I'm not sure if this belongs in this forum, but anyhow, considering the many threads where the BBA has been debated, I thought I might summarize the pros/cons of the proposed BBA structure change. I feel like I am being fair in this post regarding the arguments made by both those opposed to and for the BBA, at least as far as what has been posted in these threads. If I am missing anything, or am mischaracterizing an argument, then by all means, please set me straight. Lastly, I am using the word "benefit" and "drawback" in so far as the claims being made in all these threads. Of course, what an individual views as a benefit or drawback will be a personal decision.

BBA "demonstrable" benefits

1) The process will be simplified. Players will no longer have to think about posting antes on most hands and dealers will no longer have to collect antes on most hands.

2) Somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 hands/hr will be gained by eliminating the collection of antes (as per benefit #1 above).

3) Level-to-level "cost per orbit" will increase in a smoother fashion. See this post for analysis: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...1&postcount=83


BBA "potential" benefits

1) Additional hands/hr may be gained if the change in ante structure leads to pots which are contested less frequently and/or less stubbornly (for lack of a better term).


BBA "demonstrable" drawbacks

1) Existing cost per hand inequities caused by unbalanced tables will be increased ~2x+. See this post for analysis: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...1&postcount=58

2) Existing inequity caused by being moved in to the BB when re-assigned to a new table is increased because the forced contribution of the BB is doubled (in most BBA formats I have seen)

3) Intra-orbit cost variations will be less smooth, obviously, since one position will be contributing double what it does under traditional antes, and most positions will be contributing nothing.


BBA "potential" drawbacks

1) It has been theorized that the BBA may lead to more passive play overall. This may result in the potential benefit #1 listed above, but it also may result in tournaments taking longer to break down. Longer tournaments would present a direct negative economic impact on venues, and likely have an indirect negative effect on all players, in the form of rake, or other structural changes made necessary by these effects of the BBA.


BBA Benefit or Drawback (you decide)

Hand play dynamics will change due to perception and/or reality. Decision ranges will be affected by the removal of antes from most positions and significant increase in forced contribution in one position.

If anyone has read any of my posts on the subject, I am obviously opposed to the BBA. I recognize the BBA does offer some benefits over the traditional ante. However it also has drawbacks which I listed above. IMO, the benefits do not outweigh the drawbacks sufficiently enough to warrant making wholesale changes to tournament structures. I allow that the benefits of the BBA may be more conducive to certain types of tournaments (turbos, for instance), and if the BBA were routinely implemented in some events (as opposed to all), I wouldn't have any particular issue. However, the BBA has never been debated as such. It has always been a treated like a proposed rules change which will effect all events. In my mind, there is not nearly enough evidence, either of a real or theoretical benefit which would justify making such wholesale changes to a system that has worked perfectly well for so long.

I also feel like there has been a deliberate effort to cram this change through on the part of certain advocates in the industry for some unknown and/or unspecified purpose using advocacy tactics normally reserved to the dirty business of politics. That gives me even more pause as to the wisdom of implementing this change.

Here are my specific thoughts on the above benefits/drawbacks in my original post.

Benefits

1) Demonstrable benefit #1 doesn't need much analysis. It is real. My personal feeling is it is not a particularly arduous task for players to have to post antes, and when compared to all of the tasks a dealer must accomplish in the course of performing their duties, the collection of antes is a small step. However, the BBA obviously is a simplification.

2) For demonstrable benefit #2, I claim a gain of about 2 hands/hr. In my investigation the real savings is between 1-2 hands per hour, while other reasonable posters have claimed between 2-3. So 2 hands/hr seems like a decent value. I don't believe posters who claim "tons" of time is saved by eliminating antes. IMO, they are either being disingenuous in order to try and strengthen their argument for the BBA, or they are simply suffering from some sort of confirmation bias when they believe that delays which occur during ante collection represent a significant amount of time. In order to strengthen my beliefs with regard to how long it takes to collect antes, I did two rounds of experiments which I have summarized here: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...4&postcount=66
, and here: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...1&postcount=36

My experiments are not scientific since I cannot control for all variables. However, I think the results were pretty sound and, even if allowing for large variability, still only indicated paltry time savings if one were to eliminate ante collection. These savings are real, so I don't claim they should be completely ignored. However they are not significant and would only be a justification for making the change if the change had no drawbacks, which is not the case.

