Antes and Blinds

If you are used to playing with an ante, you appreciate the fact that you can come and go from the game as you please. If you are used to playing with blinds, you appreciate that only a couple of people have to put money into the pot at the start of a deal, and that money counts toward your bet. Combining an ante with blinds seems to result in a structure that has the worst elements of each, and loses their virtues. But this is not the whole story; there also are benefits to combining an ante with blinds.

Stud poker is played with an ante and hold'em is played with blinds, right? Usually, but not always. For example, I have played in a half stud, half hold'em game in which we played stud with a blind. It was actually a very interesting game, because the action started with a hand that could be anything from the 2 to the A. To me, this created a lot of extra permutations that took the game out of the hands of the rote players and made everybody think.

I have played both no-limit hold'em and pot-limit Omaha with an ante to supplement the blinds. It is common in a no-limit hold'em tournament to have an ante added at the higher limits. The most common point in a tournament to do this is to go from $100-$200 blinds to the same blinds with a $25 ante. There is a story connected with why this is the usual point to introduce an ante to the game.

One morning back in the '80s, Brent Carter and I got together for breakfast with Jack McClelland, with the aim of discussing tournament structures and establishing some standards. Brent was a highly experienced tournament competitor, and I was known as both a player and rulemaker. (It is also possible that I might have owed Jack breakfast as a result of a golf course loss, since he used to rob me pretty regularly at that game. Even back in his hefty days, Jack had excellent hand-eye coordination.)

Both Brent and I believed that using an ante added something to the game. The World Series of Poker used an ante, but some of the other tournaments did not. The question was when to introduce the ante, since doing it right away gets a lot of cheap chips into the game and that slows it up. I suggested adding a $25 ante as the next step up after the blinds were at the $50-$100 level. (That was the way the WSOP was structured.) Brent pointed out the big increase in game size when this is done. He suggested waiting a round, so that the amount in the pot would not be more than doubling. This sounded like good commonsense reasoning to both Jack and me, and after that, McClelland's tournaments used Carter's suggested structure.

An ante adds something to the game of no-limit hold'em. Few people have ever played with an ante outside of tournament play, and lots of small cardrooms do not use an ante in their no-limit hold'em tournament structures. The result is, the people who have lots of experience in big tournaments are much more at home in the event than others. So, how should you play when an ante is added to the structure?

Let us assume a ninehanded game that has just gone from $100-$200 blinds to having a $25 ante put into use. The pot has gone from having $300 in it to having $525. I see many players who fail to adjust to the fact that there is now almost twice as much money in the pot. In the previous structure, the typical amount to open for was $700, three and a half times the big blind. (That is a $200 call and a $500 raise.) A lot of bets in no-limit hold'em are the size of the pot, even though you are allowed to exceed it. With the ante tacked on, if you still followed the size of the pot as a reasonable amount to bet, you should be opening for $925. (That is a $200 call and $725 raise.) For me, a guy who hates minutia in bookkeeping when betting, I would likely be opening for an even grand. Opening for the same $700 that you did in the previous structure is letting the enemy in too cheaply. You have to mentally adjust to the new monetary situation.

When playing with only blinds, even though most people who open do so with a raise, there is also a fair amount of limping in a number of games. Once there is ante money in the pot, you should forget about limping. If your hand is good enough to play, you are supposed to open with a raise. To use an analogy, opening with a raise in a no-limit structure that includes an ante is as normal and natural as opening with a raise on the button when all have folded to you in limit hold'em. In other words, if you limp, you have just pasted a sign on your forehead saying, "I am a newcomer who does not understand the game."

You not only must adjust to the increased pot size when opening, you must adjust in later betting, as well. For example, if a donkey limps up front and a player or two thinks this means it is OK to trail in for that price, be sure you whack the pot a big enough amount if you decide to raise. And if you are in the big blind and three people limp, a challenge is being thrown down, like when a bunch of candy bars falls off a pushcart and a group of kids is gathered around it. If I decided to raise, the amount would likely be to something like $2,000 straight (an overbet of the pot, but not that big a one), whether I had a good hand or was stealing.

I like playing with an ante, even in a money game. As my friend Garland Walters puts it, "When a player has to put something into the pot every hand, he starts thinking of it as his own money in the pot. He becomes acutely aware of the high overhead of the game, and may hit the panic button and go to gambling a little too much." One thing I can tell you for sure is this: Using an ante in combination with blinds gets the game out of the muck real fast!

Editor's note: Bob Ciaffone's new book, Middle Limit Holdem Poker, co-authored with Jim Brier, is available now (332 pages, $25 plus $5 shipping and handling). This work and his other poker books, Pot-limit and No-limit Poker, Improve Your Poker, and Omaha Holdem Poker, can be ordered through Card Player. Ciaffone is available for poker lessons. E-mail [email protected] or call (989) 792-0884. His website is www.diamondcs.net/~thecoach, where you can download Robert's Rules of Poker for free.