pls don't do anything like that with them, no monetary value, no change of possession, just a set number of time banks for the tournament.

i think replenishing them at certain points is good, but maybe not nec to increase the amount, or maybe just you get +1 per X amount of levels or something.

Oh I love idiots like Cristos being all salty about this. Almost seems like he thinks he is the only one that is time restricted. LOL at the ****** "20 variable equations", my god what a moron.

Easy. Start it on hand 1 of the tourney, like others have said. It keeps the implementation uniform throughout.

Just one thing. If the clock has tenths of a second on display racing by, eliminate that and just keep the seconds on display. This isn't a race where tenths of a second are needed, and it may be annoying to some.

There isn't tenths of a second and you are right that it isn't needed either


The floor and dealers will be instructed that the tie goes to the player if it's too close to call.

Also the bit about affecting his children's future is so cringe-worthy. Its a poker tournament altering the rules a bit to make players happier, not an employer getting rid of your healthcare benefits. If you are good enough at poker tournaments to make a living off of them, that's awesome and I'm jealous but no tournament director owes it to you to make your income a concern.

Let them starve.

Overall I am a fan of this. I don't think you're giving out too many chips as sometimes people may legit need a decent amount of time when out into a spot. Not a fan of putting them into the pot, if a habitual tanker plays a time chip and wins the pot then it isn't really doing anything to stop them.

My biggest concern with tanking is those who take way to long to preflop and stare down the whole table before they even look at their cards. 30 seconds to act preflop still lets them slow the game down tremendously. I'm not sure what a good solution to that in live poker is though.

The ultimate solution is to give floors the ability to take drastic measures when people complain. For example this Cristos guy should face the threat of being DQ'ed if he keeps doing that crap.

This poll results are pretty stunning and echoing the support and enthusiasm I received on social media.

It appears the change is long overdue?

This is the real issue. The vast majority of the problem is people who play generally slow and do so purposefully. Every now and then you run into someone who takes 2+ minutes on a lot of decisions, but the majority of the problem is people who habitually take time when they don't need it. They are doing it for other reasons.

This is a great addition for tourneys. If it goes to being from level one and up, I'd be playing every WPT event if I had the bankroll. Watching the WSOP main event this year was kinda painful with so many 2 minute plus tanks all over the place on every street.

Online tourneys for me.

Smoke dank, don't tank

I agree this is the right step. I played the WSOP ME this year and I called the clock on 5 players and I probably should have called clock on at least 5 more. There are way to many stare downs that are obviously going to be folds.

Maybe they just don't like Jordan Cristos' children. Is he a bad father who has raised such hate-worthy spawn?

That's the conventional wisdom but it always seems to me that you are more likely to give something away if you wait and let the whole table see your initial split-second reaction to your cards than if you take a peek when everyone's looking elsewhere. It's true some of the earlier players may look left before they act but they are looking for general posture things (i.e. cards held prepared to be mucked, chips held waiting to open) that you should be able to hide if you have a brain.

is perpetual tanking really still a problem? I don't play live all that much, but I feel like it peaked mb 2-3 years ago, with many pros doing it and recs mimicing, but ever since many big names and announcers started critizing it heavily it got much better.

I just came home from a small/mid stakes poker festival and during few days of play I literally never even felt the need to call a clock on someone. Every time someone needed some time on a big decision they apologized to the table first and then took reasonable time anyway. Also, almost every single player was looking at their cards before it was their turn to act. I live in Europe, though (festival was in Czech Republic), might be different in US.

As a dealer, I have to groan at this. I feel it may take a lot of concentration away from the game as the dealer has to now button mash a dozen times a hand on top of running the game. I would much rather go back to the calling the clock routine but have something for the dealer to start a clock countdown instead of needing to call a supervisor over. Perhaps allow a supervisor to approve decreasing the amount of time for a player if they habitually slow the game down. I agree with another poster that tanking has seemingly decreased in recent years compared to a few years back. I only recall calling the clock about 3-4 times all WSOP and I dealt everything from the 2PM deepstack to the 20-game mix tournament. It has stopped being as much of an epidemic as compared to a few years back.


There are also other problems that still slow the games down. It should be quicker to penalize players that habitually need to be reminded to put in their antes every single hand and often take 5-10 seconds to do so after the dealer has completed the shuffle and starts collecting them. Players should also be encouraged to make change ahead of time when a situation comes up where they may soon be using an oversized chip to put in an ante. Nothing is more aggravating than a player sitting there for a good minute or two watching a hand and then when a new hand begins, they throw in a 5k [Which is all they have] for a 25 chip ante. Now the entire table has to wait for that player to get change. Charming.


Players also need to be penalized for constantly putting their chips and cards too far away for the dealer to reach them. Seems like European players do this the most but it either puts a lot of strain on the dealer reaching as far as they can to grab them or it wastes the time of the players as the dealer has to constantly ask for them to be pushed in. I see stuff like this wasting time more than tanking nowadays.

+1 to this being from level 1, and as few extensions as possible.


Dealers also need to be instructed to never "count players down", and that time bank chips are used automatically if you have them.

It's distracting/unnecessary to be told "10 seconds, 5 seconds, 3...2...1....time out.

One of either, "5 seconds" and player is folded when the clock reaches 0, or "3, 2, 1" is enough.

This isn't true. In practice the clock starts after the player has had ~5 seconds/isn't even started 90% of the time.

LOVE This. Poker is far far too slow these days. I enjoy the mixed events at the wsop way more than NLH, and a huge part of that is how much less tanking there is in limit poker.

The next step is to reduce the tanking in simple preflop and flop decisions, 30 seconds is still far too long for most decisions.

We must make poker fun for he recreational players.

Day one went trouble free and so far it has gone well today also

Want to give props for giving it a poker-appropriate name and not borrowing the name from some lame TV sport.

I see the first action clock's WPT has finished. I assume it went well and was well received? Saw on twitter that Jay Lee used all 6 extensions at once in one of the all-ins.

Yes he did but made his decision to call 20 seconds into the 3 minutes

I'm a rec. Why can't I dress how I want? Why can't I listen to music if I want? Ban these things my $40 won't be added to the prize pool each Tuesday afternoon!

10 seconds is too long, actually. Especially when not facing a bet.