Action Clocks Will Eventually Slow The Game Down Rather Than Speed It Up
A Main Event Day 7 Surprise
Just over a week ago, the World Series Of Poker dived head-first into their umpteenth controversy of the Vegas Summer when they surprised the 62 remaining players in the Main Event with an ‘Action Clock’. For 57 years, there had never been any fixed time limits on decision making at the Series. Time was policed by a combination of the players at the table and the floor. All of a sudden, there would be limits of 20 seconds for first decisions, 30 seconds for subsequent decisions and only six 30 second time-extensions, ratcheting up the pressure for what was already going to be a stressful day of poker.
Time has become a trending topic in poker of late and with good reason. Stalling, whether it is approaching the money or around pay-jumps, has become the bane of the tournament director’s existence and certainly needs to be addressed. For a long time, the high-roller circuit has used Action Clocks. Two and a half years ago, the WPT brought them in just before the bubble of their World Championship event. This year, PokerStars have adopted them across their EPT and Open festivals.
Time being a limited commodity adds another level of sportification to our game. Managing one’s time becomes part of the strategy. That’s not a bad thing at all and this article is not going to advocate for getting rid of Action Clocks per se. What it will address, however, is when they should be used and what I believe will become an unforeseen consequence of them, one which will significantly undermine their intended purpose.
The Players Speak Out
Whether it was pressure from their broadcasting partner ESPN or just a reaction to some particularly gratuitous tanking the previous day, something gave way and the WSOP made the surprise decision to deploy an Action Clock on the morning of Day 7 of the biggest poker tournament in the world. Rule 80 of the WSOP permit the organiser to make such a drastic change to the format but that was little comfort to the remaining field who had toiled for a week to reach the point where they were playing for hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity.
With a couple of notable exceptions, it was an unpopular decision. The community weighed in with mostly negative takes and there was a spirited debate about whether professional or recreational players were worse affected. Shaun Deeb made the excellent point that, with respect to their ability to identify ladder jumps, professional players were hurt more by the change. Others made less cogent arguments about recreational players benefitting less from time because they think less deeply. Most people followed the simple and hard to refute logic that experienced players with a wealth of heuristics in their mind’s eye would need less time to come to a decision. French pro Romain Lewis was still in the mix in the Main Event and he was not impressed:
In the first orbit of the day, elite pro Patrick Leonard was put in the blender for his tournament life. He ultimately landed on the correct decision but only after exhausting all of his time-banks. For the rest of the day, he was essentially on the clock for every decision, time ticking down, dealers counting him down. It’s a brutal predicament to be in and the consequence of a being put in difficult spot, a few minutes for which nobody at the table would have begrudged him. If a man famous for 30-tabling the highest stakes online can burn all of his time-extensions right away, what chance does a recreational player have of not being rushed into a bad decision that they will regret for the rest of their life? Leonard spoke eloquently on the subject to Jeff Platt after his bust-out in 32nd place:
The Action Clock
First and foremost, I don’t think that poker tournaments with a lot of recreational players should have Action Clocks and even though it has a $10,000 buy-in, the World Series Of Poker Main Event attracts a lot of recreational players. If there is stalling in the Main Event, then the tournament organisers need to police it by hiring more staff. As I outlined in my last article, I believe that the industry is in danger of over-stepping on this issue and I do not think that operators should curb time-wasters to the detriment of people making genuine decisions for huge amounts of equity.
When should an Action Clock get introduced? The close of late registration is the perfect point, (hopefully) well before the money. What should the time-limits be? 15 seconds in a turbo on first action and 20 seconds thereafter, 20 seconds in other tournaments and 30 seconds thereafter. How many time-extensions should a player receive? Two 30-second time extensions in turbos, three in normal speed side events and four in Main Events. They should receive one additional time-extension at every break so there is an opportunity to accumulate them as you go deeper into the tournament.
Built into this model is an incentive for players to play quickly and rack up time-extensions, which, if they want, they can use to maximise their chance of a pay-jump, avoid the big blind when a table break looms or manipulate a blind level jump. A difficult, potentially time-consuming hand might be around the corner but that is a risk that they are free to take. Their time is theirs to use as they wish. When an Action Clock is in play, there should be no more policing or intervention from opponents or the floor.
A Future Problem?
In May, I played the EPT Monte Carlo Main Event. At the end of late registration right at the start of Day 2, the Action Clock was brought in and all the players received three time extensions. There were four breaks at the end of each ninety minute level, after which we all received one additional time-extension. By the end of the day, I had seven time-extensions and I would be receiving another at the re-start of play on Day 3. In other words, I didn’t face a single decision that required more than 30 seconds. I did, however, use my full 30 seconds per decision a lot when in hands and I want to explain what I was doing, why I was doing it and why a lot of people following suit might mean action clocks actually slowing the game down rather than speeding it up.
Whenever I looked down at a hand that I was going to play, I took the full amount of time before making my action. Virtually none of that time was spent thinking about the decision to open or 3bet. Rather, the time was spent thinking about my response to further action. Even if I was simply calling in the big blind with a hand that was a slam-dunk defend, I used the time to do a mental checklist of where the position the raise came from, the depth of all the stacks behind and whether ICM considerations might be in play, changing the shape of my opponent’s range.
Looking at post-flop play, let’s keep going with the example of me calling from big blind. Here, there are certain boards on which I will have a 100% checking frequency. On these boards, I would normally check within 1-2 seconds. However, with the presence of the Action Clock, I didn’t want to waste my 30 seconds with an instant tap of the table. Instead, I thought about my response to bets of various sizes that might be incoming. I also thought about the cards on which I would lead if my opponent checked back. If he bet, I likely already knew what I was going to do but rather than take that action, I used my 30 seconds to think about my response to further action if I was going to take an aggressive line or the next street if I knew I was calling. I took a similar approach for all decision points on all streets until the end of the hand.
Worlds That Never Come to Pass
What I am trying to get across here is that, for fear of running out of time on a later street, I would spend the entire 30 seconds contemplating future potential scenarios. I was no longer giving think-time to what had just happened but instead to what might happen. Without an Action Clock, I would not have done this. I would have just reacted to actualities. As a result, I took far longer than I would have in each hand and slowed the game down in a way that I would not have were I not under time pressure. To put it simply, making time such a valuable commodity made me treat it as such.
I predict that as time goes by and Action Clocks are deployed in a wider range of tournaments, a greater number of players will realise that thinking ahead at relatively simple decision points reduces the likelihood that they burn a time-bank later in the hand. They will recognise that saving 30 seconds in those spots will give them 30 seconds more for a long tank that might be deemed necessary if they are in a really tough river spot on the final table. That’s just sensible time-management.
The problem is that when a critical mass of players figure this out, then the average length of a hand will go up rather than down. Sure, stalling will be curbed and think-time will be limited in a fair way, but, as two players max out their Action Clocks each and every time, projecting into and preparing for worlds that never come to pass, two minute hands will start to routinely take four. At this point, we will have to reckon with the fact that the Action Clock, introduced to speed up the action, is the very thing that has slowed it down.
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