Any suggestions for getting a tanking player to make a decision without making him crazy after he's had a reasonable time to act?

For example, in a 1/2 NL game this weekend, four players saw a flop. After the first bet and while the second was thinking, the third player raised out-of-turn, and then the fourth player re-raised all-in. The dealer backed up the action to the second player, who thought a little more, and then just called the existing bet, knowing that there were two binding raises behind him if he did not change the action.

When the expected action returned to the second player, he tanked. After about three minutes, I said to the tanking player (who was to my immediate right), "I do want to call the clock, but I was wondering if you are getting any closer to making a decision."

The player went crazy and said that he would now never act, in this hand or any other, until I called the clock on him. He made good on that promise, refusing to act on any of the next three hands until his hands were killed by the floor. The floor had to call him away from the table to have a talk with him.

I generally do not like to call the clock on anyone, but sometimes it's necessary. I always take a ton of heat for doing so, and I haven't found a polite way to do so and avoid that result.

Any suggestions?

change tables if they bother you.

if you owned a restaurant, and a guy was in the store dilly dallying over the menu would you should at him

"hurry the **** up pal or i'm kicking you out in 5 minutes"?

If you are a serious poker player then you need to have a customer service attitude. If someone at the table is bothering you because they take a lot of time, smell bad, w/e, don't just cry about it and be a victim. Change ****ing tables. Change casinos if you have to. Move on with your life. But don't try to control other people or ruin their good time at the poker table just because you have an over inflated view of your own importance.

This is a tremendous breach of decorum. Someone is faced with a situation where there are two all ins following (and evidently was clueless enough to not realize the all ins were coming) and instead of letting him think about his decision you interrupt his thought process by talking to him? This is going to a) reset his whole thought process because now he's got to think about your comment and b) is extremely rude. Add to all this that he's clearly a fish that didn't realize the guys who went all in out of turn were going all in, why not just take a brief stroll and get a tiny bit of exercise or drain your bladder while he is making a decision? Big all in decisions should also be afforded more leeway. And esoteric situations where two people shove over the top of you also takes a little more time sometimes to figure out.

The one guy who speaks up or calls the clock does 7 other players at the table a favor. Everyone is annoyed by the guy who always tanks..

I feel sorry for you that your Monday morning sucks so badly that you feel the need to post things like that. Maybe get a different job or look for another forum to post in, in case 2+2 upsets you that much?

IDK, it never bothers me if someone takes a while to think about a big decision, especially if it's in a cash game & not a tournament.


what does bother me is people that take forever preflop to just limp in or call a small raise, but if he's making a decision for all his money, then go ahead & take your time.

Three minutes is an absolute eternity at a poker table. In this situation, it was aggravated by the fact that he already knew the decision he'd have to make when it got back to him.

Don't give the "warning" you gave next time; simply call clock and go from there.

First, there was typo in my original post... It should have read that I said "I do NOT want to call the clock, but I was wondering if you are getting any closer to making a decision." I'll try to edit my post if I can.

Secondly, with all due respect, I don't think any I said anything like "hurry the **** up pal," and I don't think calling a clock means that anyone has an overinflated sense of self-importance.

In this particular situation, the tanking player was an experienced regular at this casino. He knew what action was coming, and he was merely agonizing over whether he wanted to pursue his flush draw (the situation came up on the flop, it was a monotone board, and he held a middle-pair and the nut suited Ace). FWIW, this wasn't a $300+ decision for him, either. Since he had both the remaining players covered, this was a $100 call to win a $350 pot with two cards to come. Pretty straightforward situation.

I rarely call a clock, but sometimes I think it is warranted. Every other player at the table was mumbling about how long it was taking this player to make his decision. I'm merely the one who spoke up.

No, but you did talk to him. When someone is trying to solve a difficult problem, and you interrupt their train of thought it is counter productive if you are trying to get them to hurry up because you have now slowed them down while they process whatever you were saying, have their predictably outraged reaction, and then, eventually, after all that is done, get back to trying to solve the difficult problem facing them.

So change tables. It's not exactly that hard. You get up, walk to the floor, get a table change, and move on with your life. Why make other people feel bad about the way they play poker? Why waste your time and energy trying to get people to do things that they are not going to do? Why complain about it on the internet afterwards? Be productive and proactive; don't let other people control you, your emotions, or your game. If you are aggravated in a situation, that is going to spill back on your game; better to avoid the aggravation than sit passively through it while bitching and moaning to everyone around you.

How about this. Don't call the clock on anyone, ever.
Very bad etiquette and lack of patience. If he is, in fact, taking too much time, someone else will call the clock on him.
By calling the clock, you ARE essentially saying 'hurry the intercourse up.' Very rude.
Just chill and take a break.

Yup. I love threads like this where some people insist that you should provide customer service to the one and only customer who is disrupting the experience for everyone else.

Looking out for the other customers is customer service.

For a valid analogy, the dilly-dallier would need to be selfishly preventing other customers from ordering, and the OP would have had to have said "hurry the **** up".

