Mom-Says-You're-In-Time-Out

Well, Full Tilt Poker has done a weird thing with time-outs in multi-table tournaments: they've instituted something called "synchronized breaks." These breaks, instead of occurring one hour after the tourney starts, take place at 55 minutes past every hour. For example, if a tournament starts at 08:40, the tournament goes on break at 08:55. It doesn't matter that you've only played for fifteen minutes, you're going to take a five minute break. The reasoning is that if you're playing in multiple multi-table tournaments, you get to take all your breaks at the same time, which helps for those of us with small bladders. It does not help us, however, with short attention spans.

While I suppose this is a good idea in general, it can create some weird results. For instance, I played in a 45-man SnG today. The tournament started at 3:54pm, so after a grand total of one minute of play (one hand was dealt), we went on break. Talk about an anti-climactic start. I had mentally prepared myself to play, registered for the tournament, opened my email account while I waited for all the seats to be taken, and then the tourney started. I was dealt a folding hand, so I did so and continued reading email. After a few minutes, I realized that I hadn't seen a hand dealt in a while, and when I looked I found out that we had been on break for two minutes. Weird.

It seems to me that Full Tilt, while on to something reasonable here, could modify their rules a bit. For example, if a tourney starts within, say 10 minutes of the 55-minutes after the hour mark, the break is ignored. I mean, what is the point of a break after just a few hands of poker? It almost felt like a punishment of sorts; i.e., it was like a I-Know-You're-Ready-To-Play-Poker-But-I'm-Only-Going-To-Tease-You-With-A-Few-Hands-And-Then-You're-In-Time-Out-For-Five-Minutes kind of thing.

I'm not really complaining; rather, I think the rule needs a little tweaking to be less, shall we say, annoying.

The other odd thing that FTP has done recently is introduce late registration to regular tournaments (i.e., non-SnG-types). The deal is this: if you show up late to a big tourney, you can still register and get into the game despite the fact that everyone else who was responsible enough to show up on time did so. It's sort of an extension of the Synchonized Break thing: We're-Starting-The-Tournament-Now-Except-We're-Also-Starting-It-For-The-Next-Ten-Minutes-Too. Phil Helmuth, and his legendary late arrivals at live tournaments, would be proud. (Sigh)

All-in for now...
-Bug
PS. I busted out of the 45-man SnG in 16th place right before the second break, which of course occurred at exactly 55 minutes after the hour. Well, at least I know exactly when I died. (Double Sigh)