This business of adjusting to the ante structure

[southerndog]

On FT, I believe the ante for the 5/10 is .50 and the bi is $1.50, as opposed to the standard .25 ante and $2 BI.

So, on FT, every 200 hands will cost you $100 in antes + 25*1.50= 37.50 in Bi's = 137.50...

On party, you'd have $50 in antes+ $50 in BI's = $100..

So, figure about $19/100 hands is the increased cost.. I'd say you've gotta change something to account for this. I think you've gotta go for more steals, etc.

[Andy B]

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If you are playing a 1-2 game with a tight ante structure and I walk up and offer a $1000 to the winner of the next hand, you look down and see A-7-6 rainbow, I think you may well consider playing the hand.

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I'm playing any three, and it's no longer a tight structure.

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The 1-5 games spread in places with no ante at all, I certainly am not inclined to play drawing hands of anykind.

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If your opponents are loose, you're leaving money on the table.

[Andy B]

I've come home exhausted the last few days and haven't felt up to making a follow-up post. I still don't, but I'm going to have a bash at it anyway.

The basic adjustments for third street in high-ante games that people have cited are:

1) You should call more liberally with weaker pairs when someone open-completes.
2) You should open-complete more liberally with weaker pairs.
3) You should steal more liberally with a strong door card and nothing underneath.

I think that's all of them. Thing is, you make similar adjustments in a low-ante game depending on your opponents. If you have a loose-aggressive player who is raising with a wide range of hands, you should play more liberally against him, even if the ante is low. If the game is tight, you should be stealing more. You weigh a bunch of different factors--your opponents, the cards that are out, what you have, what's behind you, how much is in the pot, who's steaming, how your opponents perceive you, etc.--to arrive at your decisions about what you play and how you play it. There is no point at which the ante becomes the dominating factor, and that's really all I've been trying to say here.

[electrical]

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...There is no point at which the ante becomes the dominating factor, and that's really all I've been trying to say here.

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If by "ante" you mean the sum of parts making up the structure of the game (ante amount, size of bring-in relative to ante pool, size of bring-in relative to complete bet), then I disagree. For the comparison to be meaningful, we have to assume the same opponents in each game, so reads are immaterial.

In the "tight" structure I mentioned in my first post, a completion doesn't offer significantly worse odds to a player behind you than he would get with a limp. Why do it then, except to put more money in the pot. There are only a few holdings where the sole purpose of a bet or raise is to get more money in the pot, but this is the effect of completing in the tightest structure. A raise after a completion, on the other hand, has the same effect as in a "looser" structure (forcing opponents to call two bets cold), and this creates a special class of hands: hands you would limp with in an un-raised pot, but would be correct to raise with after a complete bet.

Stealing in the "tight" structure also offers the Bring-in better odds to defend than any other wager he can make on Third. So trying to steal in this structure is generally bad unless you have a playable hand with which you're indifferent about having competition, and defending in this structure can be done somewhat liberally. It becomes correct to defend with some hands you'd never bother to limp with.

I am not mentioning specific holdings becaue I think each player's preferences on how to play hands will define which are folds, which are limps and which are completions, but the adjustment for the structure will have to be made by anyone, regardless of style or preferences.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

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...There is no point at which the ante becomes the dominating factor, and that's really all I've been trying to say here.

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If by "ante" you mean the sum of parts making up the structure of the game (ante amount, size of bring-in relative to ante pool, size of bring-in relative to complete bet), then I disagree. For the comparison to be meaningful, we have to assume the same opponents in each game, so reads are immaterial.


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No, that's not the correct comparison at all. The correct comparison is to see what makes more of a difference, holding the opponents constant while varying the structure, or holding the structure constant while varying the opponents.

Let us first hold the opponents constant while varying the structure. At a tight table, how does changing the structure affect the game? One obvious effect is the efficacy of stealing. At a loose table, how does changing the structure affect the game? Not as much, because the effect of the bets that loose players are just tossing into the pot dwarfs the effect of the ante size when pots are often contested five-way. What about a table that is neither very tight nor very loose?

Then, hold the structure constant, while varying the opponents. At a "tight" structure, how much does correct play change if you go through the spectrum from vary tight table to a vary loose one? What about for a "loose" structure?

My contention (and I'm not going through all of the cases rigorously to prove it, I admit) is that you need to make more adjustments when holding the structure constant and varying the opponents than when holding the opponents constant and varying the structure. Thus, how your opponents play is more important in determining how you should play than the game's structure.

[SGspecial]

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Thus, how your opponents play is more important in determining how you should play than the game's structure.

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Confucius say "When going to pond with many fish, size of bait not matter. When only one fish to be found, bring biggest worm."

[Micturition Man]

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...There is no point at which the ante becomes the dominating factor, and that's really all I've been trying to say here.

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If by "ante" you mean the sum of parts making up the structure of the game (ante amount, size of bring-in relative to ante pool, size of bring-in relative to complete bet), then I disagree. For the comparison to be meaningful, we have to assume the same opponents in each game, so reads are immaterial.


