Quote:
Originally Posted by Yeodan
Yup.
There's a few people at my club who do this, it's pretty annoying.
But I guess if you do it consistently and only when you're going to play (call/bet/raise) it's fine if it's not 15 seconds every single time.
5 seconds should be plenty in most cases?
Five seconds isn't enough because sometimes we might actually need a while to think of hand combinations, perform math calculations, etc. I'm not sure 15 seconds would even be enough. I mean it might deflect 90% of timing tells but some of the most important decisions are also those that take a long time to reach. If we take 15 seconds 90% of the time and 15-60 seconds 8% of the time and 60-180 seconds 2% of the time, then it would be fairly easy to correlate what's meant by the times we act extra slow. And a disproportionate number of the 8% 15-60 second actions take place on later streets during larger pots so they're more significant. The 2% 60-180 second actions would take place almost exclusively in huge pots on the river, making their tells much more significant than the frequency would suggest.
Seems like for bet timing tells, in order to deflect them perfectly you need to spend the max time you would ever take on a given street for every action you take on that street. So if I take max 15 seconds on the flop, I must always take 15 seconds. If I take max 60 seconds on the turn, I must always take 60 seconds. If I take max 180 seconds on the river, I must always take 180 seconds.
Some high stakes pros actually play like this (or take even longer). In low stakes games it's a recipe for being hated. I'm just going to take 3 - 5 seconds most of the time and hope nobody notices why for when I sometimes take 15 or more.