PokerStars Testing Time to Act Settings for Cash Games

(Photo: Pokerstars.com)

There’s some good news for those of you that get tilted by slow action at the poker table.

In this post on the official PokerStars blog page, the online poker giant announced some trialed adjustments made to the amount of Time to Act for players in cash games. Implemented at the end of July, these changes reduce the length of time that a player has to act in the following ways:

• Pre-flop not facing a raise from 18 seconds down to 12 seconds
• Pre-flop facing a raise and post-flop action in general from 25 seconds to 15 seconds.

This change is currently only in its trial stage, with the tests taking place at $0.01/$0.02 NLHE and PLO ring games. The length of the Time to Act period in Zoom games will not be changed.

Regarding Timebank settings – these are not planned to change and will stay the same as they are currently. The initial length of your Timebank is 30 seconds (beginning when your Time to Act is over), with an additional 10 seconds for every 50 hands played at the same table capped at a maximum of 600 seconds. At Zoom tables, there is no additional Timebank gained as you change table every hand. Your Timebank activates only when you have money invested in the pot – if you don’t have money invested, the Timebank will not run.

Good News for (Almost) Everyone

These changes should be welcomed by the majority of users at PokerStars. If you are a grinder that has an edge in the game that you are playing in, a reduced Time to Act period will mean more hands played which will result in a higher hourly rate. For recreational players that want to play hands and have fun, less time to tank means you’ll get more time to enjoy the action. And for the rest of us that get put on tilt by somebody taking 18 seconds to decide whether to open the pre-flop action, we can look forward to less stalling in spots that shouldn’t require a ton of thought.

However, this is bad news for the players that do tend to use all of their allocated Time to Act. If the trial period is responded to positively by the majority of users, the eventual changes might mean you’ll need to cut down the number of tables that you play if you are a multi-tabler. Doing this will allow you to focus more on each decision and prevent you from stressing out on the felt.

Ultimately, this change should be a positive one for the most of us. Here’s to more hands!