By Sean Chaffin The WPT Action Clock has generally received positive reviews since it debuted at the Season XIV WPT 🗝 Tournament of Champions. The goal was to speed up play in later stages of a tournament – striking a balance 🗝 in speeding up play but also offering opportunities for time extensions when players have particularly…
Matt Clark
By Sean Chaffin
The WPT Action 🗝 Clock has generally received positive reviews since it debuted at the Season XIV WPT Tournament of Champions. The goal was 🗝 to speed up play in later stages of a tournament – striking a balance in speeding up play but also 🗝 offering opportunities for time extensions when players have particularly difficult decisions.
However, as tour events continue to attract bigger and bigger 🗝 fields, a few changes were added beginning with the WPT Seminole Hard Rock Poker Showdown.
The Action Clock comes into play 🗝 when a tournament is one full table off the money bubble and continues until a champion is crowned. Each player 🗝 has 30 seconds to act on a hand, and received four time-extension chips for an extra 30 seconds each. Players 🗝 reaching the final three tables of the tournament are then reset to a maximum of six time-extension chips, and those 🗝 at the final table are reset to a maximum of eight chips.
Now, the tour is adjusting the number of time 🗝 chips players receive based on the number of players who will cash in an event.
“What happened at the Borgata [Winter 🗝 Poker Open] is that we just had so many people in the money,” WPT executive tour director Matt Savage (pictured) 🗝 says. “It was always four time extensions to play down to 24. We could have been paying 28 and from 🗝 28 down to 24, you got four time chips. At the Borgata, we paid 136, which is great, and you 🗝 got four down from that to 24. Is that fair?”
Players basically had to play a full day with four time 🗝 chips because of the increased number of entries. The tour is now trying to adjust for those increases and distributing 🗝 more chips accordingly.
“We’re giving more time chips based on the number of players paid,” Savage says. “Players brought it up 🗝 to me and obviously it makes sense that if we’re playing that many more, that it’s not really fair for 🗝 them to be getting the same amount of time chips.”
Players can now receive as many as 10 time-extension chips when 🗝 the Action Clock comes into play. Once play reaches 24 players, all other time extension rules remain the same. A 🗝 full copy of Action Clock rules can be found here.
Here’s a look at the new time chip structure for future 🗝 tournaments when the Action Clock is put into play:
Number of players in the money Number of time-extension chips (per player) 🗝 25-34 players Two (2) time-extension chips, per player 35-44 players Three (3) time-extension chips, per player 45-64 players Four (4) 🗝 time-extension chips, per player 65-80 players Five (5) time-extension chips, per player 81-100 players Six (6) time-extension chips, per player 🗝 101-120 players Seven (7) time-extension chips, per player 121-140 players Eight (8) time-extension chips, per player 141-160 players Nine (9) 🗝 time-extension chips, per player 161+ players Ten (10) time-extension chips, per player
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