The Ante
January 8, 2008
The ante is basically the amount of chips or the amount of money that you need to put into the pot before getting any of your cards. Why do poker tables have the ante anyway? The reason for putting the ante on the table is because if there were no ante, the players will simply wait for the best cards they get and only play on those hands. The ante gives the poker players a reason to play. It forces them to make a move even if they do not have nice cards. For example, if there are ten players at the poker table and each person is required to put a dollar ante for every round then there will always be ten dollars on the table to play for. Even if your cards are not that nice, you will still try to make a move and get the ten dollars.
Antes are normally raised after ten to fifteen minutes of play. If you started with antes of fifty cents then after fifteen minutes, you could raise the antes to a dollar, and so on and so forth. This will speed up the game and it will make everyone play more aggressively toward the very end. If you are putting out antes of ten dollars for every round then you will be forced to grab the pot as much as possible.
What are ways of speeding up the antes? Sometimes it takes a lot of time to put the antes into the pot. You may encounter trouble finding out who did not put the ante or who have already placed an ante. Sometimes, long debates might even go on during prior distribution of cards because no one knows who put the ante or who did not put the ante. One way of solving this problem is to make the dealer pay the ante for everyone. Since the dealer rotates after every hand, the dealer can pay the antes for everyone at the table. The only thing that should be kept in mind in this situation is that everyone at the table must be able to deal an equal amount of times. Player one and player seven have to deal a one dollar ante for every rotation of the dealer button.
In some cases, the ante is completely removed but it is advised that every poker match have an ante. If you are hosting a poker tournament then make sure that you know the rules for antes so that when the tournament begins, no one is lost. Explain the rules of antes to the players so that no one will be confused.
If you do not like putting antes in your poker tournament then maybe you should simply increase the blinds. This way, everyone ends up giving their portion of the pot for every round as the dealer button rotates. In any case, the bottom line in any poker tournament is that there must be action on each and every round and that every player on the table must contribute to the action by putting in a portion of his or her chips on the table.