|
All
online poker games starts as a struggle for the antes.
If there were no ante, there would be no reason to play.
It's true that some players would play anyway, but a
good player in such a game would simply wait for the
pure nuts and nearly always win. A good player would
have no reason to play anything but big starter hands
- three aces, say, in seven-card stud - because with
no money yet in the pot, there would be nothing to shoot
for. To play with anything less would be to risk getting
picked off by someone else who played nothing but the
pure nuts. If all players in the games played nothing
but the pure nuts, there could be no games. Any time
one person bet, everyone else would fold. Obviously,
then, there has to be an ante to establish a game.
On the other hand, if the ante were ridiculously large
in relation to the betting limits, the games would pretty
much deteriorate into a crap shoot. It would be like
someone walking by a $5-$10 games and tossing a $100
bill on the table saying, "Play for it, boys."
With that big an initial pot, in which you would be
getting at least 21-to-1 odds on your first $5 call,
it would be worth playing just about any hand right
to the end.
These two extremes - no ante and an absurdly high ante
- suggest a general principle of play. The lower the
ante in comparison to future bets, the fewer hands you
should play; the higher the ante, the more hands you
should play. A different way of looking at it is: The
lower the ante, the higher your starting requirements
should be, and the higher the ante, the lower your starting
requirements should be. Or in the language of the online
poker games room: The lower the ante, the tighter you
should play; the higher the ante, the looser you should
play. I consider 5 percent or less of the average future
bets a small ante and 15 percent or more of the average
future bets a large ante. Anything in between is an
average ante. Thus, $100 would be an average ante in
a $1,000-$2,000 games, while in a $5-$10 games, 50 cents
would be an average ante.
The antes are not always the only things that make up
the initial pot. There may be forced bets, or blinds
- forced bets that rotate around the table from hand
to hand. In Las Vegas seven-card stud, for example,
the low card on board starts the action with a small
bet. In most $1-$2, $1-$3, and $1-$4 stud games the
forced bet (50 cents) actually replaces the ante. In
razz the high card starts the action with a small bet.
And in hold 'em there is almost always at least one
and sometimes two or even three blinds. When we talk
about antes in this page, we are including any forced
bets or blinds.
To repeat, all online poker games starts as a struggle
for the ante. This struggle for the antes is what determines
all future action. It is a struggle that increases and
builds up, but it should never be forgotten that the
initial struggle for the antes is what started the war.
Players who do forget this, no matter how well they
play otherwise, frequently find themselves in trouble.
Most often they play too many hands in relation to the
size of the ante; sometimes they play too few.
The best way to evaluate the size of the ante is to
think about it in terms of pot odds and expectation.
Let's say you sit down in an eight-handed $10-$20 games,
and everybody antes $1. That creates an $8 pot. Starting
with that $8, you should play your hand in terms of
the odds you're getting for each bet in relation to
your expectation of winning. If you bet $10, you are
laying $10 to win $8. If someone calls you, he is getting
$18-to-$10.
The fact that $1 or one-eighth of that ante money was
originally yours is of no consequence. In truth, it
is no longer yours. The moment you place your $1 ante
in the pot, it belongs to the pot, not to you, and eventually
to the winner of the hand. It is a common fallacy for
players to think in terms of the money they have already
put in the pot. They make a bad call because they called
one or two bets on earlier rounds. However, it is absolutely
irrelevant whether you put the money in there or someone
else did. It is the total amount, no part of which belongs
to you any longer, that should determine how you play
your hand. In home games the dealer often antes for
everybody. Some players play much more loosely when
they are dealing, thinking that the ante is somehow
theirs. But to play differently just because you anted,
rather than someone else, is absurd. It is the same
amount of money out there, no matter from whose stack
of chips it came.
On the other hand, when you have the blind in hold 'em,
for example, you can and should play a little looser,
not because that blind is yours, but because you're
getting better pot odds. A single example should make
this clear. Let's say you have the $5 blind in hold
'em, and someone behind you raises it to $10. It now
costs everyone else $10 to call, but when it comes back
around to you, it costs you only $5. If the pot grows
to $35, someone calling the $10 would be getting 3'/z-to-1,
but since it's only $5 to you, you're getting 7-to-1
for your money. So you don't need quite so strong a
hand to justify a call. You are considering your present
pot odds, not the $5 you already have in the pot. |
