diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
index 6a0deb59f4..32df54de87 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
@@ -167,6 +167,9 @@ Release 2.3.0 - UNRELEASED
     MAPREDUCE-1176. FixedLengthInputFormat and FixedLengthRecordReader
     (Mariappan Asokan and BitsOfInfo via Sandy Ryza)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-5613. DefaultSpeculator holds and checks hashmap that is always
+    empty (Gera Shegalov via Sandy Ryza)
+
   OPTIMIZATIONS
 
     MAPREDUCE-5484. YarnChild unnecessarily loads job conf twice (Sandy Ryza)
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/speculate/DefaultSpeculator.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/speculate/DefaultSpeculator.java
index 80e3833473..34dcb1294d 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/speculate/DefaultSpeculator.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-app/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapreduce/v2/app/speculate/DefaultSpeculator.java
@@ -28,7 +28,6 @@
 import java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentMap;
 import java.util.concurrent.LinkedBlockingQueue;
 import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
-import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicBoolean;
 import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicInteger;
 
 import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
@@ -75,9 +74,6 @@ public class DefaultSpeculator extends AbstractService implements
   private final ConcurrentMap<TaskId, Boolean> runningTasks
       = new ConcurrentHashMap<TaskId, Boolean>();
 
-  private final Map<Task, AtomicBoolean> pendingSpeculations
-      = new ConcurrentHashMap<Task, AtomicBoolean>();
-
   // Used to track any TaskAttempts that aren't heart-beating for a while, so
   // that we can aggressively speculate instead of waiting for task-timeout.
   private final ConcurrentMap<TaskAttemptId, TaskAttemptHistoryStatistics>
@@ -328,13 +324,6 @@ protected void statusUpdate(TaskAttemptStatus reportedStatus, long timestamp) {
 
     estimator.updateAttempt(reportedStatus, timestamp);
 
-    // If the task is already known to be speculation-bait, don't do anything
-    if (pendingSpeculations.get(task) != null) {
-      if (pendingSpeculations.get(task).get()) {
-        return;
-      }
-    }
-
     if (stateString.equals(TaskAttemptState.RUNNING.name())) {
       runningTasks.putIfAbsent(taskID, Boolean.TRUE);
     } else {