Guy refuses to pay time pot.

[TomBrooks]

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Anyone who responded to this thread by saying they dont like time pots doesnt like money. Time pots are a huge advantage for the expert player since he or she plays far fewer pots in a full ring game than his or her opponents, making it most likely that he will rarely have to pay time. In the long run these savings add up, and keeping your opponents in the game longer by not bleeding them of their chips by paying time every 1/2 hour is another great advantage. TT [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

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I thought this was an excellent point I hadn't thought about before.


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...time pots make the good player forgo many otherwise profitable situations [because you're going to tend to play tighter in time pots.] So even though you fold and avoid actually paying the time pot, you're still "paying" for it because you've given up EV in order to avoid it.

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This makes for an interesting consideration though. How much tighter is it appropriate to play in time pots? How long does it usually take for a time pot to get paid? i.e.: How many hands are you likely to alter your strategy for?

I'll note that from my own experience I've rarely done poorly when playing very tight, while I cannot say the same about times I've played on the loose side. (To me, tight would be 20-24 VPIP at a Six Max Limit Table or a Full Ring NL game.)

[Justin A]

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10 handed, $6 time charge, $60 in time total.
TAG player maybe wins 7% of the hands (instead of the 10% 'average')
.07 * $60 = $4.20
Round up to $4.50 because his pots are more likely to be big enough to make the size cutoff to pay 1/2 the time pot.
So, in the long run, the TAG will pay about $9 in time using time pots, instead of $12.
$3 an hr.
Even if you round down instead of up, you get a savings of about $4 an hour.

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For one thing, most time pot games are 20/40 and up, so $4 per hour isn't much at all.

Secondly, as I posted above the savings is less than that because of the times we are forced to fold otherwise profitable hands. This is not a negligible amount compared to the savings you're talking about.

[AngusThermopyle]

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For one thing, most time pot games are 20/40 and up, so $4 per hour isn't much at all.

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Didn't say it was. Just tried to quantify the amount and compare it to TT's figure of about $7 hr.

[RR]

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I really cannot imagine why you don't like time pots, someone like you who plays for a living should relish the extra $12/hour or so saved. I guesstimate that over the course of a lifetime the expert player is probably paying an average of $5/hour by playing in time pots if the standard time charge is $6 per down - a significant savings.

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I know some very strong players that suggest paying your own time and stealing blinds while the others are playing tight to avoid winning a time pot. I think Ray Zee may have suggested this line many years ago (I am going by memory, and have no idea how to search for it).

[Justin A]

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This makes for an interesting consideration though. How much tighter is it appropriate to play in time pots? How long does it usually take for a time pot to get paid? i.e.: How many hands are you likely to alter your strategy for?

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A lot tighter. A typical time pot is going to be about a small bet, so take a small bet out of your profit for every time pot you win. Look at poker tracker and see how many of your hands average greater than .5 BB/hand. Looking at a database from a while back, only 9 hands are above .5 bb/h for a full ring game. Those hands are AA-99, AKs, AQs, and AKo. AKo is at exactly .5 bb/hand, which means assuming my sample is ridiculously off(1,192 times dealt), AKo is a breakeven hand in the average time pot.

These numbers include rake in online games, but the majority of these hands are at 10/20 and 15/30, with an average rake of a little over $2, so about 1/5 of a small bet. So you can probably add a couple more hands, but needless to say you still need to fold a lot of hands that you'd normally play.

[TomBrooks]

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This makes for an interesting consideration though. How much tighter is it appropriate to play in time pots? How long does it usually take for a time pot to get paid? i.e.: How many hands are you likely to alter your strategy for?

[/ QUOTE ]

A lot tighter. A typical time pot is going to be about a small bet, so take a small bet out of your profit for every time pot you win. Look at poker tracker and see how many of your hands average greater than .5 BB/hand. Looking at a database from a while back, only 9 hands are above .5 bb/h for a full ring game. Those hands are AA-99, AKs, AQs, and AKo. AKo is at exactly .5 bb/hand, which means assuming my sample is ridiculously off(1,192 times dealt), AKo is a breakeven hand in the average time pot.

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Hi Justin,

I think that line of reasoning might be faulty. It's true there are few hands that average more than .5 BB/hand. But most of the time, you get away from most hands at some point postflop without a win. It's only the times any particular hand wins that it is going to be affected by the time pot deduction.

Therefore, you need to deduct the time charge from the average size of a winning pot, not from the average BB/hand.

Then, if you averaged that reduced winning pot size with all the times you didn't win, it would have a much small effect on the average BB/hand than simply subtracting .5BB/hand.

I think another way of looking at it would be only if every pot was a time pot would subtracting .5BB/hand be correct.

[AngusThermopyle]

Agree with Tom.
If hand X wins say 40% of the time, your overall expectation is decreased (with time pot) by .40 small bets, or .20 big bets, not by .5bb.
So it depends on both the profitability of the hand and how often it wins. AKo would still be profitable with a time pot in effect (I assume your AKo does not win 100% of the time).

[GiantBuddha]

Yeah, it's not even if hand X wins 40% of the time. It's if hand X wins a large enough pot to pay time from, which should be less than that "40%".

[afish]

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Anyone who responded to this thread by saying they dont like time pots doesnt like money. Time pots are a huge advantage for the expert player since he or she plays far fewer pots in a full ring game than his or her opponents, making it most likely that he will rarely have to pay time. In the long run these savings add up, and keeping your opponents in the game longer by not bleeding them of their chips by paying time every 1/2 hour is another great advantage.

TT [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]

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As others have posted, there is no way time pots result in a "huge" time savings for expert players. In addition to the calculations posted by others, I'd note that although loose players win more pots, those pots tend to be smaller. I'm not sure that expert players win much less than the average number of 5BB time pots. Also, as one poster noted, the experts have to give up situations that would be +EV w/o a time pot, thereby indirectly paying time.

The main advantage of the time pot for the expert is speeding up the game. In AC 20-40 games, at least, my experience is that time pot fights slow down the game too much. Also, any rule that makes the casual player feel like he is being scammed is bad for the game. Finally, in the 20-40 game, a time pot can sometimes kill the action, with everyone folding until time is paid.

I can assure you that I like money. I also think time pots (at least in the 20-40 game in AC) are a bad idea.

To the original poster: Results please?

[Stuart Scott]

It's all about the Benjamins