ITH Poker Forum

[csimps13]

Hi there,

I am wondering about players who lag in a MTT.

Specifically, the experience I had was in a 0.10 (360 player) MTT Turbo (5 min blinds). Tournament started and we had one player at the table who let the time bank run out every single time it was his turn to play. We had only played 2 hands when the blinds went up. And he just kept doing it every single time.

After a while a couple of us queried him in chat saying it seemed he was lagging for the big blinds and he just said bad luck, it's what I'm doing.

I had a look at his stats on pokerrankings after busting out to him (on a shocking river beat - but that's another story) in 133rd place and whilst he seems to land in the money quite regularly, his payouts seem woeful to me for the time and effort, ie: only 1 top 10 finish in the last 4 months and generally only doubling or trebling his buy-in.

So I guess I'm wondering a couple of things:

1. What are people's views on this kind of play?, and
2. How do you play against it?

To be honest, I kept hoping to get shifted to a more dynamic table but it never happened, as everyone else at the table was playing fairly tight and not busting.

Many thanks in advance for the advice.

C

[royze1]

I don't let the stalling get to me. It's their turn to play so whatever is fine, fast, slow, meh. Guys who do this other than on a bubble are so few and far between it's not something I'd get worked up over. As a matter of fact you can use it to your benefit to work on hands, dig into stats of other players or if you aren't multitabling already go ahead and open another table up. No way I'd let anyone tilt me over slow play or even say anything to them, but if I saw someone chatting him up I'd pay attention to them for tilting.

How do I play against someone stalling? The same way I play anyone. I look for good spots to chip up.

I wouldn't read a whole lot into only 1 top 10 in the last 4 months. If you play long enough you'll go through some prolonged dry spells and a bad 4 months will feel like a mosquito bite compared to other dry spells. I'd look at his overall numbers and trust my reads more than I would his ability to make final tables over a relatively short span. Of course I'd also likely be looking to see if he's a target to push around and be taking pots from. Another thing is 4 months play for some is a ton of tourneys and for others it's a handful so I'm assuming he's some type of reg.

[Zenjo]

Perhaps the guy was just trying to recreate the experience of playing live for everyone?

[mrmudgey]

I agree with royze1. It is annoying but you can't let it affect your play. You see less hands before you enter the middle stage of the tourney, which will increase the luck factor, but that evens out in the long run.

[csimps13]

Thanks for the feedback. In hindsight I think I let it bug me off my game. With everyone playing so tight, there were definitely some opportunities to shove and chip up but I was getting so frustrated that I missed them - maybe that's part of his play.

Cheers
C