Stalling is Cheating
Hi, my name is James Chen. I’m a professional poker player, and I would like to start a stand against stalling in poker tournaments.
So very quickly for those unfamiliar, stalling is when a player intentionally takes more time than necessary when it’s their turn to act. Typically, stalling occurs near the bubble or a pay jump of a tournament, when a player is trying to play as slow as possible, and avoid going through the blinds as much as possible, in order to increase their chance of cashing or making a pay jump. An example might be a pro taking an excessive amount of time to fold 82o from early position in No Limit Hold’em.
Stalling disrupts the pace of the game, and makes poker less enjoyable for professionals and amateurs alike, but it’s unfortunately becoming more common in tournaments. Not that long ago, the poker community shunned this behavior. But these days, you’d typically find multiple stallers at a table, stalling hand after hand near any bubble or pay jump. Stallers are being called out much less compared to a few years ago, and even many players who dislike stalling have resigned to accepting it as a symptom of tournaments that they just have to deal with. Honestly, I think we got to this point because a sizable amount of the community adopt plays they see made by other players without verifying whether they’re correct. “Players are opening 3x, so I’ll open 3x. Players are opening 2x, so I’ll open 2x.”
However, I believe it’s not too late to reverse the trend, and to help reverse the trend, I’m going to try and address the most common arguments given by players who stall.
“It’s not against the rules”
First and foremost, I believe the vast majority of stallers do so because they actually don’t know it’s against the rules in most poker tournaments. WSOP, Triton Poker, and the International Poker Rules, used by partypoker, all have rules specifically against stalling. The official TDA rules, used in PokerStars Live events, also state that players should act in a timely manner. Worth mentioning is that stalling is prohibited even in Triton Poker events with a shot clock.
Furthermore, even if stalling isn’t explicitly mentioned in a set of rules, as long as hand-for-hand play is implemented at any stage of a tournament, we can logically deduce that the organizers are against players stalling to gain an advantage. It’s just impractical to implement hand-for-hand play throughout large portions of a tournament, and doing so would also be at the expense of the pace of the game.
Breaking the rules of a game in order to gain an advantage is, by definition, cheating. If you’re someone who believes stalling should be allowed in tournaments, you can try to lobby to have the rules changed, or you can boycott events that prohibit stalling. But right now, according to the current rules in most poker tournaments, the indisputable fact of the matter is that stalling is cheating.
Like I said, and hopefully it’s not just optimism on my part, I think the vast majority of players who stall are not cheating intentionally, just unaware that it’s against the rules. But now you do know it’s against the rules, so the next time you stall in a tournament, you would be cheating intentionally.
“It’s plus EV”
After establishing that stalling is against the rules, I feel that EV shouldn’t really have a foothold in the conversation. But since EV considerations are so etched into us as poker players, people sometimes get carried away. I’ve actually heard a pro defend his stalling in a WSOP high roller by saying that he only cares about EV and not the rules. Now, I don’t think he really meant it. I think he just blurted it after being called out, so I’m not going to name him, but EV being the fallback justification is quite representative of the reasoning behind most undesired behavior in poker. It’s obviously a flimsy justification, otherwise everything from marking cards to colluding would also be justified.
To be honest, I might even respect you more if you marked cards rather than stalled in tourneys. Don’t get me wrong. I’d still absolutely despise you, but you’d at least be a bank robber instead of a children’s candy robber in the hierarchy of cheaters.
In terms of long term EV, and “the good of the game” so to speak, having stallers at your table is such a drag on the tournament poker experience that doing our best to eliminate the issue would certainly welcome more players to play tournaments more often.
“Others do it”
Some players dislike stalling themselves, but still choose to do so to not be at a disadvantage to other stallers in the field. But that’s like choosing to angle shoot because others are angle shooting. I can understand not wanting to compete at a disadvantage, but this type of response actually worsens the state of the game by making undesirable conduct more common. To help maintain a level playing field and prevent the situation from exacerbating, the better response would be to collectively call out those breaking the rules instead of joining them.
As poker players, we’d never justify a bad play with “others do it, too” and we should keep this perspective not only for strategy, but for conduct as well.
“It’s too hard to enforce”
Another argument stallers often give is that it’s too hard to enforce the rules against stalling. I agree there can sometimes be difficulty in determining whether a player truly has a tough decision, but in the majority of instances, regulars are able to tell whether an opponent is stalling quite easily based on how experienced the player is and their playing speed compared to other stages of the tournament. Experienced players also recognize the situations where stalling is common, making it even easier to identify.
More importantly, stalling is hardly unique when it comes to rules that are difficult to enforce. For instance, there’s much more ambiguity in trying to determine collusion, and I’m sure no one would say we should just allow collusion in poker if we can’t catch every occurrence of it. Instead, because of the difficulty in enforcing these rules, players should be more actively helping staff identify possible offenders.
Another example comparable to stalling is when a player dodges the blinds by taking an unnecessary amount of time to move tables. Although players are required to take their new seats promptly, the rule is difficult to enforce, especially in big fields. I’ve never heard anyone say that dodging the blinds is fine, and it’s inconsistent to justify one offense and not the other if enforcement of the rules is the concern. When you think about it, not taking your new seat immediately is just a different form of stalling, and both are attempting to gain EV by not playing. One could even argue that stalling at the table is worse, because you’re also preventing others from playing the game.
