This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how poker works and I really wish it would stop. Not trying to single you out in particular as several people have been saying something to this effect but it's really infected this conversation. Antes and blinds are fundamentally different in how they affect a hand at a mathematical level.

A big blind ante equal to what a table full of antes would have been should not affect how a given hand is played at all, though it may affect how people who don't understand poker will play. It's just dead money in the pot. Jacking up the blinds is completely different; it changes the amount of each subsequent bet and all of the subsequent action. It would fundamentally change each individual hand.

I'm on the big blind ante bandwagon, but I'm willing to listen to good arguments against it. This is not one of them.

yes

That’s sort of what I was recommending in the BBA thread. It would certainly have all the benefits of the BBA without the warts.

I don’t recall if you were making this point in another post or thread, but if something changes the game because people make mistakes, then you still have to consider the change. The fact that people are making a mistake is irrelevant if it is reasonable to assume they will make the mistake.

Changing hand dynamics may speed up hand/hour. But simply emiminating ante-collection cannot speed up hands/hr in any noticeable way because ante-collection simply doesn’t take very much time in casino environments. I have no idea what it’s like in your home game though.

I see all the big East coast poker rooms met last week and have agreed upon using the BB ante moving forward so as to be uniformed. Borgata set to start things off with the upcoming Spring Open series. Wynn apparently using for all NL this summer too.

Played my first tourneys since the "BB ante" discussion flared up. They were traditional ante tourneys, so I wanted to pay attention to the process.

I will agree that I overestimated the time that traditional ante adds IF you have sufficient chips on the table, players paying attention, and a competent dealer. Even with those factors, it can add a significant amount of time, especially on ante levels like 75 or 400.

BB ante is best if:
1) you have few low denomination chips. If you give less than 8 each of 25 and 100, BB ante will be way better

2) you have average or below average dealers. The difference at the table between good and poor dealers on the time collecting antes was very noticeable. Plus the chipstacks are bigger in traditional ante games, making breaking down of stacks by mediocre or below dealers mind-numbingly tedious.

3) the tournament is populated mainly by recreational players, who may be drinking/not paying attention.

4) the structure is pretty fast, thus allowing BB ante to smooth out the jumps. I know aka has taken the (IMO absurd) position that a smooth structure isn't a benefit necessarily. I would say 99% of players would not enjoy a tourney that, say, jumped from 100/200 blinds to 500/1000. Smoother structures are more enjoyable for the vast majority.

To me, a tourney like the WSOP Daily Deepstack is a PERFECT BB ante tourney. Dealer quality is uneven, players are frequently drinking etc., and the structure losing some of the uneven jumps would be an improvement.

Ok great, now playing poker was a ***** but you didn't know it, before today. The damn structure can be anything the tournament director wants with the "pitching antes" system; the fact that 25's are used makes it much more flexible.

We were all enjoying poker (within the limits of win/lose) and now we are going to be orgasmic with the new system.

I'm playing the system and plan on going to the Wynn/Aria during the summer but in no way cam I buy this ersatz benefits/joys to the player as everyone is standing by.

The Aria has a poll on its twitter site and the numbers are 61% loved it, 13% hated it and 26 % were indifferent. Please note that the 13% says something and ask yourself whether this poll means anything at all. Its a poor man's justification for poor thinking.

The thoughts are in the heads of the tournament directors and they are unable to transfer these thoughts onto the reality of the game. It's Zeno's Paradox in which the Achilles never catches the tortoise.

I'm really not against it , honestly, as the point is moot.

http://platonicrealms.com/encycloped...e-and-achilles

Didn't want to lose track where we are; Planet Hollywood, Wynn and Aria are all in my plans for the summer.

It would be more correct to say they HAD a poll. It has closed at some point in the past. Since I (and I am guessing many others) don't follow every casino or player on Twitter, never even knew about the poll.

However, given that myself and others that think it is an unnecessary change are being ignored and that our funds are not needed in the poker economy, it isn't like the ability to have voted would make much difference.

Too bad given that I actually had looked forward to spending a lot of time (and money) with Aria events this summer.

Be specific... what is a "significant amount of time"? In my experimenting, the most time which was added (a hand where the pot had to actually get counted down because of confusion) was about 20 seconds. 20 seconds when hands average nearly three minutes is not significant... especially when it is an outlier.

I agree there is variance in how long the ante collection process takes. But unless someone is so unfortunate as to be stuck with a horrible dealer and horribly inept players, it simply doesn't make that big a difference. And if you are that unfortunate, I would bet there are a ton of things which will happen in the course of playing that will slow things down significantly more than the ante-collection process.

Hey, I'm all for rules that minimize other delays as well. But just because other things also lead to delays doesn't mean we shouldn't reduce this one.

