The BB SHOULDN'T defend any more than normal but you're right we should probably plan that they will bc they will use the fallacy that it matters who put the ante out.

This is simply wrong for the same reason that folding with no action in front of you is wrong. It affects the dynamics of the hand. The point is, when 10 people have money invested in a hand its a very different situation than when only 2 people (one significantly more than the other) have money invested. And this also effects what happens in blind vs blind situations since the disparity will be so much greater.

As I mentioned in other posts on this topic, I am not solidly prepared to say whether this dynamics change is good or bad. But the more I think about it, I'm leaning towards it being a bad change. The only reason antes exist is to make it so all players have money invested. I wasn't around when antes were invented, but I think the idea was to induce action in order to help a tourney break down faster. With this sort of change, yes the blinds will be increased to offset the loss of antes, but I really think it will allow nits to play fewer hands. This change, which I assume has been toyed with for the sole purpose of speeding things up, could actually lead to longer tournaments if players start playing tighter.

In any case, to say there is no change is not at all accurate.

Again, your analysis is not really accurate to what actually happens. There is a big difference between needing to invest X amount of chips in one hand versus 9 or 10 hands. Yes, the total number of chips may be the same in those two scenarios, but the disadvantage of only getting one hand is huge since you obviously have far fewer opportunities to get a good one. So, for the short-stacked player being moved into the BB, this is a really big deal. And they don't have to be completely crippled (0-4BB). Having to pay 2.5x more than with the current system can really harm any player who is relatively short-stacked. All of a sudden you go from short, to shove/fold mode, or shove/fold mode to crippled. The point of my objection to the BB ante on the grounds of the table break procedure isn't that the current procedure is great and the BB ante makes it bad. Its that the current procedure is flawed and the BB-ante significantly exacerbates that flaw.

Anyhow, what this all comes down to is... what is actually gained by the BB-ante structure (or essentially eliminating antes)? I have been playing live tournament poker for a long time and in my experience, the collection of antes does not represent a significant portion of the total time of a hand. But, I have never done any experiments. Over this weekend, I plan on playing quite a bit, so I will do my own little experiment to see what typical ante collection times are.

It literally matters not who put the money into the pot once it is in the pot. If we are playing 800/1600/200, your defense of the big blind to a HJ open to 3500 should be the same as it would be if the tourney director came over that hand and said "hey, I have 4200 chips here, the casino is posting the blinds and antes this hand". Are you really arguing that we should play it differently, because the 1600 came from our stack and not the casino? The relevant info is it is 1900 to us, not who the money came from.

No, it is to increase the size of pots, which increases action. There is no such thing as "money invested", that is a sunk cost fallacy. Put another way vs the above, say you're playing a heads up cash game. We are on the turn, and each of you has put in $252 blind, making a pot of $504, and you each have $300 behind. Correct strategy AT THIS POINT is no different than a situation where we are on the turn, each of you has put in $2, and the casino did a splash pot, adding in $500 to the pot, and you each have $300 behind. The source of the money is no longer relevant.


But it doesn't except for the situation I gave in my original post. The added hit you take in the BB is offset by the fact that you lose less fold equity on the other 8 hands. It makes moving to the BB a little bit worse, and moving to other positions a tiny bit better. Over time, your EV will remain equal by the amount of times you get moved to each position.

I think you are overlooking it a bit, because it is "the norm". What % of time are all 9 players paying attention and post an ante immediately upon the conclusion of the previous hand? Maybe 10%, if that? There's almost always at least one person who is donking around on their phone, etc. But even assuming perfection, then the dealer has to round up the 9 antes, frequently having to make change. Best case scenario, antes add 20 seconds to each hand. So for every 25 hands, we gain 500 seconds, or just over 8 minutes. And that doesn't factor in the fairly rare, but still present situation where there is a dispute or disagreement over who posted the antes, or situations where the dealer just sits quietly or just says "antes please" while the guy who hasn't posted sits there dicking off on Facebook.

Now, there are going to be times when the BB ante poster is the one person who isn't paying attention or needs change. But it is much easier to go ahead and start dealing when one player hasn't posted correctly, and fix it as we go (as frequently happens when players haven't posted blinds), versus dealing to a table of 9 players and 8 antes and trying to figure that out.

