Because of a very small number of naturally slow players (some of whom probably are also aware that it annoys others), and of Will Kassouf outsmarting the WSOP rules for a few hours on a few days of one WSOP series, the WSOP have massively over reacted IMO in changing one of the fundamental and traditional differences between live and on line poker.

Their new rules not only move the live game experience much closer to playing on line but they also penalise some players who are slower (often older players, or inexperienced players) who genuinely *do* need more time and who are not seeking to gain any advantage by playing more slowly.

It is pretty obvious that a time bank system, as used in many other places, is a way fairer system to adopt, along side some TD discretion if it is felt that someone is trying to abuse or circumvent a time bank system.
Yes there still needs to be roughly defined time limits before the clock can be called as there always has been, but not as short as the new rules.

Obviously, anyone who plays mainly on line poker or who is not well versed in the dark arts of live poker or cannot cope with them is going to say how wonderful this WSOP rule change is, because as usual poker players the vast majority of the time speak purely out of self interest and do not therefore give a balanced view or judgement on certain things.

Live poker and on line poker are two very different animals, this WSOP rule converges them because of a knee jerk, badly thought out over reaction by them to a jovial, lateral thinking man from Watford, England who showed them up.

Haha wp

Took me a minute to get that

yeah, +1, seems like a good change

I'm pretty much exclusively a live player, though cash games rather than tourneys. I think this is a great change. I have played for 10 years and I don't think I've ever had clock called on me. I've only once seen clock called when IMO the player had not received enough time to think, and in that case the floor didn't start a countdown yet.

People are generally conflict-adverse and do not call clock unless it's very bad. I think there is a general unwillingness to call clock, so anything counteracting that is good, and it's quite common for other players in the hand to be looking at each other hoping someone calls clock. I've seen countless times where a given player takes way too long on standard decisions, like taking several minutes to think about $75 river bets in multiple hands in a 2/5 game, or a multi way pot where there's a raise, one player thinks for a minute or two and then folds, and then the second player goes into the tank. I think floor discretion is perfect for these kind of situations. if someone gets clock called on them multiple times, it's right that the floor start giving them less and less leeway. It's appropriate for the floor to give someone more time facing a river decision for their whole stack than standard pre-flop decisions.

I also haven't noticed that it's older or inexperienced players who take a lot of time. In my game there are certain guys who just take too much time, either because they like all eyes being on them, they're drunk or they're just bemoaning their luck. Finally, I'd feel more sympathy for people that took a long time for decisions if they didn't fold 95% of the time. Often the tanking is just mourning the loss of the hand rather than truly thinking through a decision.

Don't buy this. Most inexperienced players tanking are not trying to assign accurate ranges and calculate their hands equity against that range. They are tanking because they don't know what to do and still won't know whether they have 1 minute or 10 minutes.

Every time I've clocked the 2nd player in this situation they're always like "It's only been a minute!"

"No dude. You're supposed to think during that 2 minutes the other guy used to fold."

All very good points, but it is what it is in live poker and all of these things are things that one needs to adapt to in live poker. This is why for me it was pathetic that people complained about, ganged up on and were aided and abetted by TDs regarding Will Kassouf's speech play. What he did was so easy to cope with, counteract and even take advantage of for anyone with a modicom of live poker know how.

Once you start playing around with basic fundamentals of the live game it will have a ripple effect on everything else. For example if the game is much quicker then the tournament structure has been effectively altered as effective levels (more hands per hour) are longer.

I mean some of the things that Will Kassouf amplified and brought to the forefront are so normal in live poker and in fact are child's play compared to what you and I have experienced in live cash games, such as playing against players who intimidate you with thinly veiled physical threats, players who blatantly angle shoot or cheat and other undesirable or difficult things that you have to cope with in live poker.

The player who most tilted me ever in live poker cash games was ironically a man who never, ever uttered a single word, I mean for many hours in a long cash game session. He also played extremely tight waiting for big hands 9 handed in NLHE and when dealt them completely maximised their value. So should I have complained to the floor that this was unfair because he never talked? No of course not, it was his strategy and it worked and it was my responsibility and challenge to deal with it.

This WSOP rule change is wrapping players up in cotton wool and a lazy method of making the WSOP's job of managing the comps easier for them. The change removes some of the live combat aspect from the game.

This is one of my least favorite things in live poker. When the first guy is going into the tank, you should be thinking what you will do if he folds, because 90% of the time when people go into the tank they fold. If he calls or raises you can reevaluate.