I didn't have a stopwatch out. One one down, we had 4 separate pots where there was a specific delay of 20-90 seconds for the antes, and then a literal 2 1/2 minute count of someone's stack, but that was dealer-related.

Outside of that dealer, multiple other 30-45 second delays in the two tourneys, usually some variant of a guy having a 1k chip out for a 75 ante, then the dealer pitching the 1k chip to some person who is dicking on a phone or ipad to get change, them having to be specifically requested for change, them fumbling for change and making it, the dealer tossing the 100 chip into the pot, returning the rest, then picking the deck back up.

Which comes back to 'you don't change the ante structure because of idiots.'

That situation is entirely on the idiots who cannot be bothered to ask his neighbor to break a chip long before it was necessary or the neighbors that were not pro-active enough to ask how s/he wants change since they have an obvious need.

When every table or nearly every table has that situation happening (I was at 4 tables during the ME and it happened at 3 of them at least), then it is an issue worth addressing. As I said above, especially useful in tournies that have players drinking, venues with mediocre or worse dealers, venues with shortages of low denom chips, and tourneys with faster structures.

Seems pretty horrible. I gotta say, in 15+ years of playing live poker, I have never had a situation where there were those kind of consistent delays. Once in a blue moon, perhaps, bot not regularly. In any case, if there were no drawbacks, I would be fine with changing the system to shave off even a little time. But there are drawbacks, and the minimal time savings one would normally expect are not worth it.

Hi everyone; updated flyer here with a couple edits and additions.

Summary of updates;
-Event 19 had a typo, buy in is now $255 + $45
-Event 53 had a typo, flight was missing on 6/28 @11am
-Blind Lengths added
-Events using Big Blind Ante now noted next to event name
-Charity Events updated with prize and buy in info

Updated flyer below
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14JE...ew?usp=sharing

How many MORE edits are there going to be as you cave to the group that wants unnecessary changes? Some of us are having to change travel plans now...

The industry has been mostly supportive of Big Blind ante. You have many venues going exclusively with big blind ante for the summer. Those venues wouldn't go that direction if they didn't feel their players would be supportive.

Ph is simply testing it out to see what the feedback is - I think 11 or 12 (plus our nightly deepstack bounty events) of our 70 plus events are using it. We are still largely a traditional ante house. Could that change after GOLIATH 2018? Maybe? For now we are just dipping our toe in the water a bit to see what the temperature is. We hope we have enough options to make everyone happy.

Ph will get a very good sample size as we are using BB ante for events at the $100 price point. We look forward to see how players at that level (as well as higher buy ins) feel about it.

Only up on the strip for the tale end of your series, but will try popping over to donate, if I get the chance.

Glad you're not caving to the few, who seem so aggrieved by things changing

If the 'industry' was so supportive, then there would have been more of an effort to solicit feedback instead of making a change that, at its most basic level, appears to have been brought about to molly-coddle some inebriated high-rollers. Many of those players would play no-limit high card. They don't have the best interest of the game at heart.

The players who don't grind day in and day out but who come out and drop several thousand in entry fees at least a few times per year were never asked for an opinion. And when we learn about this crap and VOICE an opinion, we are told that our opinion doesn't matter.

Unfortunately, one of the events you are putting this crap into is your main event. I had intended to enter. No longer is that in the works. Tag team event was one I was mixed on, mainly because I felt the entry fee was too LOW...but it is ALSO no longer on my calendar. Again, removed because you insist on changing ante structures.

Nobody seems to want to address the inequities that are present. Instead everyone just wants to engage in cult-like thinking that goes from "play one and you will see- you will like it" (no, I didn't) to "well, we don't need you anyhow."

Precisely how much money are the grinders (and the TD's who cater to them) willing to see voluntarily exit the poker economy? After all, it is the recs with money (like me) that are supposedly what everyone licks their chops for each June...

TBH, I don't see a baby buy-in as being any manner of indicator as the daily events at most properties tend not to be a gauge of much of anything with regard to serious play.

I wasn't going to play the main in favor of the 888 at the WSOP the day I get to Vegas this summer. I will play your main now due to BB ante. Poof, Michelle's entry fee is recovered.

I don’t know. Michelle saying she won’t play an event because of the bb ante is pretty believable. She’s been dead set against it.

But you saying you will play a $2200 Event instead of an $888 event simply because of the BB ante really strains credibility. I call your bluff. It’s easy to say these things... for you and even for Michelle. No one can verify it. But it would be borderline psychotic to spend more than $1300 for the “pleasure” of playing with the bb ante. Seems a little crazy. Or cult-ish.

bba is going to take over all live events eventually. anyone complaining is fighting a losing battle

Totally agree.

I don’t like it but I accept that the battle has been lost.

Would rather focus energy on other things

There are players who enter mixed game tournaments thinking it's going to be NLHE...so you really think they'll notice it's BBA and not enter?