Doyle Brunson

It has become one of the most pressing issues in poker, whether an automatic clock is needed to halt endless periods of inactivity in tournament poker.The problem arises when players deliberately take several minutes to make decision. Other players will respect an opponent with an important choice to make, but when the delay is because a player is trying to increase their chance of outlasting another (and winning more money), then the disgruntled begin to speak up.

Two of those disgruntled players happen to be among the most high profile in the game, Daniel Negreanu and Doyle Brunson.Both command great respect and have sizeable followings online, where both have highlighted the issue. Despite not always agreeing on matters poker, politics and life in general, the pair agrees that something must be done.

Specifically they want a “shot clock”, like that used in basketball, in which each team is permitted a certain amount of time before they concede possession. A more obvious comparison is online poker, where each player has a set time before their hand is declared dead.

Negreanu tweeted as much after watching coverage on ESPN of this year’s World Series of Poker main event final which turned into a three-handed marathon.

@RealKidPoker: If there was any doubt about the need for a clock in poker this is exhibit A. This is painstakingly tilting for casual viewers….October 30 2012

Writing on his blog, Brunson, a two time winner of the event, echoed Negreanu.

“At least we agree that something has to be done about the slow play in the poker tournaments. It makes almost unwatchable TV and is very boring. A shot clock is the answer and the only question is how long can a player wait before he acts? I think one minute is plenty of time.”

It’s an issue that was discussed at length in an article on the PokerStars Blog during EPT Sanremo in October. In it, Neil Johnson,

PokerStars Live Events Specialist, detailed how the problem is one regularly discussed by tournament staff. Johnson, though, doubts that a shot clock is the ideal solution.

“The biggest hindrance to it from an organiser’s perspective is that the only way to run a shot clock is to put the dealers in charge of it. And that’s not saying anything bad against the dealer, but no tournament organiser I know wants to be putting the dealer in the position to kill a hand…The only people killing hands should be floor personnel. I want dealers watching the game, not staring at their lap at a little clock to see if a hand should be killed.”

As the article details, Johnson advocates a third way, a more rigorous use of existing rules requiring no additional duties for the dealer while allowing players to take time if a genuinely needed.

“There are a number of things that have happened in the last ten years in poker: asking to see an opponent’s hand has become very poor etiquette; calling the clock has become very poor etiquette,” Johnson said. “But the guy Hollywood-ing with jack-five, or even having a tough decision with pocket nines, is still eating my clock, which I’ve paid for…Some of these chronic two-minute guys, I would start hitting them with a clock. There’s nothing sacred about that. This is about players taking back their tournament.”

So could it be that the easiest solution is to let players play and call the clock if they suspect someone of slow play? It’s either that or a clock of some kind forcing players to act. The latter might not be all that bad if Brunson’s experience is anything to go by.

“We had a tourney in Lake Tahoe that had a 20 second clock,” writes Brunson, “and it was the most fun I’ve ever had in a tournament.”

Shane Warne at The Table in 2011

A cricket magazine might not be the first place you’d expect to see a report of the World Series of Poker, but when the subject matter is Shane Warne it’s perhaps not quite as surprising.

To those who don’t follow cricket, Warne is regarded as one of the greatest bowlers in the history of the game. Warne was a devastating spin bowler, whose capricious leg-breaks claimed 708 test wickets across 15 years playing for Australia. Dubbed “The King of Spin”, Warne cultivated a reputation for excellence on the field and a little notoriety off it, making regular appearances on the front and back pages of various tabloids.

Retiring from the International game in 2007, Warne, like so many former athletes, turned to poker as a means of satisfying his competitive urges. This summer he was once more in Las Vegas for the WSOP main event, watched from the Brasilia Room rail by his wife Liz Hurley. Standing out a little, she, in turn, was watched by several hundred Brasilia room players.

The article in The Cricketer, by Andrew Miller, recounts Warne’s experiences in Las Vegas (he was eliminated on the first day) while looking back on his cricketing days. In a telling sign of Warne’s commitment to poker the 43-year-old admits, in the limo on the way to the tournament, that he’s just keen to get started. “This is the same buzz I used to get from playing cricket,” he says.

While sponsored by an online poker site, Warne not in it for the publicity, but, it seems, because of an inherent love of the game. The concept of defeat doesn’t rest well and so poker comes first, so much so that in 2009 his four day run in the main event (he would finish a handful of places off the money), made him miss the first test of the Ashes in Cardiff, where he was due to commentate.

“Poker is his passion and his pleasure and, increasingly, a prism through which the character of one of the world’s greatest sportsmen can be viewed,” writes Miller, who also manages to capture the essence of poker, stripping down to its most basic parts before comparing it with cricket.

“It is not hard to see why Warne is hooked,” he writes. “In poker, as in spin bowling, the mind-games can be gladiatorial. Whereas the skill of a fast bowler is backed up by the threat of physical violence, even the wiliest of spinners have only their own wits to call upon. The pitch may help, just as a poker player can be aided by the cards that are dealt as the betting progresses, but ultimately each had is a battle of conviction: the projection of a belief that the cards you hold are better than those of your opponent and that at the crucial moment your skill will either maximise your winnings or – just as importantly – cut your losses.”

Conviction, skill and maximising opportunities. Again poker shows, in analogy form, its capacity to reach the places other sports and games cannot reach. We can expect to see Warne at the poker tables for some time yet.

Read the full article in The Cricketer magazine.