3) Demonstrable benefit #3 is literally the only "real" benefit which has been provided by some advocates for the BBA (at least in these threads) which isn't grossly exaggerated. The structure is smoother, no doubt. I discount this benefit, though, primarily because the main thrust of the argument is that short stacks will benefit from smoother structure. On its surface, this makes sense, since obviously a big jump in cost per orbit will hurt short stacks more than others. However, under the traditional ante system, you get two full levels before and two full levels after the relatively large cost jump where the structure increases at a slower rate (up to twice as slow) than with the BBA. I believe that this extended period of time where costs increase slower is just as big, if not more, of an advantage to short stacks, as the higher cost jump is a disadvantage. So in the end, the effect of the smoother structure caused by BBA on short stacks is basically a wash. There is no, or at least no significant benefit. I will allow that the benefit of a smoother level-to-level structure may be greater for large stacks than it is for small. But in the final analysis, I just don't see how smoother structure represents an obvious benefit to all players.

Drawbacks

1) Demonstrable drawback #1 is real and significant enough that there have been a number of ideas put forward on how to avoid the issue (or lessen its effects) by introducing different rules under different circumstances and/or points in a tournament. I have no opinion on the effectiveness of these suggestions to counter-act the inequity exacerbation caused by the BBA. But I think having all these different sets of rules will drastically reduce or even eliminate what is supposed to be one of the most important benefits of the BBA... simplification.

2) Demonstrable drawback #2 is a pet-peeve of mind, so I definitely care about it more than other issues (or perhaps other players). There have been suggestions, such as the button ante, which have the effect of lessening this inequity exacerbated by the BBA. However, in the end, all of these various ante-less or ante-reducing formats still concentrate the forced contribution into a smaller number of hands, making those positions more consequential. So, a player is more likely to be moved into a more consequential position under these formats, which obviously can be bad for them if they are short-stacked.

3) As a player (and a rec one at that), I don't have a lot to say about potential benefit #1 and potential drawback #1 (they are related). But I do think potential drawback #1 would be bad for venues, and therefore indirectly bad for players.

So, that pretty much summarizes the issue for me. I continue to be open to anyone who can present and argue for any additional "benefits" which I didn't list in my original post. I would hope that these would be "real" benefits, and not ones made up or exaggerated in order to try and strengthen the case for the BBA. IMO, the BBA will basically improve things in some areas, and make things worse in other areas. I assume the degree to which one accepts the case for improvement and worsening will largely determine which side of the issue they may fall on. For example, I believe there are some players (perhaps many), for whom demonstrable benefit #1 is all that matters. They only care that the change will make it so they are inconvenienced less. If that is how they feel, its fine with me. But in order to get a real understanding of people's views on the subject, I feel like they need to be informed about it. The need to understand it as completely as possible. Otherwise it is just too easy to play games with "polls" in order to get an outcome a person wants. To a large degree the numerous back-and-forth debates going on in multiple threads is a good thing to inform people of the various aspects of this issue. I started this thread to hopefully consolidate things in a more central location that talks about the issue in it’s entirety.

I'd like to refer to a statement of yours with respect to passive playing. You mentioned on one occasion that increased action is a main factor in slowing down the speed of play and I see this as true and to the point. Things slow down with action.

Of course "action" is not something to legislate against, but the best part of the game, love it or hate it. Or better yet it is the game.

Therefore the supposed benefit of quick play due to this theorized passive nature in the big blind methodology is not so evident; it only means that the players enjoy the "ease" and in our times everyone loves "ease" . LOL

The Wynn Rep did state that his tourneys are taking the same amount of time, conventional or big blind ante.

"Action" definitely slows things down in the sense that you get fewer hands/hr. Of course, if one is part of the "action" it may not feel like things are slowing down... perhaps the exact opposite.

