Running the clock down

[slapdash]

I just played a satellite for the Poker Stars Sunday Warm-Up. 219 runners with 50 to qualify. When it got down to about 70 left, most of the people at my table were running down their clocks to slow down the action at the table. Even when it went to Hand-for-Hand play, there were still a lot of people doing this. Blinds were going up every 5 minutes, so if you had a decent but not dominant stack, so that you could get by another round of blinds even if they increased a couple of times, it was probably in your interest to slow things down so that the blinds went up more quickly relative to the number of hands, and so more of the smaller stacks wouldn't have enough for the blinds when they came round. I don't think there's anything wrong with doing this, and I'll do it myself if I think it will help, but it does get very tiresome. I started to wonder if, in tournaments like this, it might be better: (a) To introduce Hand-for-Hand play earlier, and (b) To increase the blinds on the basis of number of hands played, rather than time, when Hand-for-Hand play starts. Thoughts?

[Valiant23]

Re: Running the clock down As annoying as it can be it's a tactic that I advocate. At the end of the day there are only so many factors that you can influence when playing a tourney so if people are aware of the time factor when playing then thats fair if you ask me. If I'm a big stack then I could use it to exert more pressure on the short stacks without playing a hand and if I'm short then I'm hoping others will bust out before me.