Clocking in from Panama

Hola from rainy Panama City where I’ve been since Friday, having arrived in time to help cover the PokerStars Championship Panama series for the next week-and-a-half.

Had a chance this morning to get out and about a little, then again at lunchtime when my friend Nick and I were able to find a very busy local establishment to enjoy a Sunday brunch of Panamanian fare. The temps are warm and the air humid, and right now as I write a thunderstorm is pouring down sheets of rain outside. (Meanwhile, check out what happened back at the farm this morning -- nuts!)

Inside the Sortis Hotel and Casino the PSC continues with the $50,000 Super High Roller, a “shot clock” tournament in which players have 30 seconds to act, unless they want to use any of their three “time bank” chips that give them an extra minute each to be a decision.

I’m not sure if I ever have covered a tournament using a shot clock before -- if I have, I don’t recall it -- but yesterday made it seem an awfully attractive addition to tournament poker. My sample is a bit misleading, given that the players (all high rollers) are pretty much without exception both experienced and skillful, and the dealers are also top notch, making the incorporation of the clock (a hand held time piece) seem not at all intrusive.

From a reporter’s standpoint, the shot clock is very welcome given the way it obviously sets a limit on the amount of time any one hand will take. It’s nice to know something is going to happen relatively soon whenever you get involved watching a hand, and to avoid ever getting lost in those endless tanks that end in folds and little to report.

These guys (the regular participants in SHRs) generally act fairly quickly, anyway, of course. I could see how the shot clock wouldn’t be so welcome among more varied fields. Then again, I can also imagine everyone getting fairly used to them, and don’t necessarily see their introduction as being that much different than other experiments with structures designed to make events play out more quickly. I’m remembering not being so crazy about such an idea three years ago or even more recently, but I could warm to it.

Get over to the PokerStars blog to see how the $50K SHR is (rapidly) playing out and everything else happening in Panama.

Photo: courtesy Neil Stoddart / PokerStars blog.

Tanks for Nothing

Was watching a lot of the EPTLive coverage today from Sanremo as the Main Event played down to just 16 players. Lot of big names in there, including Victoria Coren Mitchell who is short-stacked but the only one left with a chance to break the decade-long streak of no double-EPT winners ever.

The EPTLive shows are terrific in my estimation, with James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton always entertaining. I like hearing Marc Convey and the PokerStars bloggers on there, too, as well as the players they recruit to come do commentary. Very easy to get locked in when watching and not want to turn away, especially as the tourneys wind down toward the latter stages.

There was one small hand early in the day on the TV table this afternoon involving Dinesh Alt (who eventually went out in 25th place) and Raul Mestre (who survived and is second in chips overnight). Not at all a remarkable hand, but on the turn Alt tanked for nearly two minutes before folding, during which time Hartigan and Stapleton eventually had to fill the space by talking about the length of time he was taking to act -- not just on that hand, but generally.

A little later I clicked over to the High Roller updates on PokerNews and noticed a hand reported involving Davidi Kitai and Jonathan Duhamel in which Kitai apparently spent more than 10 minutes making a river decision before folding and showing he’d had a strong hand with trip aces on a board with no flush and only one unlikely-looking straight possible. The pre-river action wasn’t described and it looked like a legitimately difficult decision, but that’s still a lot of time.

There’s much talk these days about tanking and players taking inordinate time to make decisions, with that “shot clock” idea continuing to get kicked around with varying degrees of seriousness.

As I was watching the Alt-Mestre hand, I realized that I actually like the way the pace of poker will alternate between fast and slow. Sure, I get impatient as the next guy when at the table. Even when reporting sometimes I dread those hands with super-long tanks that end with anticlimactic folds and therefore (occasionally) a page full of scribbles that aren’t necessarily even worth reporting.

I’ve mentioned before here how I’m no fan of the shot clock idea in poker, and I think one other reason why I don’t like it would be the way it would eliminate this variety in the pacing of the game, which adds a kind of unpredictability to it that makes it more enjoyable to follow.

All things considered, then, I don’t mind the tanks. I also like Stapes’s jokes during the long wait for a player to act.

(So who couldn’t read that post title without thinking about Caddyshack?)

On the Clock (It’s a Matter of Time)

All of this “shot clock” talk happening these days in the poker world -- and gathering a lot of momentum of late -- has been interesting to follow.

In fact, I’m finding the whole dynamic of discussion-slash-debate among players and tournament organizers that seems a constant presence in poker diverting. Seems like everything is on the table these days, perhaps more a function of social media than any specific poker-related development.

Rich Ryan reported on the vote among players that happened this week at the World Poker Tour L.A. Poker Classic, the one that resulted in 80% of players saying they favored the introduction of a “shot clock” on the WPT next season. We had a piece on Learn.PokerNews discussing the topic as well. That pic, by the way, is an inset from one taken at an earlier LAPC event a couple of weeks ago in which a clock was used.

I find it hard to drop the scare quotes because the term isn’t exactly descriptive. The clock being proposed would limit the amount of time a player has to act, and shooting hasn’t really been a common feature of poker since the Old West. Still, everyone knows what is meant by the idea of a shot clock in poker, and indeed the subject has been discussed for more than a couple of years now.

I personally don’t like the idea at all. I understand the problem of excessive, unnecessary tanking and definitely would encourage measures to prevent it. But introducing a shot clock -- especially a 30-second one such as was used in that A$100,000 Challenge event at the recent Aussie Millions and was being discussed at the WPT LAPC -- seems to me like it would introduce several more problems (and probably not even satisfactorily solve this one).

Looking at it from the perspective of a non-pro player, I also dislike the idea and imagine many other non-pros feel the same. While people can adapt to just about anything, my sense is facing the prospect of playing with a shot clock would prove a big turnoff to newer players.

I guess I also find the idea of a shot clock a little too great of a violation of the “natural” rhythm of the game, which like baseball contains a kind of beauty precisely because of the way it accommodates individual differences when it comes to the pace with which each person plays. (Of course, there’s a similar discussion happening in baseball, too, over whether or not some time restrictions should be introduced to shorten games.)

All of which is to say I think a shot clock in poker could be interesting here and there, but wouldn’t like seeing it become a standard part of the game. That said, it is starting to feel like the introduction of this shot clock thing in tournament poker might be only a matter of time (pun intended).