interesting read about Ante structures

[WYoung83]

 Here is a link to a blog i have just read, and i think its a pretty interesting read regarding structures in tournys, and i know structure and blinds/antes are always a hot topic for debate. Hope its ok to post a link to another poker site on here? Would be a shame if this post gets deleated because i found it quite interesting.

http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-journal.php?subaction=showfull&id=1289951723&archive=&start_from=&ucat=&


Funnily enough ive been saying for about 1 year now, that antes in most tourneys are not high enough to promote decent play, make it worth while stealing the blinds etc. And some of us have been debating in the past the reason why APATs and DTD deepstacks tournys for example, start off really deep, then suddenly turn into shove fests during the latter stadges. I can remember a while back i said, that the reason is, because there are too many nitty short stackers holding on and waiting for big hands to doubble up, while their "M" reduces, and this in turn gives the bigger stacks a tough job of trying to play post flop poker.

Basically with a better ante structure, these short stacks will simply have to take a shot, which will reduce the field size and spread the chips around a smaller group of players. So that we esentially get into the money/final table quicker etc. 

Obviously Negranue is waaaayyy more qualified than me to explain the reason lol.  What do you guys think??

[AMRN]

Never really thought about this in such detail - good food for thought though, and makes perfect sense.

[Chipaccrual]

Never really thought about this in such detail - I got as far as clicking on the MMA banner advert.  Great link Will.  

FYP

[AJDUK]

Not read the link but it"s interesting the way that aggressive types are seemingly trying to change the parameters of the game to create what they perceive as a better game, when in fact I suspect they just want it to suit their game.  But will eradicating the game of rocks and nits earlier actually make it a better game? Who will you steal from if you"re facing nine aggression clones?

Preflop shove-fests with little or no flop play is dull as dishwater both to watch and play. But whatever tinkering is done there will always be a stage of the game where it occurs - be it early or late. Which is preferable? If you want to get rid of the rocks earlier you don"t need to up the ante"s to achieve it - just make the stacks shallower and the clock shorter i.e. exactly the opposite of what is commonly accepted as the recipe for a good game.

I"m probably not doing justice to either Will"s OP or the article but ante"s are an effective method of getting the game over with earlier, not necessarily at promoting interesting poker. If players fall quick enough in the earlier stages with higher ante"s, I suspect the stacks will get deeper for the few remaining towards the end but you"ll have had to do a lot of gambling to get there! And whose gonna travel too far to a tourney that they know they have to gamble in very early.

I"d rather play early and gamble late than the other way around, certainly for live play.

[George2Loose]

Not read the link but it"s interesting the way that aggressive types are seemingly trying to change the parameters of the game to create what they perceive as a better game, when in fact I suspect they just want it to suit their game.  But will eradicating the game of rocks and nits earlier actually make it a better game? Who will you steal from if you"re facing nine aggression clones?

Preflop shove-fests with little or no flop play is dull as dishwater both to watch and play. But whatever tinkering is done there will always be a stage of the game where it occurs - be it early or late. Which is preferable? If you want to get rid of the rocks earlier you don"t need to up the ante"s to achieve it - just make the stacks shallower and the clock shorter i.e. exactly the opposite of what is commonly accepted as the recipe for a good game.

I"m probably not doing justice to either Will"s OP or the article but ante"s are an effective method of getting the game over with earlier, not necessarily at promoting interesting poker. If players fall quick enough in the earlier stages with higher ante"s, I suspect the stacks will get deeper for the few remaining towards the end but you"ll have had to do a lot of gambling to get there! And whose gonna travel too far to a tourney that they know they have to gamble in very early.

I"d rather play early and gamble late than the other way around, certainly for live play.

You should read the link because Daniel says the high ante structure offers MORE play not less due to effective stack sizes.

And why do you want more play early? Surely you want more play when you"re sat at a final table playing for the money?

[AJDUK]

And why do you want more play early? Surely you want more play when you"re sat at a final table playing for the money?

I agree.

The problem is that the game has to become a shovefest at some point to get rid of people. Raise the ante"s and it happens earlier (I did say that raising the ante"s would give more late game play!). For live play I don"t think I"d be travelling too far to a game where I know I"d be gambling very early, regardless of whether I"d have more play if I reached the FT.

For online play well maybe I can see the logic. Fire up 10 games, gamble early in all of them and then get great play when you go deep in 1 of them. Could be frustrating though for those experiencing a long run on the wrong side of variance!

[AMRN]

Also, APAT is supposed to be about bringing new people to the game at the grass roots level - given that in a 200 user tournament, only a small number would benefit from increased opportunity for play if we created play at the deep end... and the majority of users could end up feeling disatisfied.

By keeping to a system where we have loads of play early on - the vast majority of those new players will gain the benefit of a positive experience, and are more likely to want to continue and to play again.

For run of the mill, "normal" tournaments, I much prefer a gamble early, then deep with loads of play later on. Hate making final tables which are just shovefests, but for APAT I recognise that this is the downside of keeping things slow early on to benefit the majority.

[RioRodent]

Also, APAT is supposed to be about bringing new people to the game at the grass roots level - given that in a 200 user tournament, only a small number would benefit from increased opportunity for play if we created play at the deep end... and the majority of users could end up feeling disatisfied.

By keeping to a system where we have loads of play early on - the vast majority of those new players will gain the benefit of a positive experience, and are more likely to want to continue and to play again.

For run of the mill, "normal" tournaments, I much prefer a gamble early, then deep with loads of play later on. Hate making final tables which are just shovefests, but for APAT I recognise that this is the downside of keeping things slow early on to benefit the majority.

So it was wrong to introduce antes into APAT in the first place??

[AMRN]

Also, APAT is supposed to be about bringing new people to the game at the grass roots level - given that in a 200 user tournament, only a small number would benefit from increased opportunity for play if we created play at the deep end... and the majority of users could end up feeling disatisfied.

By keeping to a system where we have loads of play early on - the vast majority of those new players will gain the benefit of a positive experience, and are more likely to want to continue and to play again.

For run of the mill, "normal" tournaments, I much prefer a gamble early, then deep with loads of play later on. Hate making final tables which are just shovefests, but for APAT I recognise that this is the downside of keeping things slow early on to benefit the majority.

So it was wrong to introduce antes into APAT in the first place??

No - I think part of the APAT desire was to grow players into good tournament players to breed success on the major tours, GUKPT etc.... familiarity with the nuances of play around antes was imperative for this.

[TheSnapper]

There is also a thread about this on Blonde



Interesting stuff but do you think it would be advantageous for a card room to offer a game that favours the skilled player. I play mostly at a small room with a small clientele, as with all poker games, most are net losers.

The fast structured games allow poor players to get lucky and cash the odd time, without that hook they would likely leave the game and without them, there would ultimately be no game!
The ecology of poker games is a very delicate balance, if winners take all the losers cash the losers are lost to the game. There is a threshold beyond which a losing player either goes broke or notices how much they lose and quit.

Andy, I think most of the points you make are covered well in the DN article, and tbf he makes a lot of good points.

[George2Loose]

I"m not saying it should be introduced to APAT. Just debating the article.

[TheSnapper]

Me too