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.

[slapdash]

Re: Running the clock down I wasn't suggesting that there was anything wrong with doing it. If the tournament is designed so that it's a profitable thing to do, then people will do it, and should do it. But I think it would clearly be for the greater good if there were some good way of making it unprofitable, to stop people doing it. In the tournament I played, it probably resulted in the waste of ten or more man-hours.

[GaF]

Re: Running the clock down I don't like it, and am not proud of myself, but I do it :sad The assumption is that others do it, and if you dont then you ARE at a comparative disadvantage. I've seen people complain about hand for hand play, BUT it's far better (and quicker) than tournaments which don't have it... Is tough finding a solution - maybe track the number of hands EVERYONE plays individually and give a longer break to even the number of hands played, or more frequent breaks - every 10 or 20 hands or so.... then levels could be based on number of hands.... Something I've also wondered - I'd quite like to see games online where the blinds are recalculated EVERY hand as a proportion of the average stack .... that way you could enter games based on their "M", for an average stack (ie the amount of play). It could even be controlled by reducing the M over time - but it would be more controlled....

[AJ]

Re: Running the clock down I do this as well. I do it in live games as well, it's good because it can force small stacks to tilt. Agree that blinds based on a number of hands would be fairer though

[Football-Tipper]

Re: Running the clock down I had to do it yesterday as blinds 800/1600 ante 50 and I only had 3600 left, i was in 50 place with 51 remaining and top 50 qualifying