Hey guys,

Had a few discussion with a few tournament players on the following question.


How do you factor in BB ante in chip stack BB calculation?

Lets say you have 20k at 500/1000/1000 ante. On face value you have a 20bb stack. How do you factor in the BB ante (if at all)? Do you need to adjust your stack BB's, which then ultimately changes the strategy at different stack depths?

But based off the link below, it advises to add 66% as an ante adjusted BB. What is the logic behind it? Any help would be much appreciated!

https://www.cardschat.com/forum/tour...g-ante-194450/

They aren't saying to add 66% to the pot, they are saying to multiply the preflop pot before any voluntary raises are made by 66% (2/3) to find out the effective big blind were there no antes.

The logic is that, with no antes, there are two contributions to the pot. One small blind (0.5bb) and one big blind (1bb). 1bb/(0.5bb+1bb) = 2/3 of the pot is contributed by the big blind in the absence of antes.

In your example, there is 2500 chips in the pot before any voluntary raises. 2500*2/3 = 1666.67, which in this method you can treat as the big blind level as would be equivalent to playing without antes. i.e. You can now play your 20k stack, which would be effectively 20bb without antes, as a 20k/1666.67 = 11.99bb stack.

This is a useful heuristic if you know the non-ante shove/fold ranges.

I know it's not correct, but I play the bb ante as cutting my stack on 1/2 when playing in the BB or against the bb preflop. I view that ante as mine in the bb.

But, as many tournament I play have average stacks of 15 bbs or less when at final table but not yet in the money, I don't play a 10bb shove/fold chart strategy. I definitely keep a count of the opposing players chip counts.

Look up Harrington's M. It is really more effective than BBs in tournaments and I am not sure why BBs are the convention instead of M.

The above post is very wise - there is a notable difference between a BBA and antes paid by each player every hand. For instance, if you are short, you can afford to wait longer to jam if there is a BBA.

The BB ante does not count as part of your chip stack. In your example you have 19 bb's.

For me this has a marginal effect. In some cases it means I will 3-bet shove instead of making a 3-bet that is roughly 3.5x to 4x against one original raiser. Similarly against one or more prior callers. It also can matter if SB has limped.

What a BB ante does affect is whether or not I will call a pre-flop raise depending on the size of the raise and my hand. There are some cases where I will fold to a 3x bet when there is no ante like when I have hands like 86o but will call otherwise.

I really hate that they use the term ante to describe the "bb ante." An ante to money contributed by every player to the pot. Antes can be viewed as dead money when players don't see value in protecting their ante based on holdings, position and the nominal nature of most antes.
When you do a bb ante, all of that dead money concept only resides in one person's head (the bb), it's not always nominal and a lot of times positionally preflop the bb closes the action.

While I understand that everyone pays the BB ante in a round and it makes live tournaments faster, I just can't wrap my mind around it being the same as everyone putting in true antes.