I don't agree with this. The vast majority of people do not take too much time for decisions, and usually only take a lot of time for big or difficult decisions. Why should they have to adapt? Why shouldn't the minority of people who routinely take a lot of time on all decisions adapt? We don't have to dealwith this in live poker, we can change the rules to make the game play in a way that is more enjoyable for the majority of players, who didn't come to a casino to sit around and watch someone else think about a hand.

I have a limited amount of time available to play poker every week. I HATE wasting it watching someone tank on every decision.

nonsense
poker is a social game and the tanking is bad enough in cash games these days and ten times worse in tournaments

nobody is upset at the OCCASIONAL tank in big decisions but it's the same people constantly bringing the game to a screeching halt sucking the fun out of the game with this bs

people still get way too much time to act imo but the changes are a step in the right direction

bc everything isnt black and white

a guy getting the clock called in him for the first time after 3 days in a tournament should be treated a lot differently than the clock being called on some clown for the 5th time in a day

honestly i can't remember the last time i even took a minute to make a decision and even that is extremely rare for me.

Actual question - How frequently have people seen the clock called at a time that in their opinion was too soon? In thousands of hours of live play I've literally seen it once.

Now, how often have people been sitting around wishing someone would call the clock? This happens to me probably on average of once or twice a session, though it's a bit lumpy because in many sessions it never happens, then you get a session with the wrong guy at your table and it can happen 4 or 5 times.

I don't know if others have the same experience as I do, but if they do then we should be doing things to encourage calling the clock.

agree they're different games. much different games.
live is more of a social game and garbage like this ruins it.

and despite not even being that good i have no problem beating live games consistently for years and never having to tank.the vast majority of tanking is pure time wasting and chases people away from the game. and in cash games it's almost always done by break even/slight winners who do lots of other things to ruin the games as well (ie tablet nits, berating players etc) This is not a coincidence at all.these people are almost always a lot worse than they think they are (pretending they think on some super high level when their brain isn't capable of it), think no matter how they act at the table good games will always be there for them and have no idea what makes a game fun and profitable.

as for the bolded- if they can't act in a reasonable period of time then by definition giving them extra time is giving them an advantage. if someone's brain works slow that doesn't mean the world should revolve around them. I've never been a fast runner - that doesn't mean when I play baseball i should only have to run 70 feet from base to base to make things "fair". That would give me a huge advantage. same thing as letting slow thinking players sit there forever with their trivial decisions.

Honestly i've seen it about 5 times.

and every single time it was done in retaliation by some self absorbed dbag who was tanking all night and got mad when someone finally called the clock on him.

and i agree a lot of people don't want to be "that guy"

i used to be that way myself but it's just gotten so unbearable that i have no problem calling a clock on a constant tanker in a trivial decision- especially if it's a hand bw two tankers.really the only trepidation i have with it is impacting the other player in the hand when they aren't a tanker themselves. if the clock could be called bc somehow was done anonymously a lot more people would call the clock.

i had a guy a few weeks ago in a 5/10 plo game tank for a 50 dollar pot bet on a hand checked to the river for 2 minutes when he was facing a bet and everyone inbetween folded. and then get mad the clock was called. and then he's going to expect respect when he plays a big pot and tanks? not happening.


one of them best things i've seen in a poker room was the clock get called, the player (who had tanked for 3 mins) got mad, told the floor he's now gonna take the entire minute to fold. and once that minute past the floor gave him a rack and kicked him out to the delight of the entire table.

once for me as well. happened versus me, I couldn't have been thinking for more than 80 seconds at the time and it was a pot for the chip lead of a tourney, probs some young scrub wanted to throw an angle at me and it worked, I folded the best hand. if he don't call clock I have a lot more time to think clearly and could have easily ended up calling, instead, my timebank ran out (this was also more of a home game/club game ~50 people, not at a casino)

Again, all of the points you make are valid and fair, but I would ask why now?, why are suddenly WSOP making this quite big change?

IMO it is because of 2 things, Will Kassouf last year, and on line players becoming an ever growing and more significant part of the the live MTT player pool.

So if I am correct about the second factor, then from a democratic perspective I am totally wrong and the live game should conform even more to the online game, a very rigid and quite short amount of time per decision.

The new WSOP rule is moving towards this.

