Is it just me, or would this not make sense for the poker sites to synchronize their MTT breaks. So that there is a standard 5minute break say, at the top of the hour. I realize that tournaments start at various points and some would only have been going for 15minutes or whatever at first break, but I believe that a very large portion of their playerbase multi-table's and as one of those players it would be very nice to actually get a 5minute break at a set time instead of having 1-2 tourneys on break and trying to juggle getting food/drinks whatever between hands of the others that are still going.

It would be nice, but you probably won't see it happen. This would require coordination between all sites and would probably cause the sites more work than they want.

I myself only play on 1 site so it doesn't affect me, but it would make sense if all 8:00pm start tourneys took a break after 1 hour of play at 9:00pm.

Now if you play in a tourney that starts at 7:30pm on one site, 7:45pm on another, then you're probably SOL there.

So, youre saying that if you start a tourny at 7:45, you would have your first break at 8:00?

worst idea ever

Oh...well in that case....not a good idea. As said above, if a tourney starts at 7:45, then a break at 8:00 is kinda rediculous.

But if you're talking about playing for 55 min. and taking a 5-min break:

ie: Tourney Start at 7:05pm
1st Set: play 7:05 ~ 8:00pm, break until 8:05pm
2nd Set: play 8:05pm ~ 9:00pm, break until 9:05pm
3rd Set: play 9:05pm ~ 10:00pm, break until 10:05pm
etc.

But keep in mind, this only works if you start a tourney at 5 past the hour and you would play for 55 minutes per hour. You couldn't play 1 hour then take 5 min. since this will push the break time forward 5 minutes/break.

May be a good idea for larger buy-ins and majors, but not for other tourneys or SNG's.

I usually only play a few at a time, I wasn't saying that all who only play one are donks. Just for the most part the standard one tourney player playing the 50k or something of the sort is the guy who loads up 55 one night and plays the tourney, and will likely do the same every night continuously. The break system doesn't benefit this group which is a lot larger than most ppl realize.

Ah....gotcha.

But like you said, since the vast majority of the online poker populous consist of part-time rec players, I don't think they would particularly care for the synchronized break system.

It would be nice for the higher volume, high limit players, but probably not as a general consensus for the average player.

On the other hand, since the rec player is on for fun, they may not even care.

Its a JJ vs. AK choice for the average player.

It really doesn't have to be that complicated to run breaks at the same time. I think 5-8 min break at the end of every hour would increase the comfort and enjoyment of everyone involved, even recreational players who play only one or 2 tournaments at a time.

First of all, you could plan things around having a break at that specified time, so eating or washroom breaks become much easier for everyone, as its very easy to figure out how long til the next break.

Staggered tournament start times don't have to be adversely affected by this either, the problem can easily be solved by picking arbitrary start times at which they just play through til the second break. For example, a tournament starting at 45 mins past the hour could just run through for 1 hr and 10 mins, until the next break.

The waiting for hands to complete issue isn't really an issue, as at a certain time all tournaments would just play there final hand, so it won't impact the break too much. However, I think a few additional minutes wouldn't hurt too much either, maybe the last 6 or 8 minutes of every hour. Gives more time to eat or actually take a real break from play and relax for a minute or two, not scramble to get back to the table.

You would have to have slightly less round level times, but I don't really see why this would be an issue. For example, with a 6 minute break you could fit two 27 min levels, three 18 minute levels, or 4 13.5 minute levels.

If a poker site were to implement this, it would definitely cause me to play many more tournaments. One of the limiting factors I find is being able to take a reasonable break without having too many tables going at a time. This would solve this problem, and I can't see any way in which it would hurt lower volume users either. In fact, they may be more likely to try multitabling tourneys when they realize they'll have a reasonable and regular break in them.

The first site that impliments this will see a dramatic increase in volume of players signing up for tournaments, and the other major sites will quickly have to follow suit if they want to compete.

ya, really don't think anything would need to change structurewise for this to happen

Amazing idea. I can't even count how many times I had to take a shit but could never afford to leave the 2 or 3 tables that I'm deep in.

once again, i worded the original post poorly. I didn't mean for the sites to coordinate with each other, just the individual site's own tourneys.

I actually only like to play multiple tournaments at the same time if they start at the exact same time as each other for this exact reason. It's such a ridiculous hassle to go to the bathroom or anything like that when multi-tabling that I typically just don't do it. Ari used to tell me stories about peeing in bottles and things like that; I don't have that kind of resiliency. I think it'd be a great change to make that wouldn't require that much change at all---to make it even more simple, they could just be "hourly" breaks for every tourney, rather than fully synchronized. That is to say that if a tournament starts at 5 pm, breaks start at 6 pm, 7 pm, 8 pm, 9 pm, etc. I realize this would create breaks mid-level, but I think it'd be more than worth it for the convenience to the players.

Won't happen, buy a laptop.

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<a class="navigate" href="http://www.pocketfives.com/36CE789E-7494-4475-9890-B5BF3408093A.aspx">Re(1): Synchronized Breaks</a>
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by <a href="http://www.pocketfives.com/profiles/...leAB</a> on <font style="font-size: 6.5pt;" color="#666666">12/12/2007 16:36</font>
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Won't happen, buy a laptop.

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haha, sad thing is i've actually been looking into them lately.