Poker Pros Call Time On Slow Players

One quality that all successful poker players must possess is plenty of patience. This is especially true of live poker due to its slow speed which might then frustrate someone into playing more hands than he should. In addition, players must contend with a whole load of other distractions, such as other players who seem to take forever to make a decision.
In poker tournaments slow players can also be a real problem for keeping the game equitable, as other competitors are disadvantaged as they try to stay ahead of the ever increasing blinds. That’s why “calling a clock” is used as a simple method to keep the action and tournament flowing.
However, if certain pros like Doyle Brunson and Daniel Negreanu had it there way a clock would soon become an integral part of live poker to speed up what otherwise could become a slow, tedious game. This point couldn’t have been highlighted more that at this year’s WSOP Main Event, which reached three-handed play before grinding to a stalemate, which eventually was broken after 11 hours of play.
Unfortunately, this became a spectacle for all the wrong reasons as far as TV entertainment was concerned, with Daniel Negreanu describing it at the time as “painstakingly tilting for casual viewers.”
Negreanu then went on to extol the benefits of using a clock in poker, and now poker legend Doyle Brunson has lined up in Negreanu’s camp, recently blogging: “At least we agree that something has to be done about the slow play in the poker tournaments. It makes almost unwatchable TV and is very boring. A shot clock is the answer and the only question is how long can a player wait before he acts? I think one minute is plenty of time. We had a tourney in Lake Tahoe that had a 20 second clock and it was the most fun I’ve ever had in a tournament.”
Whether poker tournament organizers will heed the pros’ advice anytime soon remains to be seen. However, as next year’s WSOP approaches, they will surely be taking a good look at ways to avoid the grind-a-thon that was the 2012 WSOP Main Event final table.