Not sure where you play most of your tournaments, but that percentage in NO way mirrors my experience at a number of different Circuit locations. Indeed, the vast majority have their antes out and those that need change are often making it before the dealer even gets to their side of the table. It IS commonplace for there to be a single chip at some ante levels with someone piping up with "that is all of us" motioning to the four at the end of the table.

Even if we accept at face value the assertion of eight minutes every 25 hands, that is nowhere near the over/under of 4.5 gained hands per hour mentioned elsewhere. In fact, my guess is that you will see events running slower rather than faster in the early ante levels precisely because people rarely look at structure sheets.

This is not a player-friendly change. It may be an action-junkie-friendly move, but I don't play tournaments for the action rush.

It wasn't really my intention to get into a strategy or optimum play discussion, as this is a complicated subject and, frankly, I don't really care. My only point was that changing who has what invested in the hand will change how the hand is played, whether players are playing optimally or not.

As to the part about sunk costs... it doesn't matter whether it is a fallacy or not. It only matters how people play. And if they will play differently because of a rules change, then that is something to be considered.

The "tiny bit better" it gets the other times does not make up for the one time you get moved into the BB because a player may not get see all of those other hands where they don't pay the ante. When you're short stacked, each hand can be your last. And, sort of by definition, the penalty for getting placed in the BB in this new structure is not "a little bit worse" to offset the "tiny bit better" of future hands. Its literally ~2.5x worse. Perhaps if one is guaranteed to see 9 or 10 hands there would be less of disparity. But such a guarantee does not exist.


I agree that players not paying attention or dealers not being really competent are factors (and potentially significant ones) in the length of hands. And these factors can and do affect the length of time it takes to collect antes. I just don't think their effect on this length of time is nearly as great or prevalent as their effect on other aspects of game play, such as paying attention to action (for players) and correctly controlling the deck/pot/bet amounts (for dealers).

I think your time savings estimates are a bit high (but probably not way off). IMO its closer to 15 seconds, but lets go with your figures. So you're talking about maybe saving 14% on the length of time of a hand (assuming the new system takes exactly 0 seconds and doesn't lead to its own confusion amongst players). This, IMO is not a significant enough time savings in order to implement this kind of structural change, especially when you consider that the REAL cause for hands playing out longer than they ought to, and by such a wide margin that it hardly makes any sense to look at anything else, is the time it takes for players to make decisions (on purpose or by accident)

I would suggest actually playing a tourney like this before just blasting it based on ur "theories." I have heard far more compliments than complaints thus far, but I'm going to actually play a few before claiming to be an expert.

I don't buy the argument that it's bad cause it changes strategy, uhh welcome to tourney poker. Many things change strategy, level lengths, reentry, starting chip stacks, tourney formats, etc etc etc...with all these things u adapt as a poker player, don't see how this change is any different.

There is a lot of luck in poker. As a (hopefully) more skillful player, I am usually in favor of minimizing the luck factor. Big blind antes increase the luck factor a bit, specifically with regard to being at a table that is short-handed compared to the field.

Imagine you're down to the 13 players in an event being played 10-handed. That means a 6-handed and a 7-handed table. Looking at a common level in a current structure, let's assume we're playing 200-400 blinds with a 50 ante.

Assuming the tables play the same number of hands per hour (which is not accurate, but I don't want to get into that yet), let's look at a 42 hand period.

7-handed table plays 6 orbits, costing the players 3600 in blinds plus 2100 in antes, a total of 5700, or 136 per hand.
6-handed table plays 7 orbits, costing the players 4200 in blinds plus 2100 in antes, a total of 6300, or 150 per hand.
That's 14 more per hand.

In the BB ante game, the structure will probably require the big blind to pay an ante equal to what all 10 players would have paid, or 500. It seems that is the way TDs are writing up the BB ante, it is the same ante whether the table is full or short-handed. So, in this event over 42 hands:

7-handed table plays 6 orbits, costing the players 3600 in blinds plus 3000 in antes, a total of 6600, or 157 per hand.
6-handed table plays 7 orbits, costing the players 4200 in blinds plus 3500 in antes, a total of 7700, or 183 per hand.
That's 26 more per hand.

