To slightly oversimplify, it’s a $4M decision. So getting it 1% better is worth $40,000. So to spend 18 minutes to improve it by 1% makes for a little over a $120K hourly.
I think 10 minutes should be enough to get as precise as possible even after allowing for a minute or two to kind of clear the adrenaline out and lock in.
This is a real problem, tanking HU for the Main really isn’t. But even with the real problem of slow play that is pervasive in tournaments, it’s not the 5 minute tanks that are killing it, and those are very rare. It’s the people wasting 25 seconds preflop for a standard open or standard fold that should take 3 seconds to think about and 2-3 seconds to grab chips and put them in. And a 30 second shot clock often creates more of that, not less.
2013 Main Event I was at the TV table on day 6 when Carlos Mortensen had the most absurd tank I’ve ever seen. It made the broadcast, and Norm and Lon roasted him over it. They did a commercial break mid hand for the broadcast. I think it was about 15 minutes and only ended because someone called the clock on him. He was pissed that the clock was called on him.
It was like 5 am WPT Niagara and my table of 5/10 PLO had just broke and we merged with the other one. The euro on my right hadn’t played a hand yet so I just didn’t want to get it in potentially dead vs him. Even if he has 10JQdd I’m well behind.
Between the pressure, adrenaline, and lack of sleep deep in the Main Event, I’m sympathetic to taking more time. But in general it’s hard for me to imagine more than 2 minutes being beneficial, since I go pretty deep into my thought process, feel like I took 5 minutes, and check and it’s been 90-120 seconds. So yeah you can do a lot of thinking in 2 minutes.
Yea its the main event sure, but anything more than 10 min is bonkers imo.
Personally I’ve probably cost myself money tanking in big spots where I’m more likely to talk myself out of making the correct play because of the dollar amounts involved.
I’ve been skimming the last 50 posts and have no idea what clovis said and I’m not going back to look, but I’m just going to go ahead and assume this response is an expert troll.
He said he doesn’t like to play tournaments because of tanking. Tanking isn’t a problem in limit tournaments.
I genuinely like playing limit. I was in Vegas for three weeks and probably 75% of the tournaments I played were either fixed limit or mixed limit with both limit and big bet games.
The only time I’ve ever been tanking and not thinking was summoning the courage to make what I knew was the correct hero call for about a $23K pot at effectively 5/T (smaller game with multiple straddles).
I opened to 90 with QQ, three calls.
Flop (365) J96r
Check, check, I check to an action player who’s been playing crazy. He bets $1,500. I think a bit and call.
Turn ($3,365) 9x
I check, he jams for a bit over $9,700. I tank about 3 minutes and call off. He has T8o and I hold.
I had essentially made my decision after like 90 seconds, but given the size of the bet I ran back through the hand and the numbers a second time, which probably took another 60 seconds. I then spent about 30 seconds working up the courage like, “Am I really heroing off like $10K into $3K here with an overpair that blocks a bunch of the most obvious bluffs?”
Lol yeah, definitely can’t fold in that spot, even if its a lot of $$.
I remember tanking in a similar spot in a 5/10 game against a maniac for like 4k when I was in my mid 20’s and everyone at the table rolled their eyes because it was clearly a snap call, but I was under rolled.
When i tank i usually go over how happy id be if i call and am right vs how sad i would be if i call and am wrong vs how devastated id be if i folded and was shown a bluff.
Yeah the tricky thing was he could have a ton of combinations of 9x, but also a ton of Jx, so there was just no way to fold but I wanted to double check. I was rolled for the game, in theory, but not as big as it had gotten when that guy sat deep.
But nobody rolled their eyes. Even though I was probably the poorest player in the game, they didn’t think it was an easy call at all. It was a great game lol…
I laugh at this cause they used to argue back in the day whether anyone but the champ should get paid or not (lots of degens were in favor of winner take all back then)
that and TV prefers bigger jumps at the end though I guess now only poker nerds are watching the coverage at this point anyway
really though, tournaments should be gambling first and foremost, most sites went the other way to try to keep people around but it made it quite a bit more boring overall
The WSOP doesn’t facilitate it and there’s no way I’d trust a stranger in that spot. That said, if they straight ICM chopped it and played for the bracelet, they’d probably still be playing for a couple million in EV.
