Guess 5 of the money in the wsop main you would be snap folding with your 10 bigs right? Its just the nature of tournaments that near the bubble play slows down and its not just short sighted scum regs as you put it recreational players do it as well.

Its a much bigger issue people taking forever to act at all other stages of the tournament that needs addressing.

Where are you getting 3% from? The proposed solution would likely involve paying out a slightly larger percentage of the field. But as each of those additional spots would only receive a fraction of a buy-in, the impact on the overall prize pool would be pretty minimal.

People always like the use the WSOP Main Event as an example when discussing strutures, but it's a pretty poor example. There are literally hundreds of live poker tournaments run across the globe every day, and only a small handful a year get a field size anywhere close to the Main Event. Yes, paying every place differently would be a logistical nightmare for the Main. But it would be no problem at all in the case of the 98% of tournaments that get a few hundred players at most.

Poker is an extremely capitalistic game and designed to encourage each person acting out of self-interest.

In general every time you use time in poker you trade nearly nothing (only your perceived edge of future hands) for something (the ability to make more-informed decisions and on bubbles the opportunity to make more money).

I've always thought poker would be a better game if you always had a tradeoff as to whether to use time or not.

This would be much easier to implement online but I think if each second you used rrequired you to add 1/10th of an ante to the next pot you could make poker quicker, more enjoyable and remove ~80% of stalling that occurs

I got the 3% based on the min cash being at least 1.5 buyins, but going with 0.3 buyins would only mean,as I mentioned earlier ITT, that the post bubble bustout rush would probably be lost that would in turn kill the structure in the latter stages.

The reason there is a post-bubble rush in the first place is that the bubble (and near bubble) usually takes such a long time that the average stack becomes quite short by the time the bubble bursts. So you need a bunch of bustouts right after just to return the tournament to its normal low bubble-factor equilibrium. If you eliminate the bubble, this rush won't be necessary because a deeper stacked equilibrium will be maintained throughout.

Hand out time extensions and have really low time banks on the bubble. Dealer doesn't even need to mess with the clock. Just give them 10-15 seconds then ask for one of their extensions.

I'm not a pro, so I probably don't have much to offier in this thread. However, it's worth nothing that this post is precisely why TChan is such an asset to the Pokercast.

Out of curiosity, couldn't a reasonable pay structure be worked out that has both a "soft bubble" (i.e. a min-cash that is only a fraction of the buy-in) AND still have a top-heavy payout structure that has prizes for less than 20 percent of the field?

Maybe if I get some time, I'll sit down with an Excel sheet to see if I can make one – or alternatively – demonstrate to myself that it can't reasonably be done. All in all, though, I like the idea from a big-picture standpoint.

Great OP that is worthy of some discussion.

It's not too often that I'm safely in the money in a Liveament... but it has occurred. The one thing that I noticed from that vantage point is that it takes easily 2 blind levels just to go from hand to hand until the bubble is burst.

Players are stalling... but what's worse is the TD's delaying the dealing of certain tables so they can get the media over there to take pics... and themselves over there to call the action on a microphone.

Why don't TD's just average how long it takes 5 people to bust from an MTT with a 1000 field when there are 100 left. Say 15 minutes... then they need to announce that they are in hand for hand mode pause the clock and simply state that after H for H 15 minutes will be taken off the clock.

As it is TD's aren't too concerned about less play so really why should players?

Truthfully I don't think players mind waiting on the 1st bubble... what players really dislike is that 2 blind levels have been wasted.

When will poker players stop critizising anything that is plus ev. If there is room for discussing a problem that is plus ev and is social norm not to do it, then there is room for explotation, there shouldnt be a discussion.

It does get a bit frustrating when players are clearly stalling when on the bubble, but I understand in a way. It just drags the game out longer than needed, but I am not really sure how to resolve this issue. I think it is just part of the game, but if the structure was changed a bit, it may make the situation better.

I know on Ignition, at some point they go hand for hand, so it really doesn't matter but some players don't understand and still stall pre to try and drag out their table to get into the cash.

Guess a couple of years ago, Stars was issuing warnings to bubble stallers in their League games? At the time, there was lots of discussion about it over at Poker School Online, because a ton of people had received emails from support, eg ...


People were saying that games did seem to get faster close to the bubble after that ... but have only ever heard of Stars sending out email warnings for these league games - haven't heard anything about anybody ever receiving warnings for stalling in a real money game?