As for how long events take to break down, this is going to be tricky to nail down. I don't believe venues typically keep good data on this historically and comparing a range of events with BBA to equivalent events without is really the only way to empirically determine the effect. While I like the Wynn TD and expect he is being sincere in his comments, he is not yet in a position to make a definitive statement about this particular aspect of BBA since there simply isn't enough data on the break-down rates of all these tourneys. One thing I will try to do this summer is have a look at the BBA events at the WSOP and try to compare them to equivalent past events. One good thing about WSOP events is there is typically lots of good info available online on the progress of the tourney at wsop.com through their tournament updates blog. Perhaps something can be gleaned from that data. If we are simply going to go by total tournament time, we will obviously need a lot of data points for the information to be statistically relevant. But there are certainly going to be a lot of tournaments, both BBA and standard in vegas over the summer. If TDs are willing to compile the stats honestly, I don't see why we can't learn something about this effect, if it exists, by the end of the summer.

To that end, I think a particular statistic which would be relevant is players eliminated per hour. It would probably be impossible to get an accurate figure within the timeframe of a few levels (between breaks, for instance), but I think a daily figure would still be valid. So you take two multi-day tourneys with the same day 1 structure (starting stacks, level length, #levels, etc)... one BBA, one not. And you look at how many players were eliminated in day 1 (total entries minus remaining) and divide that by the length of play and I think its probably a fairly good metric for the breakdown speed of the day one structure. You can do the same for day 2, though this will obviously be slower in most structures. I don't see any theoretical reason why BBA would be faster, and there is some theoretical reasons why it might be slower (at some anecdotal evidence too). But none of that matters without reliable data to look at. This seems like it should be a fairly easy metric to compile and track. Hopefully TDs will be willing to do so. I would think they would be since this particular potential aspect of the BBA will impact their bottom lines directly.

We have debated most of this already, but I think the HUGE majority of tourney players would prefer a smoother structure. Are you saying that players would be equally amenable to:

50/100
400/800
500/1000
600/1200
700/1400
1500/3000
1600/3200
1700/3400
2000/4000
4000/8000

and

50/100
100/200
200/400
350/700
600/1200
900/1800
1400/2800
2000/4000
2800/5600
4000/8000?

They both go from 50/100 to 4000/8000 in 10 levels. For you to say there is no benefit to a "smoother" structure says that players would prefer both of these equally, which is obviously absurd.

First off, what players prefer rarely has anything to do with benefit... at least and common notion of benefit. I mean, what is more beneficial, having 40 minute levels or 20 minute levels? But plenty of players prefer the latter.

Anyhow, we are not comparing two hypothetical structures. We are comparing a real standard ante structure to a real BBA structure. I think the link in the OP regarding structure smoothening is a fair comparison. I never said there was no conceivable benefit to structure smoothening. I just made the case that whatever disadvantage there is for short stacks with the typical ante structure is made up by the fact that this structure grows slower over multiple levels than the BBA. So it really comes down to what point in the tourney one finds themselves short-stacked. If I were in that position, I would much rather be in a standard ante tourney if I had two slow-growing levels ahead of me, instead of two faster growing levels in BBA. Since the advantage/disadvantage is entirely dependent on circumstance and timing, one cannot say that one structure is better than the other when it comes to structure smoothening, at least as far as short-stacks are concerned.

But just to answer your specific question... if I were short stacked, I would much rather find myself in level 6 of structure A than level 7 of structure B, even though they both have similar costs and B has a smoother overall structure. Why would anyone view that as absurd?

JFC man. You have over and over said that you don't see "smoother structures" as a benefit in and of themselves. If players would prefer that, that's a benefit to the players (since they get what they want) and to the venues (since happy players come back more).

And if we can arbitrarily pick specific spots in a tourney when we will be short, then your last point would make sense. Since we can't, a smoother structure helps ensure that we don't eat a giant jump at a bad time.

All the big series tournament directors using it and delighted as to how its been received by players.....

https://twitter.com/SavagePoker/stat...65151485509633

I’m sure matt savage would love your referring to him as “all the big series TDSs”

Tab from Borgata and Tony from Hard Rock Hollywood both reported the same in that Twitter thread, and I would say are big TDs in the business, no?

If the level jumps in the standard ante were “normal”, and then every few levels there was a huge jump, and if we compared that to a BBA structure where all the level jumps are “normal” then you could make a legitimate claim that all players who prefer “slower” structures, should prefer the BBA, at least as far as structure speed is concerned. But that is not the case. The orbit costs in standard ante tournaments grows significantly slower than BBA over several levels. If the large jump during color ups didn’t exist, there would be no question. The standard ante would clearly be a “better” structure. The existence of these jumps does not suddenly make the BBA better. It just means they are more equivalent. It just makes the whole question of structure smoothness even less important. You say you prefer structures that increase costs 25-30% every level (as a rough example). I think I would actually prefer a structure that only increases 15% for two levels before a 50-55%% jump (as a rough example). There is nothing wrong with your preference. And there’s nothing wrong with mine.

