The facts:
1. I am not a fast player. Where recs snap call preflop, I take 5 seconds to consider.
When I play a hand postflop, I take about 15 sec if I have a decision. I never snap anything.
2. Once in about two hours, I get in a tough/marginal spot and take a long time.

The opponents view:
This is the slowest player on the table. They are right.
This guy ALWAYS tanks. Completely biased and occurs if I have two or three tough spots in a short timeframe.

The aversive reactions:
Calling „time“ jokingly after 10sec or officially after 30sec.
Calling me out, talking something to me every time after 10 seconds.
Ganging up.

My view/reaction
I am completely fine with time being called after one minute, it is the distraction before and around it that drives me nuts and makes me take even longer.
I completely understand the importance of a faster game for my winrate, but if it is my money on the line, I obviously need to do the right thing.
Sometimes I talk to the guy interrupting me, telling him that he makes things worse, but to no avail.

The question:
How to best and assertively react to this during the hand or after???

KidPoker said it best:


.

A little self reflection would be good for you bud.

Your question shouldn't be "how to best and assertively react to this??????" It should be "how do I speed up?"

Thanks for the top answer.

Realistically, there's not much you can say without escalating the situation, so the answer is to learn to ignore it and not let it drive you crazy.

I wonder if enough people complain about a player slowing down the game will the pit warn them, then ban them, etc. They are decreasing the profit for the casino(which is little enough I'm told) and making the game less pleasant for others so the casino should be motivated to do something.

Does taking twice as long as everyone else help you make twice as good of decisions and win twice as much money?
if not it may be in your best interest to work on acting faster so more people are excited to gamble.
Slow players make true gamblers antsy and they go upstairs to play a fast paced game where the hands and the up and downs come much faster.

Eh, it'd have to be really egregious for this to happen. It's generally not worth the hassle for casinos to do stuff like this.

I've played for a long time and have only encountered one person who plays slow enough to warrant banning and crucifixion.

If the OP is regularly taking heat for being slow he *is* that person(esp if he is playing in the lowest limit games where folks tend to be more easy going).

Maybe there are lots of such folks in cities where tournaments are more common - they aren't around here.

If it's costing the casino $10/hr in rake it's easily worth a ban which is free.

Great biased answers, as expected.

My point was, however, that the times I am slow are pretty infrequent from an objective standpoint. It is only a problem of selective observation in the eyes of some action junkies and some regs that are worried about the 5% drop in their winrate, which they then perceive to be 50%.

Is 15sec considered to be a massive tank?
It only applies to spots where I really have some decision.
As I play only 20% of pots and have some decisions in maybe half of them,
my time wasted is realistically limited to 3 minutes per hour, which amounts to a slowdown of 5%!

My other point was how to deal with this on a positive note.
Like apologizing or somehow engaging the action players to keep them from getting bored

If you’re tanking every hand just to fold or call it becomes an irritant to a faster paced game. Usually I wait out these players because they are not good players and felt out within an hour or two.

There is nothing wrong with being a thinking player but if you are being called out all the time in the length of time it takes you to play hands, then you are slowing down the game.

Have a plan of action before the hand so it doesn’t take you so long.

MOST hands and boards basically play themselves live, especially at smaller stakes. Rare is the instance when there is a real decision that takes 15 seconds. If you find that you are routinely taking fifteen seconds on more than one board per orbit, then there is more that you need to be looking at with respect to your game.

Seriously...take a moment when you are NOT playing poker and look at your watch. Look at how long 15 seconds really is and ask yourself whether you REALLY need to be wasting that time on a regular basis.

I don't understand, why aren't you snap folding trashing like 28o and J2o preflop? Why take any seconds at a low level game?

Is disagreeing with you just biased now? People are allowed to hold other opinions.

And 3 minutes per hour, as you pointed out, comes out to 5% of the total time playing being watching you tank. That's significant. You're really downplaying how irritating that is.