All 13 players are paying a lot more per hand, about 13% more, whichever is already a concern IMO. Most short-handed play comes near the end of the event, which is not the best time to increase the luck factor. Then, we are almost doubling the difference between the 7- and 6-handed tables in terms of cost per hand as we move from traditional ante format to the BB ante format. That means the already significant increase in the luck factor for everyone hits the short-handed table even harder.

Yes, I know. I'm going to suffer the advantages and disadvantages of this effect no more or less than anyone else. It is random (well, not really, but again, too much granularity to dig into that now) who gets the 7-handed and who gets the 6-handed table. But just because it's not unfair doesn't mean it's good. If the TD did a random draw once an hour, and if your name is drawn, you are eliminated from the event, that is fair. At least, it is fair in the sense that the same risk falls equally on everybody. But I doubt any of us would want such a thing.

And what about tournaments that start short-handed? True, most events do not have antes in the early levels, in which case this is not a concern. But in events that do have antes from level 1, it feels pretty unfair that my table is 4-handed, your table is 8-handed, and I'm paying twice as much per hand as you.

I'll be trying out the new format at some point clearly, but have not yet played it. If it really does increase the number of hands per hour by more than 10%, it might be a good move. I'm doubtful that will be the case, but happy to find out.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

Greg,

Generally good post (as usual).

But I think it is a bit misleading to treat blinds/antes as a kind of "rake" that everyone pays and it goes away, giving everyone a sunk cost per orbit, as you will have in a cash game with money being raked out of the game.

Here, everyone's "cost per orbit" will average to 0, obviously, since no chips are coming off the table. So while the player who is folding hands is losing a bit more than they would without BB ante, a short stack who shoves and steals the blinds/antes WINS more than they would without BB ante. Each table is a zero sum game.

I'm not aware of anyone claiming to be an expert.

Anyhow, what are people actually complimenting? There's a physical limit to how much time can be saved by essentially eliminating antes, and except in the case of some pretty uncommon circumstances, this amount of time savings is miniscule. Are you saying players don't like the actual process of paying antes? Does it bother them to have to look up from their tablets to toss a chip or two in the pot? I realize paying attention to and actually playing a single table of poker is pretty arduous for many nowadays, but I fail to see how eliminating the act-of ante-ing would significantly reduce the burden.

In general, I agree that a change in game dynamics is not, in itself, a bad thing. But if the change brings about some bad side-effects (like lengthening tourneys) I would be dubious about implementing them.

Of course, if we get to a point where most series include a bunch of BB-ante tourneys and a bunch under the old format, then I guess I wouldn't care. A player could choose whichever they prefer, just like they can choose buy-in and other structure elements. But I don't feel like the BB-ante is something card-rooms are looking to implement just for some events. It feels like... this is the way they will do things from now on, if it becomes accepted.

And, of course, if it comes to be that all tourneys are played under this format, then players will have to adjust. But even for those who are proponents (for whatever reason... I really haven't seen a very good one yet), I'm pretty certain the first time they get moved into the BB a few times in a big tourney with lots of money on the line, they won't be singing the praises of getting a couple extra hands an hour or being freed from the excessive burden of having to use their brains to count out a few chips before each hand.

Each table may be a zero sum game, however, one table's zero sum game will be more advantageous than another's... hence the inequity. The BB ante does not create the inequity in this case, any more than it creates the inequity in the table break situation I have highlighted. It just exacerbates the inequity.

I had actually forgotten about the unbalanced table issue as far as reasons to oppose the BB ante (though I believe someone... perhaps Greg, brought it up in another thread)

Uh, how can one zero sum game be more advantageous to the other? The short-handed table is more volatile, but each hand at both tables, the players will average 0 gain/loss. Now, based on a person's playing style, they may PREFER one or the other, but there is no INHERENT disadvantage to being at the shorter table. You are only looking at "but what if I lose?" If you jam UTG at the 6 handed table, you have one less hand to get through, but win the same as you would at the 7 handed table, where with every player antes, you win LESS than you would at the 7 handed table, right? Isn't this an advantage?

Same with this quote: Why do you only focus on the negative? What about "I'm pretty certain the first time they get moved into the button a few times in a big tourney with lots of money on the line, they will be singing the praises of getting 5-7 hands in a row without losing a single chip"?

Via Negativa!

