In part 1 of this series (‘Is stalling ethical?’) we discussed the ethics of using the clock to your advantage and when it might be a good time to apply this tactic. Now we can move on to the practicalities of stalling. The most important thing to note here is that to be aware of the best times to stall you must have a good awareness of your overall situation in a tournament or Sit & Go. This means that in an MTT you should be keeping an eye on the lobby to know how many players remain, when the bubble is and where you stand overall. In a Sit & Go you should be even more aware of when the blinds are going up, which are the biggest jumps and when an increase is going to significantly influence the game because of its effect on one or more players’ stack sizes.
Multi-table tournaments
In terms of MTTs, stalling takes place mostly around the bubble, with many short stacks wanting to ensure they get into the money before they risk their remaining chips. If you are in the bottom positions, therefore, you should probably stall in the run-up to the bubble, especially since it’s likely other tables will be doing the same (you can look for these by finding the smallest stacks by table in the lobby). This will also help you if things gets tight and you want to see how many hands people have left before blinding out. If you are a few places off the money spots with just a few players left to get KO’d you can usually make it without playing any hands. Slowing the action makes even more sense here, particularly since there are few hands you actually want to be dealt at such a point.
An average stack is a different consideration. If there are a lot of scared short stacks at your table you want to get in as many hands as possible. If there are bigger stacks playing aggressively you may want to slow things down.
Sit & Go’s
In Sit & Go’s the situation is even more extreme. If you are one of the short stacks on the bubble and a large blind increase is coming your best hope may be to use stalling tactics. In this spot you can gain a significant advantage by stalling so that you pay the blinds just before they go up, forcing the players behind to pay more and allowing you to win more chips by shoving, or even forcing another small stack into being pot-committed in the big blind.