Poker Shot Clock

[Walda Caesar]

Witha shot clock at the table, players have a certain time to act on their hand. Typically players get 30 seconds per decision. On top of that, in most poker tournaments operating a shot clock, players get a certain amount of time bank cards. These cards are typically worth an additional 30 or 60 seconds.

The shot clock is a physical clock on the table that counts down the time players have left to act on their hand. Once the clock reaches zero without the player having decided to call, fold, bet, or raise, a player's hand is either dead, or a player is forced to play one of their time bank cards to gain some more time to think.

Every tournament organizer decided how many time bank cards players get at the beginning of the tournament. If a player has time bank cards left when he or she busts, those are typically forfeited. Some tournaments let you carry over your time bank cards to coming days, and some give out additional cards upon making the next day, and/or making the final table.

For those new to shot clock format, the basic premise is once it is your action, the dealer starts a 30 second timer. You are given a set number of time extensions worth 30 seconds each. In this tournament, we were given seven additional time extensions for a total of 3 min and 30 seconds of time bank. This was with 106 players remaining. At 24 players, our time extensions would reset to 6. If you have not made an action when your time is up and you have no time extensions, your hand is either dead if facing action, or an auto check if not facing a bet.

The shot clock in poker has been discussed for a while. As far as I know, the World Poker Tour is the first major tour to implement it into non high roller events. While there are many positives of the shot clock, I think there are improvements that should be made as it evolves. First, and most obvious, a shot clock punishes players who make long tanks in hands. I am talking about the player who takes 3 min on the river facing an all-in bet. What the shot clock does not currently do is punish the player who takes 15 seconds for EVERY preflop decision no matter the action. The latter is much worse for a poker game than the person who plays quick then takes 3 minutes on a single river decision.

The other issue I have with how the shot clock is currently being utilized is that it is brought into play one table BEFORE the money bubble. The original thought was having the shot clock on the money bubble would help reduce stalling to make the money. In reality though, the exact opposite thing happens, once the shot clock is brought into play, it is a reminder to players that they should be stalling, and it is to their benefit to stall. Now instead of maybe fake tanking for 10-15 seconds, most players use the FULL 30 seconds and simply fold before they require a time extension. By implementing the shot clock before the money bubble, we are encouraging players to stall on the bubble and slow the pace of play. My suggestion would be to implement shot clocks AFTER the money bubble has broken to avoid any extra stalling that already exists.

The best way to improve the system is to use a chess clock format. In this format, instead of every action receiving a 30 second time limit before using extensions, we get rid of the extensions and give the players all the time up front. Every player would simply have a 3-minute time bank to use at their leisure. In this example, every player would have 10 seconds to make an action, after 10 seconds, the players 3-minute time bank begins to tick down. If a player has no time bank remaining, they simply have 10 seconds to make every decision until the time banks reset. The advantage of this system is the player who tanks 15-30 seconds every preflop decision is severely punished as he is forced to use his timebank every hand. This also rewards / does not punish the player who acts within 10 seconds every time, but uses 2 minutes on a difficult river decision.

As poker moves towards an era where the shot clock is part of the landscape, we ask what the consequences might be for the game we all love. Will it slow down or speed up play? Which type of player benefits most from the tick-tock of a decision needing to be made?

Poker has been slowing down for years is the argument. Once upon a three-bet, that was called slow-play, and it was no less respected as a style than safety play at the snooker table. In recent years, however, slow play has become synonymous with bad play and rudeness. Call it what you like, tanking has become a bugbear poker simply cannot stand to have at the table.

But should poker move on from an era where each man or woman has had as long as they needed to make a decision unless the clock was called? Going from unlimited time to time banks and shot and action clocks has many implications upon the modern game.

Would that be the case in reality, or would the speed increase, as it does online, where hands are on the virtual clock and players are forced to make quicker decisions for fear of losing their banked time?

On the other hand, recreational players might love it. Playing more hands and not taking the game so seriously might include the thrill of playing poker on fast-forward. Providing players get to even a basic level of competency, the 30 seconds might prove just the right amount to keep the game more fun for everyone, not just the high stakes professionals.

Even with shot clocks in play, stalling players can stall for 30 seconds every hand where once they might have been warned after a few hands of excessive fake-tanking. Tournament directors, hands tied by the demon clock, might find themselves going from table to table to enforce punishments and sorting out debates over whether a hand was called on the buzzer or after. Fine margins are there to be exploited, after all.

On the other hand, maybe stalling players would get bored of utilizing a rather petty tool to stretch out the game. Money bubbles (or the period before the bubble) slow down anyway, and the limit of 30 seconds might restrict the length of the delay and help the poker media cover the action, knowing they have exactly 30 seconds from the deal for each player in turn to make a decision.

I've been an advocate of the shot clock in poker for a long time now but it wasn't until last weekend that I got to play with one myself. My local poker club the Genting in Sheffield (who also were early adopters of the single ante system) started using a shot clock in all their regular games last year.

Like the single ante, some operators have been reluctant to make them widespread because they fear the local players would struggle to adapt. In the case of shot clocks there is also a fear casual players would find them intimidating (because they are less experienced the assumption is they take longer to make decisions). I've witnessed first hand we have nothing to worry about.

First and foremost, 10, 20 or 30 seconds is a surprisingly long amount of time. I made it to the final table of the event I played and in the eight hours I was there, I probably only witnessed four times the dealer had to verbally count down to signify to a player their timer was running out.

We all had three timebank cards for tougher decisions and again, I only saw them being used a handful of times. I used two myself. In both cases (and most of the time for other players) the timebanks were only used when facing a very big call or at least when a big chip count was needed. Everything else went quickly.

It confirmed what we have written about before, which is that 95% of the time we instinctively know what our decision is right away. That was the case for serious and casual players alike in the game I played.

Combined with the single ante system we were getting tons of hands in per hour and generally speaking people got on with the game itself with less fuss (there were less arguments because we were already onto the next hand and I didn't see the floor get called over at any time).

I worried the increased speed might make the games less chatty and again that wasn't the case. Even the dealers were still able to chat away as usual, despite having the extra responsibility of managing the clock.

I guess the big takeway was how the issue of the shot clock never actually came up (it would not have been discussed at all had I not kept asking everyone questions). It was seamless, it didn't cause any problems, the game went along much faster and it just felt normal.

The single ante and the shot clock are probably the best thing to happen to live tournament poker in recent years. When you go to a live poker game, you want to get as much poker in as possible. Shot clocks allow everyone to do that and having seen the regs in my local 30 freezeout adapt to it with no issue, I don't think any operators in the industry should worry about introducing it.

Well studied players, assuming they're studying the newest phenomenons, are counting combos and accessing ranges given the action street-by-street. The more time they're given, the better decisions they come down to.

This will even out the game and make it more enjoyable for non-studied-recreational players as the edge is slightly shortened for the studied players and the tilt-free players. They'll always have an edge but will have to rely more on built-in intuition and need to apply much quicker than before, and the general player is going to be less tilted, which decreases the edge of the already-tilt-free player.

The best learners and quickest thinkers will now have a great advantage over the other studies players who aren't as quick at implementing their knowledge but the gap between them and the non-studied players becomes slightly less than before.

3a8082e126