Late in tournaments, each chip lost hurts more than each chip won helps. Having to pay an extra BB ante in 1 hand hurts more than saving incremental antes helps. The potential for pain is worse than the potential for gain. It's not all linear. There is some asymmetry, even if the mean averages in the math all work out to be the same.

With the new BB ante system, there are essentially no antes. Antes are eliminated. The big blind is now a Much Bigger Big Blind. This will certainly change game dynamics and strategies, and present new opportunities for exploitation that didn't previously exist with antes.

These new exploitation opportunities in BB ante tourneys are fair because they are the same advantages and disadvantages for every player in terms of randomness. However, players with experience playing the BB ante format will have some advantage over players at the same skill level but without experience playing BB ante format.

So, it seems like the new BB ante format is going to be favored by pros who play a lot of live tournaments, as they will have this additional experience advantage, in addition to whatever other perceived benefits come with the BB ante game.

As a recreational player without experience with the BB ante, I think I am better off playing tournaments with the familiar, traditional ante format. I'm going to stick with my original plan to play the Seniors event at the Rio.

I will leave it to Greg to expound upon the disadvantage of playing at a short table when it comes to the BB ante, as this is not the thrust of my argument. But I believe the gist of it is, its more expensive with a shorter table because of the cost per unit time when the ante is not proportional to the number of players at the table.

As to the rest, as Greg put it, it’s not about fairness. Any rule that applies equally to all is fair. Rather, it’s about inequity. There are number of situations in tournament poker that lead to inequity. I’m not sure it’s possible to eliminate all of these. However TDs shouldn’t be introducing rule changes which lead to greater inequities unless there’s a really good reason to do so. Thus far I am not convinced such a reason really exists in this case. But we’ll see what the numbers look like in the Wynn TD’s experiments, as well as my own.

Tweet from Matt Savage
We have used BB ante @LAPC for multiple events now and it will continue in the future as the compliments of speeding the game up, “who didn’t ante”, and “put in your ante sir” have far outweighed complaints of “not fair for short stacks” and “but I like to bet 775 not 800.” https://t.co/mXGdrRqXiY

So I completed my non-scientific experiment regarding how long it takes to collect antes.

My methodology:

I collected data over the course of three full 50 minute levels with antes of 25, 50 and 75. I used the tournament clock in front of me for timing. I waited till the dealer finished their shuffle and put the deck down to start timing. I stopped timing when the dealer picked the deck back up to either cut or deal. Here are the results.

Total time of play: 150 minutes
# hands played: 53 (21.2/hr, 2.8 min/hand)

Ante collection:

high: 25 sec. (this occurred once when there was a question about someone's ante)
low: 5 sec. (this occurred 3 times in the first ante level with a competent dealer)
total: 585 sec (9.8 min.)
average = 11 sec.

So, the total % of time being spent collecting antes was 9.8/150 or 6.5%. and if it were physically possible to completely eliminate the ante collection process, then we would have seen 1.4 more hands per hour.

Takeaways:

1) My experiment occurred during a period when the tourney was very deep, and there was quite a bit of action. So it doesn't surprise me that the total hands/hour was on the low end of what I would consider normal (~25). But people claiming they get as much as 35 or even more hands per hour in the tourneys they play must be paying against the biggest nits ever.

2) I was surprised at how consistent the hands/hr was. In the three levels we got 18, 18 and 17 hands dealt, even though we saw 4 different dealers over that span. And the average time to collect antes in each level was 7.9 sec, 12 sec, 13.8 sec. respectively. I think the disparity, and steady increase had to do with the fact that, as the tournament wore on, the green chips starting accumulating in certain stacks, so the instances of needing to make change increased. I didn't follow things when black chips started being used, but I think its safe to assume it would follow a similar pattern with the 100 ante taking the least time.

3) The players were fairly competent about posting their antes, though there were the usual instances where the dealer would have to remind them. As I mentioned in the results, there was only one instance where the dealer had to count the pot because there was a question about whether someone posted or not, and this ended up only taking 25 seconds to rectify.

4) My experiment was not scientific as it did not account for every possible variable. And obviously, individual results will depend a great deal on specific circumstances at a particular table. However, my experiment did contain a pretty good sample size and the results were fairly consistent, so I am confident these were not some sort of aberration. I would allow that there could be a worse situation where the ante collection time is closer to the 15 seconds I hypothesized in an earlier post or, in a truly horrible case, the 20 seconds someone else did. But these results pretty much support my contention that eliminating the collection of antes does not represent a significant enough time savings to justify the drawbacks of the policy.