But you knew that when forming the analogy.

Just to be clear, your suggested method of delivering customer service is to abandon your customers. How is this at all a reasonable response to what madlex said?

It has not happened too often when I'm in a hand, but when it does I let the Dealer call the clock. The way I see it, I'm holding down a chair and the Dealer runs the game. Maybe where you play the situation is reversed.

Generally dealers aren't allowed to call a clock.


In any event the tanking in poker has gotten way out of hand. The only way to fix it is to change the culture of poker. You need to start thinking that wasting time is rude and calling a clock is not rude. If people would get out of the mindset that they are the bad guy if they call the clock we might be able to get this game moving.

Omg El o el. But what if all people read your posts.

IMO:

If you feel like you need to call the clock (and here, it's not unreasonable to feel that way), then just call the clock -- there shouldn't be anything wrong with that as long as you're not abusing it. If you don't want to, then don't and find something else to do. It feel like the passive-aggressive method of threatening to do it is the worst way.

That said, this guy is clearly a toolbag for making the floor kill three of his hands in a row, so who cares what he thinks?

This post is exactly and perfectly wrong.

In deference to the mods I will try to phrase this as nicely as possible, but in both this thread as well as the "selling chips to a felted player" thread, it seems like a significant part of the problem is that you don't understand how offensive certain actions are and then are surprised when people flip out.

Calling the clock on someone is a BFD. The fact that you say you do it "rarely" suggests you've done it in the past - just don't. Or at least not until you get a better idea of what bothers people.

To be clear, I think it's actually ridiculous that anyone spends more than half a second thinking at a 1/2 NL game. If you consistently find yourself in tough situations at the softest poker game in the world, you can take a break and Google poker strategy and be faster than some of these people make decisions. But, hey, if someone feels like $50 is a lot of money and my expert all-in just put them in a really tough spot, I let them have all the time they need to make a decision.

Be sure of your times before calling clock. Waiting on someone else makes time seem to go slower than it is.

I know that calling the clock upsets people. That's why this thread is about whether there is a way to do it that minimizes the impact.

This particular situation seemed like a pretty clear abuse of everyone's time. The player in question tanked twice on this hand. First, he acted so slowly on his original decision that two players acted out-of-turn. He clearly understood the significance of their acting out-of-turn because he then took about 45 seconds to decide what to do after the dealer backed up the action to him. When the entirely anticipated action returned, he then tanked for 3 full minutes on a very straightforward decision. At 2:30 am, everyone at the table wanted to play poker rather than watch this guy figure out if he felt like chasing his flush.

If there is never any justification for calling the clock in a cash game, then the right should be removed from the rule book. I'm actually ok with that, and I respect different opinions about whether calling the clock in a cash game should be prohibited.

But this thread is about something different. This thread is about whether there is a way to do it and avoid or minimize an eruption when invoking the right to call the clock is appropriate under the circumstances.

The guy taking a little extra time to make an easy (or tough) decision is exactly who you want in the game. Why run him off with a douche move.
Just to reiterate: when you call the clock on someone you are essentially
saying 'hurry the intercourse up.'..... not cool.

If he's in the middle of a hand, either call the clock or don't. Otherwise, I like the option of passive-aggressive snark between hands. If he is a reg who is a habitual tanker, try to get the rest of the room to call him by a nickname that highlights how slow he is. Like, if his name is Fred, start calling him Fast Freddie.

The real solution is to make clock calling less taboo. This means calling the clock more often, which is easier said than done. Also some people truly don't mind. (As a cash game player, I personally don't mind waiting for long tanking. I'm sure it's different for tournament players.)

Regardless, the floor shouldn't have let him spite tank three more times afterwards. They should have put a stop to it immediately, assuming they were aware.

nonsense. constant tankers ruin the good time for everyone.

to top it off this dick then intentionally tanks 3 hands in a row wasting everyone's time at the table.

as for people saying you want guys like this in the game you often don't. tankers are usually break even miserable to be around players who suck the fun out of a game.
if it's some huge drooler tanking then obviously let him.

It's pretty easy to get a good idea what bothers people: Sit in a 1/2 game, wait for a player to tank for 5 minutes and take a look at the other players at the table. You'll see a couple annoyed faces from people who came to play a game of cards on Satuday evening instead of sitting around to wait for someone to make a decision.

I honestly can't remember a home game where anybody took more than 1-2 minutes for a decision, even if it was a big all-in.

What's the difference to a game at a casino? At the home game, the players are either friends with each other and actually do care that minutes of tanking bores everybody else or they fear they won't be invited again if they wasted too much time.

The other day at Walmart two women blocked the whole aisle with their carts while chatting. I waited for 10-20 seconds before saying "excuse me" to bring their attention to the fact that there was no way for me to pass them. They both gave me a super ugly look before moving one of the carts as if it was my fault that I couldn't get through.
To me that's not too different from somebody getting upset about other players calling the clock on them after they spent an unreasonable amount of time to make a decision.