Does this situation look familiar to you…

Ok, so the wait may not have been this long, but it was pretty damn long and you were waiting on someone to act, or maybe the guy was you, and you were chatting with a friend who stopped by your table and you didn’t understand why the other players were getting angry.

Let me explain: your pause for a chit chat, when it’s holding up the game, is actually costing everyone at the table money.

For those familiar with playing cash games and have no idea about tournament poker, let me let you in on some tournament etiquette – don’t hold up the game.  During a tournament, the blinds are generally timed, meaning, the cost to play and stay in hands tend to double, sometimes every 20 minutes, sometimes as quick as every 10, but no matter what, the cost of playing hands will traditionally double after every blind, so potentially your conversation will cost all the players at your table an additional 1 or 2 hands at a discounted rate, until the minimum changes.

Yeah, don’t be that guy.

For the players that feel absolutely helpless in this situation, there is something you CAN do, which is call “CLOCK” on the player.  What does CLOCK do?  I’m glad you asked.  If a player calls CLOCK on another player whose turn it is, and who is most likely  holding up the hand, the acting player will be given 60 seconds to decide on their move, or automatically be folded out of the hand.  You cannot call CLOCK within the first minute of another player’s turn (some may consider it just to put players on tilt, but sorry, there are parameters) and to call out CLOCK too often is a jerk move, however the option is there, if someone is taking way too long to make up their mind.

If you want to catch up with your friends, do so after you’ve folded your hand or during the break, but be courteous to your fellow players, and don’t hold up play.