Dominate Beat the Clock Games with a HUD

Last month, the world’s largest poker room introduced a fun game that is great when you only have a few minutes to play called Beat the Clock.

Initially introduced at $1 and $5 buy-in levels, the game proved to be popular and is now also available at higher $10 and $25 buy-ins as well.

How it works is easy. Players head to the Beat the Clock tab in the poker client, choose the buy-in they want to play, and click on register. Once 48 players have registered in the game, some cool graphics go off including a stop watch designating that there are five minutes of game play.

Play begins with blinds at 200/400 and a 20 percent ante of 80 and opening stacks of 5,000. It is a push/fold type of game to start, however, on lower buy-in you can probably get away with min raising your premium hands and getting three-bet shoved on. That being said, it is a good idea to brush up on your push/fold charts and do exactly as they say in order to succeed in the game.

Game play is in four-max Zoom Poker format. Every time you fold a hand or play one to completion, you are brought to a new table with a new four players. A HUD here is a good idea since you can vary your ranges to push, fold or call depending on the type of player you are up against.

Blinds increase every minute of the game until the end of the last level which is 500/1,000 and an ante of 200. Once the clock is wound down and the final hands are completed on each table, PokerStars tells you exactly how much you won based on your chip count.

So, it isn’t a matter of what place you finish that determines the amount you win, but how big your stack is. Therefore, throw ICM out the window as this doesn’t matter since techinically each chips has a certain monetary value and you should only be making good chip EV plays and not worry about laddering up.

The game is also available in segregated markets as well, although slightly different. For example on PokerStars France, it is only available in €1 and €3 buy-in levels and features three-max games (instead of four-max) with 27 players (instead of 48). We are not sure if the game is available in all markets PokerStars operates in and can confirm that it is neither offered for players ring fenced in Portugal or New Jersey.