Quote:
Originally Posted by floattheboat
How exactly does an ante-only tournament work? Where do people play these? Why? How different is strategy for them?
There are a lot of gimmicks with tournaments lately, antes only is just one of them. When I first started playing on PokerStars I don't think that there were bounty tournaments yet, STTs didn't have antes and turbos were not nearly as popular as they are now.
I think that a lot of players get bored doing the same thing all the time, They need to change it up with different variants or structures, mixed games, or whatever keeps them amused. I'm happy just playing old-fashioned freezouts and STTs, but that's me. I just want to make money, I don't need to be entertained with the next big thing. Whatever you play, you can analyze a tournament and see if it works for you.
I will skip tournaments for a lot of reasons, for example: I don't like turbos, the prize pool is too small, the structure is too fast, or the bounties take too much out of the general prize pool.
I will sometimes break down/analyze/list tournaments on an Open Office page so that I know what's running the rest of the week and I can look ahead to see which tournaments fit with my goals, bankroll and schedule for that day.
I have not played an ante-only tournament, but I would do the same thing with that type of tournament as I would with any other type. I would do something like finding out my starting stack, then seeing what percentage of my starting stack the ante would be at levels 1, 5, 10 and 20. Those percentages will give you an idea of how fast the structure is and whether it works for you. Compare that with a tournament that has blinds and decide which works better for your situation.