A Partial Solution to the Hand For Hand / Stalling Issue

[ZeeJustin]

In order to speed up tournaments, I believe hand for hand should be done in batches of five hands. IOW, each table will play five hands before stopping to wait for other tables to finish their five hands. Order of finish will be determined by the hand # in which a player was eliminated rather than by time of elimination.
Has this been suggested before?
Thoughts?
At the very least this would speed up the play a little bit.

[jba]

not a bad idea, but it can create problems when tables collapse. for example, table a and table b each have 8 players. table a quickly plays their five hands in the time table b plays one hand, and three players are eliminated from table b in that hand. it is not fair for table b to play the next four hands short.

[Nick-Zack]

[ QUOTE ]
In order to speed up tournaments, I believe hand for hand should be done in batches of five hands.


[/ QUOTE ]

There is always some idiot that doesn't understand hand for hand and stalls anyway. Having to wait for him to stall for 5 hands in a row would give me a chance to get some laundry done.

[ADBjester]

The best solution is the toughest to implement. When hand for hand implements, also go to blind levels of X hands per level. i.e. you're at Level 11 in a satellite, blinds 1000/2000+100, with 5 minutes to go in the round (10 minute rounds)... and HFH begins. The blinds will now go up every 10 hands instead of every 10 minutes... and level 11 will end after 5 more hands instead of 5 more minutes.

One can argue either for blinds to resume being timer-based when HFH ends, or for the entire balance of the tournament to be played out on a hands-basis rather than a minutes-basis. Either way, this makes stalling COMPLETELY irrelevant to strategy. People will still do it, but all it does is extend the time required to play now.

Jester

[MicroBob]

yup. stalling isn't JUST about the issues involved in hand-for-hand.
it also has to do with waiting for the next limit to begin.
To that end, it can actually be correct in some satellites to stall even when you're hand-for-hand or are even down to just 1 table (I have actually done this).

It is also correct that some players will continue to stall when it makes no sense for them to do so.
And some players even stall when it is completely incorrect for them to do so (example: if on the button and they hurried-up then they could afford to pay the blinds on the next two hands...but by stalling they have just created situation where they are now going to be busted).

to that end, the stalling doesn't bother me THAT much.
Because I feel that I implement the strategy decently...whereas MANY players actually hurt themselves.


I've also been in Stars tournaments where one of the players is disconnecting frequently when it's down to 1 or 2 tables and they are always given another 240 seconds to re-connect.
This is frustrating and annoying and in one instance I wrote to Stars about it (and they were very polite in explaining why they did it....but that didn't stop the fact that the guy who got knocked-off 10x in an hour REALLY slowed down our play).


I think the best solution would be to stop giving each player SO much time on each hand.
Give them a longer clock...but only 5 or 10 seconds befote that clock starts.

As it stands now (on stars)...
I believe you get a warning after 15 seconds...
and then the clock starts after another 15 seconds.

After a certain point in the tourney I don't think each player should get a full 30 seconds before the clock starts.

[ QUOTE ]
After a certain point in the tourney I don't think each player should get a full 30 seconds before the clock starts.

[/ QUOTE ]

IMO, that's the only way to fix the problem.

[Benholio]

[ QUOTE ]
In order to speed up tournaments, I believe hand for hand should be done in batches of five hands. IOW, each table will play five hands before stopping to wait for other tables to finish their five hands. Order of finish will be determined by the hand # in which a player was eliminated rather than by time of elimination.
Has this been suggested before?
Thoughts?
At the very least this would speed up the play a little bit.

[/ QUOTE ]

I dunno, lets say we are on the bubble and extremely shortstacked (2xBB). There is one more shortstack on another table. Our table is playing faster and is on hand #4, while his table is on #2. Its my turn to act on the big blind, I'd really like to know what happens to the other guy before making my decision. It would be be in our advantage to stall to not get ahead of the other table to avoid this from happening.

I think they could stand to shorten the criteria for H2H play, though. Instead of doing it when you are x number of players from the money/final table, chop that number down a bit.

[ZeeJustin]

I agree 100% w/ your shorter clock longer time bank suggestion, but that's been discussed before.