Reasonable speed

[TexasGal]

In the Poker Etiquette article, we are urged to play our hands within a reasonable speed. What is considered a reasonable speed? What I may consider reasonable may be frightfully slow to someone else. I'm still learning, so I'm bound to take things slower. How wrong is that?

[The Professor]

If your talking about Live poker play then I would say that in general you should be able to act within about 30 seconds most times - there will be times when you need to think a bit more about things and this is fine but in general you should be able to act pretty quickly within 10 - 30 seconds.

Online obviously it is timed by the software, but most of the time you run in to problems with people who are multi-tabling online and don't act quickly which can be very annoying and really slow the game down.

[najdoyza]

Acting too fast or acting too slow are both potential problems. Online, in general you look at your cards and you have a first impression of what you think you will do. Then you watch what everyone else is doing and adjust your actions based on what they've done. Some hands you know your going to play pretty much no matter what happens and some you know your going to throw. Everything else in between depends on factors like how many have already called, are you in one of the blinds and if not what will your position be if you hit or miss.

The longer you play the faster those factors process, so yeah as a less experienced player you will need more time to think it out. One of the things you can do to teach yourself to think a bit faster is multi-table at least 4 play money games. On most of the sites the active table, the one where it's your turn, will pop up on top and you look at the table and decide. It's play chips so if you make a mistake - no big deal. But you get to see more hands and how things work and you are seeing them in snapshots so you make fast evaluations.

Now when you are playing a single game it will seem like you have a lot more time to decide. For the most part you should act somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the clock. That way you are not giving anything away by how fast or slow you act for the bulk of your hands. Later on as you work with other strategies you can use the clock to advantage, for instance waiting out to near the end to appear timid when slow playing or betting as soon as the button comes up if you want to appear stronger than you are.