A counter argument to what you've described very well, is that if you make the live game too much like the online game then you may discourage many value weaker players who like having the freedom of acting up a bit and feeling that they have some special live "powers" at their disposal.

wsop should have done this ten years ago

honestly i don't even know who will kassaouf is- and the reason why is i've tried watching tournament poker - actually watch it not just ho hum espn ak vs qq yawn all in 15 blinds hands. it's unbearable. i haven't tried watching it in a few years because of all of the tanking.

i think you're wrong about the online players causing this change- a lot of them are then ones tanking the most!

like i said this should have been done 10 years ago. your first point is basically saying they took too long so they should just leave it how it is which makes no sense. better late than never.

as for your second point

1) i think you're wrong on why they're doing it
2) if you are right on why they are doing it that still doesn't matter. all that matters is this a good rule change and it is.

The real question you should be asking is what the hell took them so long!

Making people act faster is also not making the game more like the online game. they're still drastically different games still filled with live tells, people sitting on wait lists for an hour, drives to casinos so they didn't come to fold, people getting bored and playing too many hands 1 tabling etc. having them act in a more reasonable amount of time-that is still acting a lot slower than they have to online btw- is not making it more like online poker.

For spectators and players alike, the game would benefit from a shot clock. The only thing holding it back, I suppose, is the complexity of implementing it, especially in these massive tournaments with so many less experienced dealers.

@SageDonkey, regarding Will Kassouf, I really think you're over estimating a correlation between an effective strategy and the brilliance of the person implementing it in this instance. The reason we don't all look to increase our tournament equity through negatively affecting the enjoyment of our opponents is generally due to lack of desire rather than lack of ability.

No good discussion would be complete without that one guy opposing something 'because that's how we did it all the time'.

People drove all the time without wearing a seat belt and there was huge opposition to seat belt laws. That sounds pretty stupid 40 years later.

In poker, there was just no need for a specific rule about the speed of play because it wasn't an issue until a couple of years ago. Just watch video from Moneymakers WSOP win and see how fast players act. Compare that to more current videos. Your argument that new/inexperienced players play slow is not valid. The percentage of new players in any given tournament was way higher 15 years ago and still they acted as fast as everybody else.

When an issue arises, it should be tackled. There was no big reason to change the PAT rules in the NFL when kickers converted less than 90%. When they convert >99%, you either have to change the spot of the kick or remove the element completely. When every MLB game features a pitcher who pitches a complete game, speed of pitching changes is not an issue. When most games feature 5-10 pitchers, nobody wants to wait 5 minutes for them to get ready.

When almost every tournament poker player acted in a timely manner, there was no need to implement rules to prevent stalling. But that's clearly not the case anymore.

I do agree that one would need to have very few scruples and a high tolerance level towards being hated on to do what Will Kassouf did, and I agree that there are a lot of players who could do a similar thing if they really wanted to.

What shocked me though was people's inability to cope with it or counteract it and this is not unique to players at WSOP as, perhaps not now, but when Will first started out playing in London and the UK (circa 2010?) and used similar, less refined tactics, he was also hated on and it affected some players' play against him.

I will be honest and admit that I use all kinds of unorthodox tactics in live MTTs but they are more subtle and done in such a way that they are undetectable or rarely spotted. They are all within the rules, not angle shooting, and based on some lateral thinking and on some weaknesses in other players' armoury and weaknesses in the general convention of how most players approach a live tournament.

If Will had used his speech play in just 1 session of play very early in the comp and was busted half way through session two then it's reasonable that opponents in session two may still not have had time to prepare or discuss a counter strategy with friends, but it was truly amateurish and displayed a lack of normal basic human intelligence that players on the last 2 days of the WSOP ME had not worked out and implemented a counter strategy against him. Their strategy was to do nothing at all but still IMO be inwardly affected rather than use the information he was giving them, or to cry like a bunch of babies for their Mummy/Mommy (the TD).

I am not saying don't change it, I am saying change it but do it in a better way and more thoughtfully. Their way is too draconian.

So habitual tankers get less time to keep doing what they are doing while everyone else can now randomly be counted down from 10?

Seems right.

Give warnings and penalties for habitual tanking. The average player isn't going to be effected by a system that takes multiple warnings before a penalty, but could very well be counted down from 10 arbitrarily.

Nothing about this is 'draconian'. It's still going to take longer for the floor to arrive at your table than for a shot clock to expire.

Shot clock of 10sec preflop, 20sec flop & turn, 30sec river. 2 time chips per level. That would be draconian.

good change , no downside, the player still has to make it through the table's threshold for calling the clock, that will give them more than enough time