As the host of a regular home game tournament, I did away with antes quite a number of years ago simply because they were a pain for me to enforce and for players to remember. I have always missed them as antes of course are what make a real tournament, they are what drive the action and make pots worth fighting for. But it was simply easier to not have them in a home game where everybody takes a turn in dealing.

Then I watched the super high roller bowl and saw that they simply made a big blind pay the antes for the table. Pretty genius I think, I can't wait to try it out in my game, but what do people here think? I would love to get some opinions on the idea – to me it seems like a pretty good solution to achieving a balance between convenience and a good tournament structure.

The SHRB ante was always the amount of the big blind, so essentially the big blind was posting a double, one in front of him and one in the center of the table. I was thinking maybe we could have the ante amount be small and then multiplied by the number of players at the table, so for example if the anti-is 25 and there are 10 players, a big blind would throw 250 into the middle. What do you guys think? What's the best way to go about this?

Well it certainly is dead around here. Ante experiment went off pretty much without a hitch - though we did notice that it regardless of the number of players at the table the ante amount was always within a chip or two of the big blind. So next time we make the big blind pay the antes, it will simply be a two big blinds, one of which is put in the middle of the table. Much more simple to calculate. It's what the Super High Roller did and now I see why.

Is there any reason to have the big blind post the antes, instead of say, the button?

I'd rather the button or UTG pay it than the BB personally as getting hit with a double blind on the same hand is kind of brutal. This puts a "third players" money in the pot as well. (I realize it's everyone's money, but generally the player feels like it was only theirs)

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I have used this method (one player posting all antes for the table) in stud cash home games and it worked well.

The problem with using it in a tournament is: what happens when the designated player doesn't have enough chips to pay everyone's antes?

There is no solution to the problem that seems fair to me, although if this method was used in a big name official tournament, I am curious as to what their rule for it was.

The SHRB made the dealer pay the antes I also like this idea and may incorporate it into our games.

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I never added antes, either. They slow the game down.

And I agree that having larger pots to play for is great. But you could raise the blinds and do the same thing. What makes antes interesting is how they are paid.

In fact, making the BB pay it is simply raising the blind levels. You could increase the blinds at a steeper rate and do the same thing. Plus, it would be simpler.

Having the button pay it is interesting. It's really just a button blind, right? It will not only increase the starting pot, it will be another forced bet that will cut into stacks each orbit.

That will change the dynamic of the game in the later stages. Everyone will need to calculate how they will play their hands considering how each player (including themselves) will be impacted by the need to pay as BB, SB, then Button. It's a 3 blind game now. Might be good, but not the same as antes.

Antes where everyone pays has a very different effect on the game. Now every hand requires a fee to pay. That's one of the purposes of antes.

Try adding a button blind mid-way through the tournament and let us know how it goes.

I'm not really a fan of antes, honestly, for the reasons most people don't like them: they slow the game down, it's easy to forget them, etc. I do like having more in the pot to steal preflop, of course, but from the perspective of game management, meh.

As to having the BB (or someone ante) for everyone, my main concern is what others have mentioned. Players are frequently working with short stacks in a tournament. What happens when the ante-person is light? Did this come up in your game?

Antes are not the same as blinds, nor the same as increasing the blinds. Antes are dead money, if the button ante was a blind, the button could check if there was no raise and see a flop. This is not the case when the button pays the ante for the table.

In home/neighborhood tournaments there is like a white/black board with the antes and blinds so everyone can look up and see it. There are apps for the tablets that allow for Blinds, antes, and timers to be used. Need to have antes later in the tourny for sure.

You're right, it is not exactly the same. What I meant to say was that it is similar to a blind in that you only have to pay it once per orbit. When a player is short stacked, antes are a slow drain on every hand. If the dealer pays the antes, on a full table a player can see six or seven hands without paying anything. There is a big difference in that situation.

As a player that wants to get more hands in, with less disruptions, I'm not a fan of the home game ante.

I understand the difference in blinds and antes, and the difference it makes if a single player pays a table ante each round. It should change strategy mostly when players are short stacked.

If you are going with a single player to pay it... I don't think I really care who it is. I do think it's important to plan for when that player doesn't have the chips to cover the table ante. Probably OK with any 'fair' plan to deal with that.

Another issue if you do something like have steady ante amount being paid by the button regardless of the number of players at the table then their is a sort of weird skew as the tabe gets fewer players.

But if you do it based on the number of players at the table some players are posting less than others in a given round.

We used this at our last NL tournament, which had 26 players. I thought it worked great having a button ante equal to the big blind for most of the tourney, as well as two decks per table to keep the game moving. We scrapped it when we got down to 4 players as a full BB is a bit much when you're that short-handed, and the blinds are getting pretty big.

I think we'll continue with it instead of our usual ante structure, it resulted in way less griping about the antes.

Coming back to this thread made me think of something.

Basically the whole goal of the ante is to juice the pot to get the action going, right? If that's the case, why not introduce a third blind? So your structure goes something like this:

25/50
50/100
75/150
100/200
150/300
200/400

[start "ante" levels]

200/400/600
250/500/750
300/600/900
400/800/1,200

Seems much easier to enforce than antes for everyone, and it's not as awkward as having the button post something. It's a little bigger than a one-man ante, but it's not dead money, as it's a live blind, so the person posting it isn't just throwing chips away and still having to pay the full price to call.

We use antes about half the time in our $100+ tournaments. Too much trouble at the $30-$40 level (mostly because the crowd has a few more drinks in them and are a lot more likely to be forgetful).

We have tried traditional, button blind, and double big blind. I think prefer the double big blind the best because it adds a little "strategory" to late position play (basically makes the HJ middle position).

I agree that antes are a necessary evil at home games, the evil being how big a pain in the butt is it to collect from certain people and how often the deal gets messed up since, especially on the long tables, the cards end up hitting the antes that dot the table like land mines and flip over causing a misdeal. So I'm going to implement the one-player-pays-antes in my poker league next year in order to speed the process up. Here's how I'm going to try it.

The Cut Off will pay the antes. Blinds are already paying and the dealer (button in our game) has to focus on dealing and making sure the the blinds/antes pay, so Cut Off makes the most sense. (btw, almost every time we're a blind short the dealer is the one who missed, so don't give them more to do).

We usually start with three to four tables of 8 people (maybe 9 on one), so to speed things up/simplify the process I'd have the ante be the equivalent of the minimum # people that will be at a table before it breaks times your normal ante for that level. Which breaks down to:

Four tables, that's 6 minimum players before a table breaks. So 6x the ante.
Three/Two tables, that's 5 minimum players before a table breaks. So 5x the ante.

Yes, you could set it for the actual amount of players at the table times the normal ante, but then the amount is always changing each time a player drops which ads more confusion and there's unfairness when tables are not balanced. And the point is to simplify the night and keep things moving. At 6x or 5x the ante, it's the same for the whole blind level no matter how many are at your table. And if you have three or less tables, it will always be 5x.

Then at the final table I'd set if for 5x again and stop when you get down to four players.

I might actually just make it 5x for the whole night no matter how many tables we have at the time of the antes, to really simplify things. Then I won't need to have two columns of potential antes for each blind level. Sure, a little less money per round goes in the pot at 5x, but I'm guessing it will be worth it in time saved and it will still juice the pot more than having no antes.

IF THE CUT OFF is short, I'd just have them be all in and the only part of the pot they're eligible for which is the antes that they just put in. And for that hand your antes are just less than normal. Shouldn't happen that often so why worry about it.

I'll let you know how it works in in 6 months when I start it!