Cool concepts

What are antes?

Like blinds, antes are forced bets, only this time every player (including the blinds) must put in the bet or ‘ante’ before the cards are dealt. If the blinds are 150/300/25, the 25 bit is the ante. They are most common in tournaments and usually come into play after the early levels as a device to force the action. In terms of size an ante is usually somewhere between one-tenth and one-sixth of the big blind.

What are the pros?

Just as players dislike leaving their blinds behind, they detest giving up their antes too. So they stay in pots when they shouldn’t. Antes create pressure in a game, because if there aren’t any in play at a nine or 10-handed table, people tend to sit back and wait for big hands. But with antes in play there’s more pressure to get involved as players are constantly putting money into the pot. So it forces players to play pots, which if you believe yourself to be one of the better players at the table, can work in your favour. Also, if you’re aggressive you’ll be taking down more pots, and if there’s more money in the pot...

What are the cons?

When playing in a live environment antes can certainly slow the game down. Live poker is slow enough as it is, and even experienced players sometimes need to be prompted multiple times to post antes, especially if they’re used to playing online where it’s done for them or in live tourneys without antes. (They can also create one or two arguments, like when Prahlad Friedman accused Jeff Lisandro of not anteing during the 2006 WSOP, which turned into a huge blow-up. Go to tinyurl.com/583284 to see the whole sorry incident – Ed)

Pre-flop raises

Using the jump between 100/200 and 100/200/25 as an example, when you open the action pre-flop you’re raising to win a pot of 500, not 300. So you can raise more to begin with should you wish. Players will probably think you’re being over-aggressive, but in my opinion you’re doing the right thing. Most players expect you to raise to 600, but as there’s 500 in the middle already, you can apply pressure by raising to 1000 or 1500.

Calling wider

You’re in the big blind and it’s at the 200/400/50 level (making a pot of 1025). A player makes a standard raise to 1200 and the action folds to you. There’s now 2025 in the pot and it costs you just 800 to call the bet, so you’re getting odds of roughly 2.5/1, which is generous. However, you need to weigh up the fact that while you’re being priced in, you’re also out of position for the rest of the hand and you’ve got to know your own ability to play on the flop, turn and river. It’s important that you consider all these factors as well as your actual cards.

Adjusting to antes

A common tournament structure is 100/200, with the next level going to 100/200/25. When this happens you have to realise that although the blinds are still 100/200 the ante means that instead of putting in 300 each orbit you’re now putting in 525 an orbit if you’re playing nine-handed. That’s almost double, which means you have to readjust. If you’ve got 5250 chips, although you’ve got over 25 big blinds (well over the short stack threshold of 10 big blinds) you’ve only got 10 times the pot.

Antes in cash games

Some cash games will also have an ante in play – you may have seen this on TV in the Million Dollar Cash Game or High Stakes Poker. If the blinds are, say, £5/£10 the ante would be £1/£2. And if you think people get involved more in tournaments once antes kick in, you should see a cash game with antes! Players don’t want to leave one penny behind! Even the tightest players turn into maniacs. Antes in cash games aren’t usually offered by the casinos, as they don’t want players to go skint quickly (and therefore go home earlier), so you have to ask for it usually.