It just isn't. 5 minutes is plenty of time. There are other people at the table to play poker.

No excuse for taking five minutes with any decision, imo. But most players aren't really thinking through the situation; they almost always end up doing exactly what they would have done if they followed their first impulse. They are working up the will power to fold what they perceive to be a big hand, or the nerve to call with a marginal one. This makes the wait even more irritating to me--that we're wasting all that time dealing with their emotions. If they were actually thinking, I wouldn't mind nearly as much.

Perfect storm of tilt:

I open AJ in MP to $10 with a horribly spewy image, get 3 callers. Flop comes A74. I bet $30 into $41, get a call from BTN who I've been abusing for the last thirty minutes or so. Turn comes J. I bet $70 into $100, BTN calls. River comes T. I ship for the $110 left in BTN's stack. BTN snaps with KQ for the nuts.

Having a terrible image and then running into the top of villains' ranges is the one form of run-bad that still gets me steamed up, so I'm already starting to tilt. BTN then drops this nugget: "You just kept pushing and pushing, I had to take a stand".

BTN insta-quits and heads to the cage.

headexpode.gif

lol yeah, guy was making a super obvious fold. Not sure what he had, but in his shoes i'd probably have folded sets.

Pro tip from the villain: "When you're going to make a stand, having the nuts can be helpful."

Kinda hard to argue with, lolololol.

played fine imo. don't fret, just a 1 buy-in loss.

You a lawyer empathy?

I used to be. I quit in 2007. Long story I won't bore you with. I loved it for 10 years, and hated it for the last 2, so I walked away. Had no particular plans, was killing time during the day playing online, one thing led to another, and I wound up making an increasingly satisfactory second income from playing and coaching. By 2010, when we needed my income to be sufficient to support us alone, it was. Then along came the DOJ, and bent me over a table and anally raped me, and I am starting all over again.

Sidenote: The ONLY time my wife has ever been irritated about my passion for poker is when we were doing our 2010 taxes and she saw that I had made nearly as much playing as she made in a real job, and that I had made more teaching people to play a game than she made in her real job.

Decent night last night - up $150 at 1/3 after 6 hours. Lost $200 in a big spot where I am still not certain about my decision - have to do some poker stoving tonight and look this one over again. The fish that won that hand went on an absurd heater and ran $300 into $1800 with my hand against him being the start of it. I did milk my profit from him, but could never get him in the jimjam to take a big chunk from him.

Scenario: I'm in Vegas and I go on super monkey steam tilt. I just got served my 4th bad beat so I decide to flip the table. I get arrested.

Cops take me to the station and book me. Tell me I get one phone call.... my response, "Actually, IMA need to log onto to my 2p2 account and get ahold of Mpethy."

Mpethy comes and bails me out and saves the day. Walks me out like I am a high profile celebrity - jacket over my head so the paparazzi can't get a pic. Balla status.

I have never had the clock called on me, and I do agree that 5 minutes is a long time. Depending on the situation, I have no issue with someone taking a long time in a big spot. IME, fishy type players who think they are better than they are do this most often, and I don't want to do anything that may cause them to rack up.

I did tank a long time last summer when facing a $750 preflop shove into a $350 pot (great 1/3 game that night!), as I had to really work out the action and the tendencies of the player involved. I am not sure if I went 5 minutes, but I probably did, and I did appreciate the other players letting me puzzle out what was going on in that hand.

Calling the clock is an amateur move. Its a "tell,tell" sign that your hand can't be beat.

WOAH WOAH WOAH!!! STOP THE PRESSES!!!!!

I just posted in two different threads both with some maths...... I JUST POSTED SOME MATHS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Please someone hurry and check, I still have time to edit my mistakes so I don't look like a fool!

Possibly.
In my games, 90% of the time the clock is called by a player not in the hand.

I must admit I started to call clock on a kid a couple of weeks ago who tanked on a $5 river bet into $24 limped pot that checked down until the river.

Lol@ $5, yeah some kid call the clock on a hand I played and he was not involved. Guy called my bluff with 1 second left. I was so pissed, because I tried to argue that the guy hand was dead. Board was KK8,9 in a 3bet pot I shoved 10s guy vs a button raise, villain flips over QQ.

i wasn't involved in the hand.

My favorite is when a raised pot on the flop goes bet,raise and then a 3rd super tight player with TPWK decides to hem and haw for 10 minutes pretending he might call. Then he turns over his hand and says "guess this is no good, I thought you both might be bluffing?"

When I hem and haw and end up folding I just apologize to everyone and say, "My bad, I thought the cameras were rolling, otherwise I would of folded 5 minutes ago."

What does TT mean? It's not on the acronym page

probably ten-ten

Waiting on players to make trivial decisions is by far the worst part about playing live imo.

At a home game I used to play at, only players involved in the hand could call clock. A lagtard raised his button big for the 7th straight orbit, and I L/shove from UTG. Folded back to V who tanked *forever* and gave huge amounts of speeches.

Table started begging me to call clock on him, and I said something to the order of "I'm not going to do that, it's a big decision and I'm not going to disrespect him. Let him have the time to decide." Table gasped and almost at the same time two people said "damn, he really wants a call!/He's afraid to do anything to make (V's name) fold."

Actually, I was bluffing (against the range I assigned AFTER he started tanking. Originally I'd thought I was way ahead of his range) and was afraid that as the clock ran out, he'd say "F-it, I call." As it turns out, he finally folded AKs face-up, so I'm very glad I didn't call clock...

Bad ethics imo.

tbf to the guy, it wasn't trivial. After that long though, you've had enough time.

**** that, some people need to have the clock called on them. If you are taking forever for a trivial decision, or even a difficult decision (5 min +) you are holding up the game.