Poker Clocks

[Amice Golden]

Forthose 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.

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So I was playing a live event over the weekend and I had a situation occur after moving to a new table I've never heard of or seen before. Ideally I'm looking for someone with floor experience to answer but if anyone has seen something like this I am curious what your TD/Floor staff ruled in the following situation:

Hero opens on the cutoff, villain is on the button. Hero does a standard open, nothing exciting, villain tank calls. We go to the flop, now this is where the situation begins before the flop is dealt, a player not in the hand mutters "He's been tanking all day, it's getting ridiculous", which is followed by several players agreeing.

Hero continues about half of pot, villain tanks. After 20 seconds pass table calls clock. Villain uses his entire time and folds. Next hand, villain again tanks preflop, immediately the same player calls clock, again as we reach the floop the same player calls clock again on the villain. After calling clock 3 times in as many streets of action the floor gives a verbal warning to the player who has called clocked 3 times.

Now this is where my main question begins. The next hand the villain tanks, clock is called immediately again, but by a different player. The entire table begins to take turns on calling clock for every action the villain makes. I have never seen a situation like this ever before where 8 out of the 10 players at a table proceeded to target a single player. So my question for any TDs/Floorstaff or perhaps a player who has seen this happen before, is how do you as a TD deal with this situation? Can you give penalties for the entire table and allow the table to continue with only 2 players? I understand this is a very niche situation but I am really not sure how to effectively deal with this situation, and thought it was an interesting situation.

TD ended up just processing every clock call as they came in, because it was a new player every time, and they did not take decisive action to stop the clock calling, which in my mind was essentially targeted bullying and wasted a huge amount of time. I really think this was a terrible decision on the floors part.

Players excessively tanking has become a more and more frequent issue in poker due to the increase in calculations done at the table. Obviously these calculations do not need to be made during every decision on every street, but players have been complaining about excessive tanking recently.

Since you were playing in a tournament, it is possible that this player was waiting for the bubble to burst, or he may have been waiting for the day to end so that he could add on or get seated at a different table.

When the floor came over, he'd immediately ask the dealer, "Has an inordinate amount of time past that justifies calling the clock?" And all times the dealer said "Yes." That creates consensus, and dude was forced to act a little quicker after two warnings.

My opinion. There are just assholes at the table who will deliberately take their time to annoy all remaining opponents. Call the clock on them after 3 minutes. Personally, I will not call the clock on someone unless I think they are deliberately stalling for no good purpose. Three minutes tops seems reasonable.

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Big Blind Ante: Outside of the stud portion of the event, we would use the big blind ante format. For those unfamiliar, this just means that the big blind covers the ante for the entire table once a round. Paying roughly the same price per round, just not slowing the game down with everyone being bothered to make change and ante every hand. Theoretically we could do this for Stud as well, but we will leave the purity of that game alone for now.

Chess Clock The most important consideration for my perfect poker tournament is a chess clock rather than a shot clock. Currently, shot clocks are used in many events that allow players 30 seconds to make a decision with some time bank cards available for tougher decisions. This is a step in the right direction, but a chess clock is far superior and punishes the right people: the ones who tank with 7-2 off suit from under the gun to just waste time. Here is how it could work:

Side events Since the structure for these events will start out pretty fast, that means more players will bust on day one. That would suck for a player traveling across country to play, so it would be important to offer side events starting the next day. Those events could vary in terms of format.

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?

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