Count me out

Recently I've been stuck playing more limit games than I usually do, and particularly $4-$8 limit. The same thing happens every time, and it makes me crazy.

It seems that nobody catches on to the fact that the bets are going to be $4 and $8 every time, and that, as a result, it is possible to have those bet amounts prepared in advance. No. Instead, nearly every player, when the action is on him, takes a stack of chips and drops them onto the table immediately in front of him, one at a time. 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8. Then he's not completely sure he has it right, so he puts down the stack in his hand, splits the new stack he has created into two halves, checking to be sure each has four in it, then finally pushes them forward to make his bet or call. This gets repeated for each player who wants in on the fun.

When the half-kill is on and the game jumps to $6-$12, it's truly like the Chinese water torture. 1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9...10...11...12. I swear that some of these players have to take off their shoes and socks to count that high.

Seriously, the game would go about 50% faster if all of the players just did one simple thing: have a few bets' worth of chips counted out and stacked in advance. Being a tad on the compulsive side, I tend to keep all of my chips in stacks of 4 and 8 when I'm playing a $4-$8 game. When there get to be too many chips for that to work without taking over all of the surface area I have in front of me, I make a bunch of stacks of 16, too, which break down readily into 8s if I lose a big pot and need more 8-chip stacks. When it's my turn, it takes no time or effort at all to grab one or two sets of either 4 or 8 chips and push them forward. Bang--I'm done. On to the next player.

The only down side to this is that if I'm interested in knowing my current total chip count, I have to add up the stacks and multiply by 8 in my head instead of 10 or 20. But so what? I'm only doing that when I'm between hands and have nothing else to be doing anyway. Besides, in a limit game my total chip count is pretty unimportant strategically (as opposed to a no-limit game, where stack size is always a critical factor in decisions); it's only idle curiosity about how much I'm up or down for the session, and that takes a back seat to speed and efficiency of play. My long-term goal is income in dollars per hour, so more hands per hour means a higher rate of return for my time investment.

Another advantage is that firing out bets faster than other players conveys a sense of confidence. It adds at least a modicum of intimidation factor. It passes the action on to the next player a little faster than he's really used to.

So can anybody explain to me why virtually nobody in limit games takes the simple expedient of pre-sizing their bets and having them ready in advance? It's such an obvious time-saver. If people were generally using the chip-counting time to think about what to do--i.e., check, bet, call, or raise--I could understand it, but that's clearly not what's going on, because you see them sit and think for a bit, mentally settle on a course of action, then grab the chips and start the slow counting thing.

What would be even better is the casino making available $3 and $6 chips for a 3-6 game, $4 and $8 chips for a 4-8 game, etc. (Lots of places have $4 chips, which they mainly use for taking the $4-max rake, but they don't sell them to players at the cage.) It would mean more hands per hour, which means more house rake and more tips for the dealers.

Oh, and if you can't bring yourself to keep some stacks in the amounts that the bets are going to be, you could at least verbalize your actions. Just say "bet" or "call" or "raise," then take whatever time you need to count out the chips, while the action moves on.

Sadly, I'm sure that very few players--and no casinos--will hear my plea and change their ways, and the next time I play limit, I'll once again be pulling out what little hair I have left, as hand after hand, bet after bet, player after player, I have to endure the agonizingly slow counting of the chips.

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8.