Tournament Clock
A “clock watcher” on the job is just some nit who doesn’t want to work one minute more than his eight hours and has more interest in the second hand than the work he is paid to do. In a poker tournament, a clock watcher is a sophisticated player who knows that every piece of information can help your game.
All good card rooms use some kind of electronic clock usually a computer software program to keep track of the rounds in a poker tournament. But there is more to just counting down the minutes on a good tournament clock. Certainly, you want to know how long the current round will last because the blinds will be going up in the next round. The tournament clock will show the current blinds and the increased blinds in the next round. Since good players always know how their stack compares to the blind structure, using the clock allows you to anticipate your changing situation for the current and the next round of blinds.
Tournament clocks will also have the average stack and number of remaining players in the tournament. Remaining players allows you to know how close you are getting to the money and how soon another table will break. If you are playing 10 handed and there are 51 players remaining, you know there are six tables left but as soon as the next player goes out, the tables will be combined down to five.
Good tournament clocks will also have the payouts once they are calculated, these are useful figures to dream about while you wait for the next hand. What will you do when you win that first place money! You don’t need to be a clock watcher in tournament poker but you should use the information provided as it impacts your decisions at the table. Poker is a game of incomplete information, use what is given to you for free.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #95
