Quote:
Originally Posted by busto23
You sound like chainsaw bud. Literally everyone that has played the format thinks it's an improvement. You're just nit picking at small irrelevant crap. If I had a dime for every forkin time someone started a "but I put my ante in dealer" argument that ended up taking a few minutes ... FOR THAT alone it is amazing.
You are imagining both the frequency and the net effect (time wise) that these sorts of delays occur. Its understandable when people are impatient or easily agitated that any little thing gets blown way out of proportion.
Anyhow, I believe the people who think its an improvement (at least those who think its a significant improvement) fall into one of two groups. Group A have some sort of psychological affinity for miniscule time savings, no matter the cost, and Group B like the way this format changes the manner in which the game is played from a competitive standpoint. Members of both groups are either completely unaware of, or don't care about the drawbacks of the system. For those in Group B, I suppose this is ok, so long as they are honest about why they like the new format instead of falling back on mythical time savings. As for Group A, they really need to reconsider their position because there may be alternatives that satisfy their psychological needs without incurring the problems of the BB ante.
As for chainsaw, he's quite a character. He knows a lot about poker. He just doesn't seem to know very much about business (at least he makes one think that with some of the things he says), and is also often incapable of making reasoned arguments. He often falls into the "I think its right, so it must be so" frame of mind. That, of course, does not mean he is wrong about any particular topic. And whenever I agree with him, I have no problem supporting his viewpoints (usually with a fair bit more thought and logic than he does
.
Anyhow, I have come at the BB ante issue without any biases whatsoever. I was told by vocal proponents that eliminating ante collection saves tons of time. I was a little dubious of this claim, but would have been happy to have it born out in reality. I did my own investigation into it and have deduced the BB ante cannot possible save tons of time since the ante collection process does not take tons of time. People who believe it does are either playing poker with completely incompetent dealers, or they are just imaging the time savings.
What the BB ante can do is exacerbate inequities when tables are imbalanced or during table break procedures. And what it can do is change the way that hands are played from a strategy/dynamics standpoint. Who knows, maybe this last point leads to hands being played faster since there are fewer players and less-contested pots. If that's the case, I would say, ok, lets have an honest debate about whether changes should be made to the fundamental nature of live holdem poker in order to increase hands/hr, instead of this farce about how long it takes to collect antes.