the dealer could easily switch action with a one-button push. Table would have to be wired into the clock and a time-per-player server, as well as having a time display for the players to know where they're at in terms of time. Probably prohibitively expensive, though there's not a technical reason it can't be done.

You're basically just describing the "chess clock" idea, right?

Online already has short time limits. Its not like OL players can take 10 minutes for one hand

What you are proposing is different than an actual chess clock, because a chess clock begins counting down as soon as it is your turn. It sounds like you are proposing something like a hybrid between shot clock and a chess clock. And this is basically already done in online tournaments, right?

If it were not incredibly clunky to administer live, this would probably be a good solution. But a pure chess clock would be easier live and less confusing to everyone if this were the case. I just don't think the technology exists in a reasonable form for large live formats. It could probably be worked out in PokerGO studio tournaments, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it tried there at some point though.

Grunching, but what about this for tournaments.....

Install a mechanism where it keeps track of how many hands into which a player has actually been dealt . After every set number of levels, a certain percentage (top 10%?) left in the field in terms of hands into which they were dealt get a non-nominal number of chips added to their stack. Then things reset and you do it again at certain intervals, until a point where players shouldn't be rushed, such as once the money bubble bursts.

I realize if a table breaks, this penalizes players through no fault of their own; but in reality it takes usually only a few hands worth of time to go from one's old table to a new one. And if you leave the table to take a break, you don't get penalized, since you're helping more hands be dealt.

What I like about this too is if one person is slowing down things for the table, there will be inherent pressure on them to play faster. Yes, pros probably figure they don't need the extra chips so it might not move the needle; but I still think it can't hurt, can it?

I realize the table could just agree to fold every hand and no one would lose money and then get the bonus; however, the fact this would happen only after a certain number of levels would make it so it would be a net-negative to just stay stuck in neutral like that because you'd be farther and farther below the average stack size.

I'm just spitballing, and fully expect I missed things that make this unworkable, but I figured I'd raise it if for no other reason than to toss it out there. Either way, I like that something like this is being discussed.

This. All of this.

One option could be a set time for pre flop (10 seconds max) and post flop every player would start for example of 5 min total time and have a chess clock that gives you more time if you act quick. After you press the clock, action is on your opponent. Could be made automatic also somehow with technology. If you run out of time, you are out of the tournament.

A Player should NEVER be facing elimination based on a clock. Dead hand? Yes .. that's already in the systems in place.

The issue live is the logistics of evaluating the previous action and adjusting the allotted time before a time bank would kick in. It's easier on a Player when it folds to them versus facing an open and 2 calls. The clock could easily be adjusted online whereas it's almost impossible to rely on a Dealer to do this live .. AND the cost associated with implementing a tiered clock system would tax venues.

Also, putting too much in place will drive away Recs .. which are essentially dead money in the prize pool. GL

The problem with this idea is that you get punished if other players on your table are slow.

What about combining this idea with the chess clock idea? Everyone gets an add-on of X chips after Y levels, but for every 10 seconds that you've used on your clock you get 1 chip less, or something like that.

It could be a fun variant just for something different. It would also be hilarious to talk crap when someone is tanking so long that they're running out of chips.

The even biggest problem is you get punished if the -dealer- is slow. I've been much more regularly frustrated with slow dealers in tournaments I've played than slow players, because when a dealer is slow, they slow up the game on every hand.

Instead of complaining about how stalling and slow dealers are bad for the game, you guys should be celebrating them. The fewer hands per round that you play, the less opportunities that the good players have to exploit the crap out of you. The more quickly (counting in hands played) the blinds go up, the more the good players' skill edge is reduced, and the more of a chance you losers have.

Most ”solutions” ITT are to complicated to implement. They will also scare of reqs that are new to the game.

The best way to punish exessive tankers are to call the clock on them quickly when they actually have a tough decision to make. That will kinda even it out time wise and they will be tilted as well. Just make them pay for the tanking in a way that hurts.

some people actually enjoy playing poker for fun and don't want to sit their watching people tank all day.

Some recreationals like thinking about their decisions as well infact for the most part they are generally slower than professionals. Obviously there is outliers who are just slow for the sake of it and that can be on both sides of the rec/pro divide but for the most part its the less experienced players who are slower than pros.

If you take away the ability to think about poker its turning it into roulette which i don't think any of us want.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that, more that the amount people actually need to think (particularly in as boring and simple a game as NLHE) is nowhere near as long as what people are often taking

Some seem to be with this 10 seconds nonsense which is completely unreasonable. I have been a massive advocate for shot clocks and we seem to be gravitating towards 20 seconds pre, 30 seconds post in the UK mtt scene. That seems to be a sweet spot and any less is turning a thinking game into a casino game imo.

Poker should be divided into two categories: one for speed poker and another where you have alot of time to think about your decisions.

Now we are only catering for the long tanking. I think it would be cool to see who has the best intuitions and how fast-paced bluffs/herocalls affect everyone’s play.

Actually that's exactly what you should want. A table full of people happy to take the worst of it if they're having fun and getting to gamble.

We're also talking in generalities here. Most recs don't constantly tank and way too many break evenish regs do. That doesn't mean no tanking recs exist.

Poker is a social game not brain surgery.