One of the well-known brands in the poker world goes by the name of PokerStars and the management of the online poker room recently announced that the Time to Act setting for ring games is finally going to receive its wider roll out after it has been initially introduced back in July 2017. The improvement aims to cut down the time needed for making a move and eliminate the unnecessary waiting for the next player to make a decision. The new and improved Time to Act setting is thus expected to make the game much more fast-paced and time-efficient.
In this expansion of the setting the stakes could go up to and including $0.10/$0.25 for the No-Limit Hold’em and Pot-Limit Omaha ring tournaments. The move of introducing the Time to Act setting this summer represented the first change in the setting applied to cash games since 2013. It still provided the time necessary for making a conscious thought-through decision and for the players to carefully measure their next step. On the other hand, it still maintained the game at a relatively fast pace and prevented long slacking and slowing down of action.
Time to Act in Its Essence
Some of the players participating in poker tournaments need more time to think and they take their time, but not intentionally, whereas there are others which purposefully slow down the game in order to follow their own agendas. With the help of the new Time to Act setting this is no longer the case. According to the new settings provided by the online poker room, the players will now have 10 seconds for action for pre-flops not facing a raise, and 15 seconds for pre-flops facing a raise and post-flops. As it has been previously explained by PokerStars, once the players are all out of their Time to Act, the Timebank settings will be in charge.
These settings remain the same as they have always been and this means that the players will begin with 30 seconds which can then be extended by 10 seconds with every 50 hands which have been played on the felt. This essentially means that the participants have the chance to extend their time for action to as many as 10 minutes, as it all goes down to how much they have played. Just like this summer, the Zoom games and their Time to Act settings will not be a subject to any changes.
The changes which were introduced back in July were then followed by close inspection of the level of satisfaction of the players and the overall performance. Of course, there has been positive and negative feedback regarding the changes and they came from very different sides. On one hand, players which use poker as a pastime were content with the change, as it meant that they will no longer have to wait an eternity for their next turn to come. On the other, professional poker players from around the world claimed that the new rules would eventually make playing several games simultaneously more difficult. The official launch of the new settings will happen on 8th January.
