Excessive tanking is obviously one of the most discussed tournament issues in the last few years. I am personally very much against the implementation of shot clocks to resolve this issue and I want to offer a better solution. This is a long one and I tried to be as straight to the point as I can be. For those that care about this issue, I think it's worthwhile to read through it. Thanks for your time.

There are many things in society that function smoothly, not because of hard rules governing it, but because of social/moral penalties guiding the behavior of the crowd. One example that comes to mind is the Freakomonics example where daycares wanted implement a money penalty to incentivize parents to not come late to pick up their kids. But what ended up happening was that the money penalty eroded the social penalty that was shaping parents' behavior and MORE parents started coming late since the money penalty was actually less important than the social/moral penalty.

Taking an appropriate amount of time in your decisions in a tournament used to be one of these things that worked well because everyone respected it. However, when a few bad apples like a jordan cristo decided to violate this unspoken respect/norm for the game in order to maximize his edge by tilting people, the entire system falls apart. Their behavior lowered the social penalty for everyone else because he is essentially normalizing this behavior. And it just gets worse from that point on when less and less people feel bad about this transgression.

In poker, we have a tool to combat excessive tanking and it's calling the clock. But obviously, that hasn't worked out well. But the question begs, why not? It seems like a very tailored made system because players at the table are the best ones to judge if someone is taking too long. The answer is that while the stalling player disregards social norms, everyone at the table still is following it. And right now, the perception of calling the clock is that it's poor etiquette confrontational behavior and people avoid doing that EVEN when it's against stallers that deserve it.

A big reason why people feel awkward about calling clock is that there's a whole lot of commotion that is caused by this act, i.e., telling the dealer, dealer calling over the floor, everyone in the room stares, the floor comes over and interrogates the dealer to make sure it was appropriate, floor reads miranda rights to the transgressor, countdown. It's overall a very uncomfortable situation for the person that initiated the clock calling. So even if the clock calling was appropriate, the caller still ends up feeling terrible.

So what I'm suggesting is that once we lower this social penalty to clock calling, the mechanism itself is actually a very effective tool to combating tanking. What I'm going to suggest came to me when I was thinking about those moral dilemma hypotheticals. The ones where they ask you if you would shove a man in front of a train to stop it if otherwise the train was going to crash and everyone onboard would die. So the results of these studies show that more people would put the man in front of the train if all they needed to do was simply press a button that causes the man to fall instead of actively needing to push the man off.

I think this has direct applicability to resolving the social barrier of calling the clock. What if everyone at the table had a plastic card in front of them that they can just throw in to call the clock on someone, and once you throw it in, one more player needs to throw in theirs to "second" you. After the "second", the dealer automatically activates the clock calling.

The problem we have with our current system is that most players just don't want to call the clock, because it's so confrontational and awkward. But just like the train crash dilemma, if we simplify the procedure and also increase the number of players responsible for the action, then calling the clock becomes more indirect and impersonal. The initial clock-caller won't feel like he or she is the only one confronting the abuser when there is support from other players. And the act of throwing in a card is psychologically much less directly confrontational than verbalizing the challenge. Another change to lower the social barrier is to let the dealer administer the count down on his own without creating a big ordeal out of each clock calling.

I think these changes can resolve the issue of excessive tanking on big decisions as well as douchebags taking 30 seconds for every preflop decision. For the latter, if a player takes way too long for every small decision, then the table will punish him by throwing in their cards fast even for big decisions he's faced with. We can also have a system where players are allotted less and less time every time the clock has been successfully called on them. So even if calling clock for the unnecessary 30 second decisions doesn't harm that player (since he's getting more than 30 seconds after the clock starts anyway), it still decreases the amount of time they have for the bigger decisions later on.

Also, generally speaking, having the card allows table to signal their annoyance and to challenge the staller as a group. These types of players are not totally immune to social pressures; it's just that usually no one is actually directly confronting them. The card gives the table the perfect way to do that without feeling as awkward about it.

What do you guys think of this system overall? I haven't spoken to anyone else about this, so I'm wondering if there are any major issues I haven't thought of. I've thought about the possibility that the social barrier might be so low that there's abuse on clock calling. But we can always increase the number of the players to "second" the initiator to two instead of one. Also, if it's obvious that two or three players are just abusing someone they don't like, the floor is allowed to take away their card.

But whatever the tournament community decides to do about this issue, I just don't think shot clocks are the way to go. Even the status quo is much more desirable given all the downsides of a shot clock. The biggest three I can think of are as follows:
One, some decisions need more time, sometimes a lot more time. And only the table is capable of understanding when the situation warrants it. Giving a uniform amount of time does not solve this.
Second, the shot clock is effectively turning the tournament into a speed poker. That is very disconcerting for a lot of recreational players that don't want to deal with the stress of feeling rushed every single hand. Quite a lot of people don't think well under pressure and it's terrible for the game to induce that stress in every single hand in the entire tournament.
Third, a shot clock doesn't prevent a player from taking 30 seconds with every preflop decision even when they are folding, because even with a shot clock, they are given at least that much time for each decision and the shot clock doesn't have any subjectivity in guarding against that. So the shot clock will be exploited anyway. Just as Cristos already threatened to do.

You can't change people into taking less time with subtle tactics. They just won't do it because they aren't really thinking but rather flipping a mental coin in their heads and not want it to be head or tails. They need to be uncomfortable and harassed before they feel like the POS they are to the table and might actually change it.

Me personally I insta-call clock on perpetual tankers and make them feel unwanted as much as I possibly can. If it's an obvious rec I will be much more subtle but any regs that tank for that long will get a death stare and if everyone would do that it has much more impact. Sure, some will stop playing that tournament but you can't have both.

