Why Do So Many People Stall?

[marley81]

Well what if you are having internet connections, and are not stalling? How can you determine which is which? By no means should someone be penalized for AOL being as slow as it is :0.

[marley81]

that always seems to be the response to that comment, I know I have experienced that more then a few times.

[JARID]

[ QUOTE ]
Ironically, though people that aren't stalling at the table get annoyed, they benifit as well as they also move up the ladder. It does get frustrating see so few hands per level due to the stalling.


[/ QUOTE ]

A player with a average to good size chip stack doesn't benefit from stalling. If I'm at table one and see 5 hands per round and a guy with an equivalent starting stack is seeing twice the hands per round at table two, I'm at an extreme disadvantage. All the stalling does is impede my ability to accumulate a bigger stack. The people that bust out ahead of me, would have busted anyway, only I would prefer to have put myself in a better position to deal with the people that are left.

-Jarid

[Cleveland Guy]

No - this is one of my peeves about pokerroom.

Their software is set up to only go hand for hand for the final 2 tables.


So if money starts at 60, you can stall. but if money is only for the final table - no stalling.

[david050173]

[ QUOTE ]
Doesn't the tournament go hand for hand when you are that close to the money? Stalling does no one good, because you have to wait for other tables to finish anyways.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stalling still has value even in hand for hand mode. Imagine you are at a table where the stacks are
UTG 10k
UTG+1 10K
UTG+2 10K
UTG+3 2K
UTG+4 10K
UTG+5 1K
SB 10K
BB 10K

Lets say the blinds are at 800/1600 and will go to 1000/2000 in 3 mins and you are the 1K stack. If by stalling you can force UTG+3 to be all in when the blinds come, you increase the odds of you moving up. Multiply this effect over 5 tables and you can sometimes move up a prize level or two. Turbo tournaments provide an extreme example of this where if you are a small stack, if you can stall long enough you can often get the blinds to the point where all the stacks have to go all in to cover the blinds. At that point it becomes a crap shoot which is about the best a really small stack can hope for.

[jeffraider]

Last night in a Party super satellite everyone was stalling, but it was fine with me because I was the monster chip leader at the time, and pretty soon when we got to hand for hand everyone was spending half their stacks on blinds. It really just created a bloodbath for everyone except me and one other guy who had some chips, and we went from hand for hand to the money in no time flat.

[Jurollo]

I didnt read this whole thread but here is my theory...
Stalling is NOT an effective way of getting into the money for a few reasons, by doing this you increase blinds faster relative to hands you see and secondly once hand for hand elimination rankings are made my starting chip count. So, for short stacks stalling hurts you more than helps you due to increased blinds to number of hands and only helps the big stacks in the long run. -EV!
~Justin

[HoldingFolding]

I've always thought there must be a better way to do this. More along the line of chess clocks. I would prefer something like 15 seconds to make your decision, if you take longer than that it eats into your total time bank. Which could be set at, say, 5 minutes for the whole tournament or 2 minutes per hour.

In this situation, it would be disadvantageous for the majority of people to stall, you would not want to use up your time clock, because you might need it for future difficult decisions.

Small stacks close to the bubble might still want to stall, but it would only be one person at the table and then for a limited period of time.

A system like this is absolutely essential before I consider a speed tourney again. In fact, you could turn it into an interesting speed chess type situation, by only allowing 10 seconds for a decision and a total of a 2 minute time bank. That would effectively make the blinds last longer, but still make it a very short skillful competition.