The Potters boss started with five at the back and, effectively, deployed Ricardo Fuller as a loan stiker. And even after seeing their opponents reduced to ten men barely a quarter of the way through the game, Pulis still opted to play safe as a dismal total shot count of two was to testify.
Stoke didn't deserve to win the game, their organisation and discipline was worthy of a point, but even that shouldn't have been heading back up with the M1 and M6 with them. The reason it was, was Darius Henderson.
The big striker may be a cult hero at Vicarage Road, but he again spurned the opportunity to increase his stock even further by missing a penalty for the second match running.
As at Bristol City in midweek, Henderson struck his spot-kick well enough, but placed it too close to Carlo Nash who, like Adriano Basso before him, clawed the ball to safety.
It would be unfair to shoulder the forward with the blame for the Hornets' failure to turn the two points they have taken from the two sides above them in the table into six this week, but, had he succeeded from 12 yards, it would be Watford, and not Stoke, now sitting on top of the tree. Those misses could yet prove decisive.
But perhaps justice was done because the award of the penalty was, at the very least, dubious. It looked like John-Joe O'Toole had simply fallen over Andy Griffin following a tussle in the penalty area, but referee Rob Styles decided otherwise.
Yet had Henderson done the business from 12 yards it would have been no more than Watford deserved, after they showed superb character to overcome the latest in a long succession of incidents involving the controversial Waterlooville official.
There was no doubt that John Eustace's challenge on Richard Cresswell midway through the first half was high, but whether it was dangerous is highly questionable.
But Styles took no time at all to decide it was and within seconds he was pulling out his 13th red card in 31 games to date this season.
It therefore speaks volumes about Stoke's lack of ambition that Watford were the side most likely to take the three points after that and, in truth, they should have done.