When the antes come in

As you get deeper into the tournament, not only are the blinds forcing you to put money in the pot – the ante’s are too. Antes are small forced bets, usually around 10% of the big blind, which everyone has to post at a stage in the tournament. So at the 200/400 level you may all have to also put in a 50 chip ante every single hand.

The purpose of antes is to speed up the action and make the pots bigger. Although you will have no need to ‘defend’ your ante in any given hand, because it’s such a small price to pay, over time they have a big impact on your stack and mean that sitting around waiting for a hand is much more costly. At the same time, they make the pots you do play much more enticing because there is a little more to win.

Pay attention with every new blind level just how much you are committing before you even play a hand. So in the 200/400/50 level, not only are you posting a 200 and 400 blind, at a nine handed table you also post 450 in antes. So every orbit costs you 1050. You can see how they can creep up on you.

You need to step things up a little when the antes kick in; the benefit is it becomes a much better time to start trying to steal the blinds. Just think that if it’s costing you 1050 an orbit, that’s the same amount you stand to win at the 200/400/50 level if you steal the blinds just once. You need to steal a blind every orbit just to maintain your stack, but if you can get away with two a round you will build a good stack.

If you get called or indeed actually have a good hand, it means there is extra money in the pot too. A lot of pro players say that the ante stage is when they start to step things up and get really aggressive - and you should too, because the ante stage is where poker starts to get juicy.

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