[Mike Gallo]

Does he really say "proper"? I mean, I can see arguing that a game with higher antes is "more fun" or "worth playing" or "helpful for exposing nits and encouraging action"... but "proper" ?

Hi Jerrod,

In the essay titled Which Game:Stud or Hold' Em Mason writes;

If you have the banktoll to play the big limit games stud is frequently the better choice.

To see why this is the case, you need to understand that poker requires a proper balace of luck and skill to be succesful. The better players need to be reasonable winners at the end of the year. This way they will return to start the games and keep them going. But there needs to be enough short term luck so that the weaker players will have some winning nights. This they will also want to return. Unfortunately, as you move up in limit, the experts get even better, but a "live" one is usually a live one. Thus the games risk having the balance of luck and skill being tipped too much in favor of skill, which could mean that they could choke themselves off.

It turns out that high limit stud actually has a device to assure that this doesnt happen. It is what we refer to as a higher proportinal ante. That is as you move up in limit at the the stud tables, the ante becomes proportionately larger relative to the betting. This serves as a way to handicap the better players and assure that skill does not totally dominate luck.

My apologies to Mason and the Mods if I should not have quoted as much of the essay as I did.

Mr Ackerman since I pointed this out to you, send me a pm for my address so I can get an autographed copy of your book [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]