Playing slowly in a tournament--a sound tactic?

In the current issue of Poker Player newspaper (September 29, 2008) is a column by "Oklahoma Sarah" Hale (p. 26). Her columns are usually boring but otherwise unobjectionable.

This week, however, in a column on poker etiquette, I think she gave out some bad advice. After explaining the reasons why it is bad form to take longer than one really needs to make decisions, she adds:

The only exception to this rule is in a tournament when you are down to the
final few tables. In this situation if you are seated at the short handed [sic] table
the blinds will hit you faster then [sic again] is fair. This is the only
time I recommend playing slower than average.

I think this advice stinks. I say it is still rude to waste all of the other players' time.

But more than being rude, I think it is stupid, self-destructive strategy to stall. It is true that the blinds are coming around faster at a short-handed table than they are at a full table. But so what? If you're a better player than average for the tournament (and if you're not, why are you in it???), then you should be winning more chips per hand, on average, than the other players. You should see yourself as having a positive EV for every hand before the cards are dealt.

In that situation, you want more hands per hour, not fewer. Every hand is an opportunity to build up your chip stack, so you should want as many such opportunities as you can squeeze in. Sure, you're paying the blinds more often than your buddy at the next table, but that's completely irrelevant if an average hand at your table has you building your stack, while those of your opponents at your table are shrinking (or at least not building as fast).

Another way to look at this is that you are not paying the blinds more than players at the other tables are, you're winning the blinds more often than players at the other tables are--if you're the best player.

Good players should see every hand as another chance to take more chips from their weaker opponents. The more such chances you get, the better.

The weakest opponents just hunker down and fold, fold, fold, hoping to stay alive as long as possible. That's no way to win a tournament. For them, stalling may prolong their tournament life. But that possibility shouldn't serve as encouragement for better players to mimic such misguided tactics.

To see stalling as a smart strategy is to admit that one is such a weak player that one is just ducking one's head under the waves, rather than playing to win. So I guess we now know what Ms. Hale really thinks of her own play.

Incidentally, she fails to mention another situation in which taking time that is not really needed for a decision is justifiable: When you need to suggest to an opponent that you have a decision more difficult than it really is. Of course, even there one shouldn't overdo it. But a bit of hemming and hawing before making a call or raise is perfectly acceptable, in order to sell a false image of weakness.

I do not, however, think it is kosher to stall on what one immediately knows will be a fold. I know that Mike Sexton often says, with seeming approval, that a player who is bluffing and gets raised will often take some time before folding so that opponents will think he had a real hand. I think this is bogus. I notice that Barry Greenstein never does this--if it's going to be a clear muck, he does it instantly. I assume that this is because Greenstein has confidence that he is virtually unreadable in his actions and mannerisms, so even if he were to announce that he had been bluffing, there is nothing for an opponent to pick up on him that would be useful in a later hand.

Besides, a rapid fold does not necessarily indicate that one had been bluffing. One might have been simply putting out a probe bet with a hand of medium strength, and once the answer came in as a raise, that was all one needed to know in order to make folding the obvious decision. So if opponents erroneously assume that every quick fold after a bet-raise means that one had been bluffing, fine, let them make that mental mistake.