Stalling doesn’t naturally feel as wrong or uncomfortable to many players, compared to breaking a rule like marking cards, and it’s easy to make the mistake of thinking it isn’t a big deal if one hasn’t given thought to the common arguments for stalling in other poker contexts. I hope that by addressing these arguments, I was able to illustrate why none of them are compelling.
Unethical players should be afraid of breaking the rules. Not the other way around, where ethical players have to worry about being at a disadvantage because they aren’t adopting practices that hurt the game.
The decisions we make today set a direction for the future evolution of poker. If we accept stalling to gain EV as a valid poker strategy, think about how the game might evolve in more than just bubble and pay jump scenarios. Any player at a table they think is too tough could stall as much as possible to decrease the number of hands dealt where they’re minus EV, and make the game higher variance by waiting for the blinds to increase.
This is not just a hypothetical but already starting to happen. An accomplished high roller pro once complained to me about an occurrence in his recent WSOP Main Event run. He told me an amateur at his table was ridiculously stalling every hand because the table was pro-heavy and tough. I asked him how the amateur stalling to reduce hands and gain EV was any different than regs stalling near bubbles and pay jumps to reduce hands and gain EV. He couldn’t answer and took back his harsh criticism of the amateur.
So if you’re someone who thinks stalling is a legitimate tactic, I urge you to consider the consequences. Pretty soon it will be standard for players to employ this “tactic” if they get a bad table draw, even if it’s level 1 of a tournament. I can’t see this devolved version of the game being enjoyable to play, and the popularity of tournament poker would almost certainly suffer as a result. Fortunately, we are not at that point yet. Poker is still taking shape, and things like big blind ante and shot clocks have only recently become common. However, it would still take proactive effort, by us as a community, to prevent the equivalent of faking an injury in football, or intentionally fouling in basketball become standard practice at the poker table.
Personally, I have never stalled in a tournament, even when it was in my interest to do so. During the Triton Macau Main Event where I was the second shortest stack on a 270K USD bubble, I still snap folded all the hands I knew I wasn’t going to play. This is not going to change going forward. I’d rather quit playing tournaments, than adopt the lamest method of cheating ever conceived in poker. I had originally drafted this piece late 2019, but then live poker went away and it didn’t seem like the right time for a discussion on stalling. Now, with live tournaments starting to return, this WSOP seems the perfect opportunity to start off on the right foot. If you’re someone who truly loves poker, and cares about preserving the spirit of the game, I hope you join me in taking a stand, by not stalling and calling out the stallers. If you’re someone who has stalled in the past, and I’ve helped change your mind on the issue, I’m more than glad to have you on #teamnostall. My goal here isn’t to shame anyone for what they’ve done in past tournaments, but to eliminate the prevalence of stalling in future tournaments.
In conclusion, it’s not always possible for every undesirable action to be exhaustively listed in the rules, and as time goes on there will be new issues we currently haven’t thought to cover. That’s why in addition to having rules, we still need to count on sportsmanship and etiquette to help keep the game pleasant. In the case of stalling, which is against the rules in most events, it should be even more clear that players should be calling out the behavior to help staff maintain the integrity, pace, and enjoyability of tournament poker.
Addendum 1
I’m not just referring to stalling here, but the poker community needs a database that tracks players’ past offenses, including warnings and penalties received. A dark Hendon Mob if you will. If someone has a history of stalling, maybe the floor doesn’t need to start with a warning and can just kill the hand or give a penalty right away. If a player does something questionable in a high equity spot, the floor will be able to see if they have a clean record, or if they have a history of doing questionable things in these spots, to better assess the situation.
Obviously, there needs to be a lot of thought put into a system like this to ensure that it’s as fair as possible and can’t be abused. But right now, there simply isn’t enough deterrent for breaking certain rules besides a player’s own moral compass, since warnings are given first, and warnings are typically reset in a new event or series. An angle shoot only has to work once to affect a tournament, and only risking a warning is too tempting for unethical players. A database as described, would provide tournament staff with additional information, so they can evaluate whether a harsher penalty, or even a ban, is appropriate for an offence.
Unethical players should be afraid of breaking the rules. Not the other way around, where ethical players have to worry about being at a disadvantage because they aren’t adopting practices that hurt the game.
Addendum 2
This piece has focused on stalling in live tournaments. As far as I know, there aren’t rules against stalling in online tournaments, so stalling online wouldn’t qualify as cheating. It’s just lame. But if poker sites want to combat the issue, making their product more enjoyable for customers, online environments actually enable more creative options.
For instance, in unopened or single raise pots near bubbles or pay jumps, there could be an 8-second timer for players to fold before losing the option. There’d still be additional time to call or raise. This could be implemented much earlier than hand-for-hand play, since it’s much less disruptive to the pace of the game.
Another, more innovative option, could be to base a player’s finish in a tournament on the number of hands they were dealt in the level they were eliminated. For instance, Dan and Phil are both eliminated in the same level, being dealt 20 and 18 hands respectively. Dan finishes ahead of Phil, even if his elimination happened prior to Phil’s. A structure like this would eliminate stalling entirely and incentivize brisk play throughout the event.
These are just two options I quickly came up with, so I’m sure the community could refine them or come up with better.
Addendum 3
By the way, if you’re a staller, please spare us the whole squeezing really slowly, wincing in pain, taking your cap off and putting it back on, double checking your cards, and squirming in your seat. It’s especially ridiculous when all of that is done by a player who normally tries to act like a robot. We all know that you’re stalling. You can ditch the act. It just makes the stalling all the more obvious.
Thank you for reading
#teamnostall
