Johan Guilbert, also known as “YoH ViraL,” is a regular at live events and enjoys playing “at home” at EPT Paris. On Day 2 of the Main Event, he won a hand that created a debate on social media owing to his extreme tanking.
Johan’s play on the board against the Kazakh Daniyar Aubakirov was distinguished by two check-raises and the eventual doubling of his stack with. Nevertheless, what grabbed the most notice was the three requests to “clock” made by the table’s players during the pre-flop action.
On Day 2, his opponents were clearly irritated with “YoH ViraL’s” style of play, which used every minute to make basic judgments, and they exploited the rule to force him to play quicker. The American Jeff Broski saw the hand posted by PokerNews on Twitter and brought up the topic. In the breach, he displayed recordings depicting Johan’s behavior in each action, including irony.
https://twitter.com/d9PON9nuGh
– Jeff Boski (@ICuRaRook) Feb 23
Obviously, this sparked a debate on how to deal with such an attitude, and a number of players weighed in. Michael Loncar was one of them. He remembers playing with Johan the previous year and saw the same behavior from the Frenchman.
“I am not shocked that he had three clocks on the same hand. Last year, he sat at my table for the whole of Day 4 of the $10,000 tournament at the Wynn Casino and took so long to make every choice that it was ridiculous lol.”
William McCue, an additional follower, remarked, “Professional tankers just do it to obstruct others. That is harmful to the game. Even if an event does not have a timer, players that get the timer should not be permitted to tank for the remainder of the hand.
At the WSOP 2022, Christoph Vogelsang was already involved in a dispute with a similar approach. Important personalities in the world of poker weighed in on the matter, but no regulations have been altered and there is nothing preventing players from using this technique. Do you agree with this perspective? Do you believe it is acceptable to destabilize one’s opponents?
