Three Minutes And Your Dead....Poker's "Shot Clock"

Its been quite a few months since i last made a post on here, and i appologise for that, largely the reason was that nothing relevant was coming up and the fact uni has started up again (Workshop tomorrow run by the group...should be fun :D) but something recently has got me debating...

Poker is a game of tough choices, niche circumstances, tough players and defining moments, some can think lightning fast, some take stupid amounts of time...this is true of any game you play, be it a simple five pound home game, be it a freezeout at your local casino, or be it on tour or at the world series...everyone has seen it, everyone has seen the extremes...but now the topic has become front page news, ive sat down and thought about it alot.

During the world series final this year, 3 handed play took as long as entire days can take....yes, two people busting took as long as 3000+ could, now obviously im not drawing direct comparisons between the two, but the simple maths is that to bust two people took nearly TWELVE HOURS....people on the east coast got a good nights sleep and still technically missed nothing!!

Now alot of pro's and amateurs alike have been calling on the idea of a "Shot clock", by which i mean a forced timer on people's actions...say for example in a hand, no matter what, you have...say 60 seconds to make a decision, don't make it by then? your hand's dead. simple as.

One of the main advocates (what a surprise, he's an advocate/opinionated for/on almost everything) is Daniel Negreanu, ive recently been listening to a video interview over on Card Player that he did this week (You can find it here) about his idea of a shot clock and the reasons behind it...im going to outline them all with my opinions, along with personal takes...now im fully aware i wont get even 1% of the views he does, nor will i get even 1% of people giving a damn....but its a public forum, damn me if im gonna voice an opinion xD. At the end i will draw my own conclusion so if you wanna go all tl;dr on me, feel free, my views at the bottom.

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1. One tank, 2 minutes after that - Now i like this idea, obviously people are going to have that one moment in their tournament which is, as i said earlier, a defining moment. After that they wont get another chance and he will give them a standardized amount of time, which under current tournament rules is completely allowed...now a few things i would say is the obvious question to Daniel (in the 1,000,000-1 shot he reads this)...is that once per day? or is this one tank for the entire comp? because id be getting intensely pissy with you if i drew your table day 1, and thought it was worth my tournament life, then you decide to hound me on the final table...2 minutes is enough there yes, but not always, and far less than normal that's for sure...

2. We can read people for longer than 2 minutes - Now this is a fair argument, i have been known personally to stare someone down very deep into a tourney, and its been a solid four minutes before they started to crack...and those cracks ultimately have led to decisions which won me the hand, i would hasten to add though that you don't need that long for EVERY hand, there are some players in the poker world that take 30 seconds to decide if they are gonna call the big blind...now that's completely ridiculous, at the end of the day all of this is situational, and in the end no matter who you are you cant standardize each instance or each hand...its impossible to truly quantify each decision made without being in that persons head...

3. Self policing vs TD policing - Now this is one of my own that im thinking to the masses...with the current rules in place, in a traditional tournament that's not shot clock specific, we would have to personally enforce this idea every time someone overstepped their time limit...now i personally want to focus on the players, focus on their movements, the way they handle their chips, my hands, my choices...its less of not being bothered but more about prioritizing things, and im sure i share the sentiments of others in that we are all there to play poker, not to enforce our own "clock" on everyone else, every single hand...sure its not alot of effort per say, that said i wouldn't make it my top priority either...another factor to consider is that is the "police" fair minded or an asshole? sure, two minutes into one final minute seems reasonable...but what happens (and it does, we've seen it) if you get "that guy" who calls the clock on you for what they think is an acceptable amount of time because they make decisions by then...which may happen to be 20 seconds, id be going insane if i got the clock called on me that fast (Can you imagine Salaburu calling the clock on people every time he would have already made a decision? like the hell?!)

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My take on this and my ideas - The idea is sound and i agree with the principle that people, on the whole, take far too long for their decisions...the problem i have with the current solutions is three fold...one is the simple fact that self policing is not only time consuming for the players, inconvenient for all those concerned, but also open to some SERIOUS bias amongst some players (count all your chips for an all in at a WPT final table, then call the clock literally two seconds after? you sir...make me sick), it should be used as a tool to keep the game flowing, not as a tactic for others to exploit...my second issue that the idea of "one tank" is just not enough, nobody runs through a tournament and only has one time where he has to seriously sit down and think...ive always been a stalwart for the idea that you have five game changing decisions per day...now obviously some are simple, but there is no way one tank would ever suffice...my third issue stems from my first and actually partially contradicts it, if we were to implement an actual shot clock, who enforces it? do we burden the dealers with even more work? does every casino have to buy a bunch of stopwatches/clocks? do we just offer this in specific tournaments and defeat the idea of this discussion altogether?

Solution - 90 seconds to make a decision on any given street, with three "Extension Cards" which can be traded in for an extra 90 seconds in that decision, but only one card per street. Extension Cards are re-distributed at the beginning of each day, and during a final table these times become 120 seconds with a 120 second add-on...to be implemented by clocks on each table, operated by a simple button the dealer presses next to them, along with a five second countdown.

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Now my solution is relatively sound, it might not be practical for every card room to get the clocks with proper buttons and all that, although that said picking up simple stopwatches these days costs less than the rake you get off a player in a simple comp! so the benefits far outweigh the costs...it gives people the chance to use extras where required, adds a new level of depth to the game in the fact you only get three cards per day, there is the very real possibility you could use one on the flop, turn and river....cool story bro...now what are you going to do for the next 9 hours? plus the simple fact is that 30 second comps work all over the place, literally 0 people can moan with triple that time...not to mention 90 seconds is where most people call the clock anyway, this just removes that extra minute unless the person REALLY needs it.

So, thats my take on this entire debate, feel free to comment below, or message me at @PeterThorpe1991 or even message me on my Facebook page, apart from that, have a fantastic christmas and i shall write more ramblings soon!