How do antes affect a no limit holdem tournament?
My poker experience is about a year of playing sit-and-go no limit holdem games with my coworkers. We kept a book and at the end of the week everyone paid. I was up more than anyone else almost every single week that we played over the year.
I recently decided to try a tournament game at a casino, so I bought in for a $60 game with about 40 people and no antes.
I won it, so I bought in for another game at the casino. The second game that I bought in for was a $125 game with about 20 people and no antes. The top two people would win an $1100 ticket to a 300 person tournament next month. I won it.
I checked the structure and it has antes. There are no antes for the first 5 rounds or so, and then they go up.
Here is an example of a round:
Level SB BB Ante
20 $6,000 $12,000 $1,000
I've never played a tournament with antes before, so I want to know how it will be different, and how I should play differently given the fact that there will be antes.
Please give me some good advice.
Comments
Antes don't really have a huge impact. They really just provide slightly more incentive to play aggressively, just like the Blinds do, or looking at it another way, provide a punishment for playing extremely passively that is present on every hand rather than just occasional hands.