You may have noticed 100-250bb NL cash games with antes deployed at PokerStars this weekend at $2/$4 stakes, 9-seat tables.

These tables will soon be deployed at additional stakes and at tables with 6 seats. First, PokerStars would like to ask you as players, how big should the ante be relative to the big blind?

The currently deployed games have $2/$4 blinds with $0.80 antes. The ante is 20% ($4 * 0.20) of a big blind. If the ante were $1, it would be 25% of a big blind.

The poll included with this thread will record your preference on ante size. Thank you for helping to make PokerStars better.

voted

Hi Steve

Please make the antes a little bit bigger on 6max and a little bit smaller on 9max like 25%/20%

And we need this for PLO, please, please.

25% will create the most action packed table. So that gets my vote. I don't see why you would make it $0.8 instead of $1. 6x$1+sb$2+bb$4 = would make the pot $12 instead of $6 preflop. Thats double the pot to win baby!

FTP is ~33% of the SB (75-200bb buyin) fwiw.

Steve I feel like you should repost this topic in HSNL aswell, optimal ante sizing seems more up their alley as you'll have a bunch of posters experienced in similar sized buyins (in terms of bbs) in live poker who would know proper ante sizing accordingly.

Personally I think bigger antes are better, but I wouldn't know how to structure it optimally in full ring games versus 6max games. Part of me thinks the ante should be bigger in 9max games.

I'd prob make the ante $1 in the 2/4 fullring and $.75 in the 6max if the buyin was 100-250bbs. But thats just me.

I will say on personal experience that the NL rotation in the 8game tournaments at the WSOP felt awesome because the antes were pretty big (like 25 at 50/100) and that was 8handed. Optimal ante sizing in tournaments (at the WSOP and Matt Savage tournaments) is closer to 33% of the SB.

Please add this for all lvls of fullring

Um, gonna be kinda hard at 2nl, 5nl, and its not working so well on FTP (nor UB/AP) for 10nl.

I'd be very interested in playing on 100~200bb buy in tables with 20~33%bb ante. Bigger than that we'll have too many pots, even at 200bb, that will play shallow on the flop.

That makes no sense, FR there's 9 players to put it in so the pot is going to be bigger anyways.

I think 25% for 6max sounds good and 20% for 9max.

The antes should be the same at 9max and 6max.

Thanks for the poll steve.

I agree that this would be wonderful for smaller stakes games, 1/2 with a 500 max buy-in would be absolutely fantastic. Also euro deep games would be great too.

I kind of disagree that we need this at PLO, given that the average table probably has a "players seeing flop" stat that is double or even triple that of NL cash. But I don't have a really strong idea one way or the other.

You should decrease the min buyin to 60-75bb and the max buyin to 150-200bb or we get almonst no customers, even at the microlimits. A buyin of 100 to 250bb scares to many people. At the moment there is only one 2/4$ ante table with 9 players on it, but 18 non ante tables (20BB+50BB tables).
The 6max ante should be bigger than the FR ante.

I think 15-20% of the big blind ante is appropriate, I think bigger than that and the games aren't playing much deeper at all.

With full 6-max table and 100BB-250BB:

31.25% (1.25$) = 45 BB min, 111 BB max
25% (1$) = 50 BB min, 125 BB max
20% (.8$) = 55 BB min, 139 BB max
18.75% (.75$) = 57 BB min, 143 BB max
15% (.60$) = 63 BB min, 156 BB max

The FTP version with 75BB-200BB:
18.75% (.75$) = 43 BB min, 114 BB max

e.g. 2$/4$ 6-max full table 1$ ante, 400$ min buy-in 1000$ max buy-in. It's basically a 4$/8$ table, so it's effectively a 50 BB min, 125 BB max with no antes, which isn't much different than you offer now.

With an .80$ ante, it's a 3.6$/7.2$ game, or 55 BB min, 139 BB max with no antes. So I voted even smaller, but I think a 25% ante would make for larger games than would be good for the games.

good point i didn't think about how the antes effect the effective deepness of the games, i'd like to change my vote to smaller antes if possible, or if you could, deeper games with 25% antes so that the effective stax aren't diminished

Just a more specified suggestion from the vague post i had above,

could we do two types of ante tables?

100-300BB 20-25% ante structure and

100bb- Uncapped 33% ante structure?


anybody else interested in splitting two diff types of ante tables?

this seems pretty good

It should vary by the number of players at the table (or just the max number of players to make life easier) and you should aim for the sum of the antes to be like 1-1.5 BBs.

unless you plan on openraising 6/7BB when you would previously open pot/4BB, I don't think a direct comparison is necessarily accurate. many people are going to be raising less than the pot to give themselves good odds to steal and hopefully not just turn it into a 5/10 no ante game at a 2/4 buy in

even now people are minraising and large antes would give you even more range of betting options without having to limp

man i hate that these test 2/4 tables are 'fast.' deep tables suck when they are fast

have you actually played in any of these games or are you just basing these assumptions on the starting pot size? Just because the starting pot is the same doesn't mean that a 2/4 ante game is gonna play the same as a 4/8 no ante game... not even close.

At 25/50/10 on FTP people do lower their raise size. At 2/4/.8, it's mostly open potting, to 18.80$ or whatever it works out to be. 10/20/3 seems to be the middle ground where you see some of each. I'd advocate for larger antes in games like the 25/50 and smaller antes in games like 1/2.

stars doesn't have a mash pot button which counts for a lot

from playing alot of SSNL FTP ante, i'd say 20% has worked out well.

Slightly off topic, but are you considering raising the antes in all your stud games? 3/6 with a 25c ante is ridiculously low.

On topic 20% seems about right.