5. I am as convinced as ever that the people who support this policy now, especially those who do so fervently, do so for one of two reasons. A) they actually like the game dynamics changes the policy brings about or B) they fall into a likely larger group of people who are generally impatient and suffer from confirmation bias. Now, I can understand if someone is used to getting dealt many more hands/hr online or is just an impatient person overall, that any little annoying delay, as happens sometimes when collecting antes, can be blown way out of proportion. I think that is probably what is going on with this issue. But the numbers don't lie. I doubt a person could actually feel a 5-10% difference in game speed. And even if eliminating, or greatly reducing a particular step in the process made people have some sort of psychological experience to imagine it is going much faster, it still wouldn't change how long things actually take. If people are concerned about pace of play in poker (as it seems they are concerned about it in almost every aspect of our increasingly attention deficient world), then there are certainly things that can be done to make for real, not imaginary, change in this area.

This doesn't surprise me. Its kind of like, when you're playing blackjack, and there's someone at the table playing improperly. People always remember the instances when that player cost them the win far more regularly and intensely than they remember the instances when that player saved them, even though in reality, it probably balanced out.

So, in the case of live poker, there are impatient people and there are instances (probably relatively few, but in any case) where another player delayed a hand by a few seconds during an ante process, and of course, the impatient player will get to thinking that this happens all the time and makes a significant difference. I just don't think its true based on the reality of the ante-ing process.

What's interesting, at least psychologically, is there hasn't quite been a clamoring for shot clocks, or stiffer penalties for not paying attention, two rules changes which would obviously have a far greater effect on the pace of play. I wonder if its because, deep down inside, while everyone complains about other people taking too long to make decisions, or slowing up the game by not paying attention, we all know that we ourselves are guilty of these sins as often as most. I think in the psychological world that's called projection, or something. Anyhow, I have no doubt that poker players would make for a very rich environment of psychological study, for those who might be inclined

Ok shifting back to the topic.

The 1st event is underway at the RIO. 6 flight $365 NLH.

475 entries so far through the first 4 flights. I am not playing this one because I am not much of a fan of the several flight/unlimited re-entry bonanza tournaments, even though the prize pool can get quite large.

They were running "mega" satellites in the Rio poker room. If you can call two tables a mega. Didn't see any signage on it.

My 2cents..I was Impressed,Coming in From the out-door parking in Masquerade Village,I thought,"oh boy,a long walk", Nope, Right from the Balcony,as soon as you enter,one has a Bird's eye view of the Poker Tourny..It is spread out,Not crowded ,near Food ,Parking and a Bar.I was very impressed with the Effort put into the Temp. Tourny area, All the staff i encountered were all Familiar Faces and were quick to say hello in passing..I really cannot compliment Jack Effel,Kim Smith ,et al. enough..all the Dealers were pleasant ,the area was clean..I will play in Thurs. Horse Event ..$365..Well done to the WSOP staff.wow,Summers almost here..I can feel it in the air there. ; 0/

Well thought out post. I played a BB Ante tournament recently and liked it for the simplicity of administration. I hadn't considered how it accelerates the structure when things get short handed or creates a small variance in cost per orbit at uneven tables.

I do believe that more hands are played as a result of this feature which has the effect of slowing down the structure vs. a standard ante event.

For those who assert that it changes the action, it really shouldn't IMO.

This is how I feel. Very convenient. I think the smoking and table location complaints are a bit overblown on here.

I think I know where I’m going for this series but can someone keep me honest? If I were to walk in the main door and make a right then head all the way down toward the bar (village bar?), and the buffet, is that right?

... or am I way off here?
Thanks

Last year was horrendous during HORSE for those of us stuck in the middle of the casino floor and not one of the tables down the hallway towards one of the restaurants.

Yeah, that end of the casino doesn't have any table games, just slots, so it's not all that crowded. Smoke was at a minimum when I was there this past weekend.

If you come in the main door the buffet is to the left, no? Just walk in the main door, head right, and keep walking until you get to a bunch of poker tables.