Good post. I didn't agree with every single thing, but I agree with the idea that tanking can be stopped without changing things all that much.

Everyone assumes that a shot clock, or even the traditional calling the clock, can only work in one way only: if you pass the limit, your hand is killed. But it doesn't have to work ONLY that way. Be creative.

Here's what I mean. What if instead of your hand being killed....the opposite occurs. Violate the time limit; now you can't fold. You have to at least toss in the BB and the action passes to the next player. Do this on TV tables, and you will eliminate people tanking with 72 UTG. I would support this for pre-flop unraised pots. Not sure you need a clock for other situations. My point is, killing hand is not the only measure. Use progressive discipline. The abusers are easy to spot. Give them warnings, then a one-hand penalty, then DQ them. Give the floor more latitude; for example, floor can come over when an abuser is tanking, and when he folds, check his cards to gather data. Then if it is clearly tanking abuse, give a warning, then more for repeated violations. If you abuse the game by waiting till the last second of the limit to fold out of spite.....warning, penalty, then DQ.

You are good with words, but used too many of them in your post.

Cliffs:

-Tournament tanking is problem
-OP doesn't like shot clock idea
-Offers solution to more streamline (and destigmatize) the current clock calling process


The problem is your clock calling process is still far too complex, and would still take / waste a significant amount of time per occurrence.

thank you for your comments. I think if we really boil it down, it's actually not that complex at all. Pretty much, everyone gets a plastic card, and if someone is taking too long, you can simply throw it in to call time on that person. When two people throw in their cards, the dealer announces that the clock has been called, and then gives staller a minute to make the decision.

We don't even really need the other part with decreasing time bank for subsequent clocks. Because if you try to abuse the system by taking exactly a minute for every decision, all the players will just throw in their cards for your big decisions too as punishment.

The solution is a shot clock (shorter preflop, bit longer on river) which also has the added benefit of being "good TV" in creating a point of tension.

That's the future. You're over-thinking it.

Put an electric shock under the cushion of every seat and after 1 minute, every 10 seconds increase the voltage until the player acts or passes out

I pretty much disagree with OP. Shot clock is the future, and TD's need to punish shot clock abusers. The idea that perpetual tankers can be shamed into playing faster is absurd as is the idea that rec players "don't want to deal with the stress of feeling rushed every single hand". What rec players really don't want to deal with is single hands taking 10-15 minutes to play out.

that's a god damned well thought out post and a great idea. well done OP.

Wat? Makes nosense at all.

Shot clock is the way to go. Pretty much same as online play in that since the time is automatically imposed as an integrated part of the game everyone has to abide by it. So damn obvious and straight forward.

This needs to happen particularly.

I would also say the dealer should just start it without intervention from a player after some time.

that seems a long post when he could have just said call the clock more often

So an automatic play clock designed to quicken the pace of each decision.

Regarding your Freakonomics example:

That is one effect, yes, but it also created a new service which parents were willing to pay for. Calling it a "penalty" makes it sound like a fee levied for negative behavior and draws an inaccurate comparison to the social penalty. Perhaps the daycare intended it to be viewed that way, but parents likely thought of it as purchasing extra time.

Not sure if or how this affects the rest of what you wrote.

Um, no. The problem isn't the rules, it's the players. If you change the rule, those exact same players will find a new form of douchebaggery that fits the new rule.

Who keeps the clock on the dealer's keeping of the clock?

Do tennis players have a time limit for serving the ball?

Well, they should pretty much just start it when the player doesn't act "in rhythm" and starts thinking.

I'm not an expert on tennis but I assume the arbiter/referee of the entire tournament isn't called over to court 4 when someone is taking too long to play, it would be something dealt with by the umpire at that court, analogous to the dealer at a poker table.

introduce a rule whereby anybody that takes over a minute to make a decision has their hole cards revealed at the end of the hand regardless of whether it goes to showdown or not.

Lol, that's brutal. I like it.

The daycare example doesn't have anything to do with the solution I'm suggesting which is to lower the psychological barrier to clock calling since that mechanism is perfectly capable of dealing with stallers if the table uses it. The daycare example was to illustrate that we don't need hard and fast rules/penalties to govern every behavior because many things in society is governed by social rules. And sometimes, when you put in rigid rules to correct behavior, there are many unintended consequences. And for the shot clock, I've listed three undesirable consequences that come to mind in my original write-up.

this is exactly what the clock calling card is meant to achieve. For most people, they aren't comfortable confronting the stallers, but with the card, it is much much easier psychologically to show their annoyance/displeasure at the staller. This is why I mentioned the train hypothetical; when the action is indirect, people have an easier time doing the right thing.

the current system we have works beautifully if it wasn't for the few bad apples that exploit it for their unfair gain. The current system allows for the table to decide if some decisions deserve more time based on the enormity of the situation. In fact, there are decisions so important that the entire table would say "hey, take as much time as you need". Why do we want to destroy an efficient and fair system that works for 95% of the tables at a tournament just to prevent bad apples at the other 5%? And even for those 5% of tables, the problem guys are still going to exploit the shot clock by just taking the full 30 seconds for every hand.

What I'm suggesting is to improve on the current system we have instead of completely destroying it. If we make it psychologically easier for the whole table to call out and penalize the stallers, then that would take care of the leak of the otherwise beautiful system we have. Recreational players in live tournaments want to be relaxed and be playing a social game; the shot clock doesn't foster that atmosphere.

I would argue that stalling is prevalent in online tournaments, and it really detracts from the experience. Playing one hand every eight minutes near the bubble is not fun.

Yes, they do. http://www.tennis.com/pro-game/2013/...r-value/46743/

Shot clock. It's easy.

I'm calling the clock on that wall of text in the OP! Snark aside, I agree with what you wrote.