Stars response on a chronic staller, with no reason to stall.

[ryanghall]

So I'm playing in the $1050 Barcelona satellite, and on my table is a chronic staller. He has been doing this since he showed up to the table. We're obviously nowhere near the bubble at this point. Every hand that he's not involved in.. yes, EVERY hand, he runs out his time.

So I email Pokerstars and make a simple request for a poker manager of some sort to come to the table and ask him to hurry up with his decisions. I thought this would be done and that it would probably scare him enough to hurry up his decisions a bit making the whole table happier.

I get emailed back and told that Stars won't do this and that this player isn't breaking any rules.

Well so what? I believe there's a certain amount of etiquette that should be followed and that it would immensely help for them to tell this player to hurry up. So we shoot a few emails back and he continues to say the same things. Finally, I get this email which I consider to be pretty smarmy and condescending to me after I tell them I'm rather pissed off and ask who has taken over for Lee and what their email is so I can contact them about it:

Hello Ryan,

The position formerly held by Lee has not been filled at this time but there are a few people who have taken those responsibilities. However they are not going to tell you anything different. Your simply not understanding there is no violation here so we cannot take any further action. EVERY player is given the full time to act on their hand and is their decision if they wish to use that full time.

Again I am sorry your frustrated but you are going to have to accept that this time is given and they can use it even if you would like them to act faster.


Regards,

Trent
PokerStars Support Team


Oh, I'm not understanding? Is that it? No, I just think the rule is horse [censored] and needs to be changed. If someone did this in a live tournament God knows what would happen to them. After someone times out a certain number of times they should be given less time to act, and it should continue to decrease. Nobody should time out more than, say, 5 or 10 times in a tournament so I don't see the issue with a rule like that.

Also, this response seems to just encourage horrendous etiquette.

Perhaps Stars will be pleased if when I 9 table my Sit and Gos (where they make a killing off me in rake, but that's a whole other story), I just decided to time out every time I was going to make a decision where I'm not involved in the hand. It would certainly be to my benefit as people would be tilting and calling me with bad hands trying to bust me.

It wouldn't make their site very nice to play on.

Anyway, I don't know why I posted this, I guess to come up with a viable solution for situations like this cause Stars sure doesn't seem interested in doing so.