Also, guess this would be hard to do with a live tourney

funny thing is, this "cultural change" has already happened in online poker, circa 2010-2011 bubble stalling was considered overly nitty and frowned upon by mtt regs. However, shortly after that people realised that stalling is massively +ev and went back to doing it.

To be fair, it's only +EV in the sense of a prisoner's dilemma. If every player at every table chose to stall to the max, absolutely no EV would be gained (barring second level EV from being a stronger short stack player than your opponents), but you certainly wouldn't enjoy playing at those tables or in that tournament.

Non-issue. It's part of the game. If it's spoiling your hourly rate then don't bother with those silly tournaments.

10k isn't enough to make me be self serving scum but we all have a price

i could understand a random making a deep run and it's "life changing " money for him so he stalls. however these guys aren't remotely the issue. it's tourny regs constantly tanking and stalling. but that's poker in 2017- years and years of poker players sabotaging their own games and most are too stupid to realize it.

proof tons of people in poker and on this site have zero common sense
keep sucking the fun out of the games geniuses.

Dunno about that, it would appear to be common sense to stall if stallling is to one's advantage. How this sucks the fun out, well I dunno. The fun surely begins after the bubble, it should be worth waiting for.

... this is yet another problem that a shot clock would fix. If people are worried about complex postflop decisions, that's what players would have a set amount of time extension buttons for that you don't get back once they're used until the final table or next day's play and the shot clock could be something like 15 seconds for preflop and 30 seconds for postflop or similar. There is basically never an excuse to tank for a minute or more preflop unless the game is playing very deep and if people need more time they can use one of their time extension buttons and if people stall using them then they won't have any time extensions if they need to make a difficult decision later. Implementing a shot clock seems to solve all of the significant problems with regards to stalling and people who act too slowly.

In the grand scheme of problem issues bubble stalling isn't a huge one, just start hand for hand slightly earlier and be quicker to call time on people who are stalling... or get a shot clock so people can't waste more than 15-20 seconds max preflop on trivial folds.

I think it would be simpler to stop the clock and run one minute off the clock for every hand when playing hand-for-hand. Or would a two minute run-off be better?

No "cultural change" is required. You simply need to punish stalling on the bubble really, really hard. Until people get the message.

Anyone who takes more than 5 seconds for a basic decision should be given a warning. If they continue to take more than 5 seconds for basic decisions, instantly remove them from the tournament and distribute their chips equally among the remaining players.

For difficult decisions, set the time at 20 seconds. This would involve decisions such as facing a big bet for their tournament life.

Such strong language you seem mad. Who do you think it is hurting if people take a longer time to fold near the bubble? Sure all the recs are furious that play has slowed down on their table so the chances of them cashing the tournament are improved right? The only people it annoys are regs with big stacks who want to abuse the bubble and well they can live with it.

Congratulations of reaching a level of wealth that $10k isn't enough for you to stall in a poker tournament. If the min cash was 1 million would that be enough to turn you into a self serving scumbag? Like you said we all have a price yours just happens to be higher because you have more money congratulations again.

Agree with those who say this is more or less a non issue. Moronic tankers taking 30 seconds to squeeze their cards and go through the game tree at all stages of the tournament are the real harm to the game.

isn't another solution adding time banks to live tourneys? probably not ideal given people can still tank all hand but that could work no?

this is just not enough time for any realistic decision/thought process. Also, how do you qualify a "basic decision" vs. a difficult decision? sure it might seem easy that HJ jammed with 15bb and you have 19 and the BTN has 9 and blinds have 20 each, and ur on a huge payjump bubble, but I promise you it's not super easy and probably takes more than 5 seconds.

It is impossible to allow everyone exactly the right amount of time so there are basically two scenarios:
[] Everyone always gets enough time for a reasonable decision and some people take more than what is reasonable.
[] No one is allowed to take an unreasonable amount of time for a decision and some people are denied a reasonable amount of time.

Which one is the worse scenario? An impatient person might prefer the latter one, while a more deliberative individual might prefer the first. A utilitarian solution might ask how many people are inconvenienced by either case and by how much. Is it preferable to harm a few slow players severely with a shot clock or to decrease a much milder level of harm to a larger number of fast players?

Maybe the correct solution is to offer some tournaments with a shot clock and some without and let the players decide which ones they want to play. Let tournaments in each segment pay out different percentages of the field. If something like a shot clock is more popular, have an "old school" tournament within a large tournament series without a standard shot clock. If shot clocks prove to be a niche gimmick, have a shot clock tournament as one event in the series.

I agree. Using a shot clock will help to solve this problem as well as excessive tanking........