And like I said way back when the question of structure somoothness was broached as an argument for BBA... if it comes down to a matter of personal preference, then this hardly seems like good justification for making wholesale changes.

I mean, if tomorrow the powers that be decided that all tourneys must have 60 minute levels and slow structures, I’m sure there would be lots of players who prefer that... perhaps even the majority of 2+2 members. But that would be a death blow to poker as we know it. So preference really shouldn’t be a governing principal when it comes to these sorts of core issues.

Besides the necessity of a smaller chip denomination, is there a material reason why tournaments typically do not have traditional antes in the early levels?

In a PokerNews podcast discussing the BBA, Justin Hammer at one point said that a major reason that tournaments never start with antes is to keep forced contribution small and manageable while the participants are still getting settled in properly. He said is that in case someone bought into the wrong tournament, or went to the wrong tournament and the dealer didn't catch it, or went to the wrong table, etc, that the stacks wouldn't be affected much and things could be reconstructed back to where they should be within those early orbits. I was pretty surprised by that reasoning, as I'd never heard that information anywhere before, so it kinda stuck with me. I suppose there are also enough dead stacks early that it would be a pain for dealers to post those antes.

Most of the venues I play at have gone away from (or never had) dead stacks, though this still exists in places.

As for the justification, I too find that odd. The reasoning seems to apply to level 1 only, and antes typically do not begin at level 2. I think the more obvious reason for not starting antes early is that antes traditionally represent a small percentage of the BB (between 1/12 and 1/6). When BB are so small, you would need even smaller denomination chips to start antes early.

I am an advocate for tourneys starting at higher levels (like 75/150, 100/100 or 100/200), especially those tourneys that start with 18-30K in chips. It would de-incentivize late-regging somewhat, and that in itself would improve a lot of logistical issues with tourney registration. And it would make it more likely that tourneys reach the money on day 1 (depending on he structure, of course). In any case, it would reduce the overall length of the tourney without really effecting the overall quality of the structure.

Many recs might be opposed since it reduces the amount of "play" early. But as long as there are plenty of starting chips, I don't think this is that big of a deal. And there are several aspects (the tourney reaching the money and completing faster chief among them) that recs would likely enjoy very much.

So is there a reason why the big blind pays the ante instead of say, the button or utg? Wouldn't it make more sense for the button to pay it?

sometimes you have a dead button if a player gets knocked out.

I think UTG should post the ante to lessen the blow of posting both the BB and ante in one hand.

Here's my first thought on that. Sometimes, doing it this way is going to allow somebody to skip paying the antes that round.

Full table, seat 1 is big blind, seat 2 pays antes. Hand plays out, seat 2 is eliminated. Next hand, seat 1 is the small blind, seat 3 is the big blind, seat 4 pays the antes. Seat 3 never had to pay the antes that orbit.

Is this issue, that won't happen too often, make it better for the one player, the big blind, to pay both the antes and the big blind? Or is the lessening of the burden in a single hand so great that we should do it this other way, and sometimes let a player "skip" paying the antes?

Personally, I'm still in favor of the current system with everybody paying their own ante.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

Button is better than UTG for the reason Greg mentioned and also because the same person can be UTG two hands in a row (seat 3 is BB, 4 is vacant, 5 is UTG; player fills seat 4, now seat 3 is SB, seat 4 is BB, and 5 is UTG again)

Except you can be UTG in consecutive hands at the same table.

THIS

-Do not allow anyone to miss the UTG ante. For the scenario Mr. Raymer noted, there would then be two antes.

-Only require one UTG ante per orbit per player. In cases where a player is UTG for 2 successive hands, there would be no ante for the subsequent hand.

So now there’s a BBA plus an UTGA sometimes? And sometimes no ante? What a pretzel we’re twisting ourselves into.

Sometimes there are 2 big blinds. Sometimes there is no small blind.

I don't hear much complaining about that.

in tourneys there is never two big blinds, you will just have a dead small.

cash on the other hand will have two big blinds some times.

SB eliminated moving button?