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No, that's not the correct comparison at all. The correct comparison is to see what makes more of a difference, holding the opponents constant while varying the structure, or holding the structure constant while varying the opponents.


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Well this thread was never about what you have now decided that it is about.

This thread was about the OP denying that ante size makes much of a difference in optimal strategy.

The question of whether you make bigger adjustments for the ante or for opponents seems completely pointless to me, and in fact it's not even answerable. (How are you supposed to quantify these adjustments to weigh against each other anyway?)

[PokrLikeItsProse]

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...There is no point at which the ante becomes the dominating factor, and that's really all I've been trying to say here.

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If by "ante" you mean the sum of parts making up the structure of the game (ante amount, size of bring-in relative to ante pool, size of bring-in relative to complete bet), then I disagree. For the comparison to be meaningful, we have to assume the same opponents in each game, so reads are immaterial.


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No, that's not the correct comparison at all. The correct comparison is to see what makes more of a difference, holding the opponents constant while varying the structure, or holding the structure constant while varying the opponents.


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Well this thread was never about what you have now decided that it is about.

This thread was about the OP denying that ante size makes much of a difference in optimal strategy.

The question of whether you make bigger adjustments for the ante or for opponents seems completely pointless to me, and in fact it's not even answerable. (How are you supposed to quantify these adjustments to weigh against each other anyway?)

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You could quantify it by a Monte Carlo method of taking x possible third street scenarios and run them through the various combinations of structure and table composition and see how often varying the structure vs varying your opponents changes your standard "by the book" play that you would advise. That would be time consuming for a meaningfully large x. And I haven't even mentioned aggressive vs passive as a variable for table composition, just tight vs. loose.

To me, this thread is about how some people overstate the importance of ante size. I tried to establish an upper bound for the importance of ante structure. It is seems clearly to be less important than the other players at the table. For example, blindly claiming that larger antes make it more correct to steal is a false generalization. At a very loose table, increasing the antes has pretty much zero effect on how often you should steal.

Andy B's claim is that the effects of the antes are "subtle." I make a weaker claim, that the ante size generally doesn't turn folds into non-folds or vice versa, but that it can have an effect on calling the bring-in vs completing or raising a completion vs. calling. Larger antes don't make that many more hands playable, which I think is Andy's main point. On average, what percentage increase do you think is optimal in hands played when moving from a "tight" to a "loose" structure?

Antes have an effect on optimal play which increases as the table becomes tighter, as stealing becomes more important, but I believe that some people are over-emphasizing the importance of stealing. These would often be the same people who think you should steal way more at short-handed stud games (when, by the same arguments they use, you should steal less because there are fewer antes in the pots offering you worse odds.)

[electrical]

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My contention (and I'm not going through all of the cases rigorously to prove it, I admit) is that you need to make more adjustments when holding the structure constant and varying the opponents than when holding the opponents constant and varying the structure. Thus, how your opponents play is more important in determining how you should play than the game's structure.

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I don't disagree with this in principle, but my point (if I have one) is that the "tight" structure as I have described it takes a lot of Third street arrows out of your quivver, such that even if you want to complete, you shouldn't, and even if you don't want to re-raise, you ought to. Things like that. The structure defeats some common moves, forcing you to play Third street differently.

The best argument for game selection (your position) is that a tight structure really only ties your hands on Third, leaving you four streets yet to outplay your man. The best argument for structural supremacy is that you have to be in the hand to outplay anybody, and a tight structure makes it correct less often to play a hand, and when you do play, your maneuvering options on Third are diminished.

[ACPlayer]

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I've come home exhausted the last few days and haven't felt up to making a follow-up post. I still don't, but I'm going to have a bash at it anyway.

The basic adjustments for third street in high-ante games that people have cited are:

1) You should call more liberally with weaker pairs when someone open-completes.
2) You should open-complete more liberally with weaker pairs.
3) You should steal more liberally with a strong door card and nothing underneath.

I think that's all of them. Thing is, you make similar adjustments in a low-ante game depending on your opponents. If you have a loose-aggressive player who is raising with a wide range of hands, you should play more liberally against him, even if the ante is low. If the game is tight, you should be stealing more. You weigh a bunch of different factors--your opponents, the cards that are out, what you have, what's behind you, how much is in the pot, who's steaming, how your opponents perceive you, etc.--to arrive at your decisions about what you play and how you play it. There is no point at which the ante becomes the dominating factor, and that's really all I've been trying to say here.

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A discussion of tight games/loose game/game conditions is orthogonal to the discussion of ante structures.

I think of it as two questions:

Given a particular lineup that you are playing in -- would you change your third street strategy if the ante doubled or halved etc. Your answer should be yes.

Given a particular line-up if the ante doubled would you leave the game because you doubt your game strategy. I beleive that in the 20-40 foxwoods game if the ante was $10 I would choose to not play even against lineups that I like with the present structure.

To me -- ante structure is important.

Player playing styles are also very important though an independent variable.