Do you open roughly the same range from each position regardless of antes? If so, you
are making a costly 5️⃣ mistake.
Many players leak chips by failing to adjust their preflop
ranges when there’s dead money to go after. With antes 5️⃣ in play, the pot is roughly 40%
bigger preflop. This means we need to play much looser than we do 5️⃣ when there are no
antes in play.
Today we’ll go through some examples to see how our open-raising range
changes from 5️⃣ early, middle, and late positions, depending on whether antes are in play
or not.
Don’t treat the ranges below as if 5️⃣ they are set in stone–no ranges are.
Instead, use them as a guide when building your own preflop strategy. But 5️⃣ first, let’s
take a look at what an ante is.
What is an Ante?
Ante refers to a mandatory bet
required of 5️⃣ all players before any cards are dealt, which encourages action by
incentivizing players to be aggressive. Antes are commonly found 5️⃣ in tournaments and
high stakes cash games.
Antes vs. No Antes: The Math
If there is a standard ante in
play and 5️⃣ we open for 2.25bb, we need to pick up the pot less than half of the time to
show an 5️⃣ immediate profit.
To show why we should be opening looser with antes in play,
let’s look at an example:
9-Handed Poker Tournament. 5️⃣ Blinds 250/500/50.
Hero is dealt
two cards on the button
folds to btn. Hero raises to 1,125.
Before we raised, the pot
was 5️⃣ 1,200 with the blinds and antes (250+500+450), and we are only risking 1,125 with
our raise. Therefore, our open needs 5️⃣ to take down the blinds 48.4% of the time to make
an immediate profit (what we are risking/total pot). And 5️⃣ this doesn’t account for the
times we win the pot postflop.
If there were no antes, the total pot would be 5️⃣ just 750
chips. Therefore, our raise would need to work 60% of the time to make an immediate
profit. This 5️⃣ 10.6 percentage point increase is quite the difference, and should
drastically impact how we think about our open-raise range.
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Now, let’s take a look at some specific ranges.
Note that the
ranges we will be looking at are for low-to-mid 5️⃣ stakes online tournaments or standard
live tournaments, and they don’t account for specific adjustments we can make depending
on our 5️⃣ given situation (the players behind, who’s in the big blind, etc). We are also
assuming a 30bb+ effective stack size.
Early 5️⃣ Position Range Example: UTG1
Let’s start
with how our early position range is impacted.
From UTG1, we are opening approximately
10% pre-ante 5️⃣ (see below). This is a very tight range, but necessary so with no antes
from early position. This is similar 5️⃣ to a cash game environment where antes are rarely
present.
When antes come in to play, we can nearly double our 5️⃣ opening range, to
approximately 20% of hands. We are now opening all the suited aces, all pocket pairs,
and some 5️⃣ more suited connectors and offsuit broadways.
Middle Position Range Example:
LoJack
From the LoJack we want to open ~16% of hands pre-ante:
Once 5️⃣ there are antes, we
can profitably open ~28% of hands, including all broadways and many suited gappers.
Here’s a reasonable 5️⃣ example of such a range:
Late Position Range Example:
Cutoff
Finally, here’s a reasonable cutoff raising range with no antes (26% of
5️⃣ hands):
Now, take a moment to consider which hands you might add into this range with
antes. Once you’re finished, click 5️⃣ below to see what I came up with
Adjusting Ranges
with Information
Again, these range recommendations don’t account for our opponents’
particular 5️⃣ tendencies. Here are 2 questions you should always ask yourself before
putting in a raise:
Who are the players behind?
If there 5️⃣ are tough, aggressive regulars
behind, we will need to adjust and tighten our range. Tough players will be the
quickest 5️⃣ to realize we are opening too loose and punish us by increasing their 3-bet
frequency.
On the other hand, if the 5️⃣ players behind are weak and passive, we can loosen
our opening range without much concern of facing a 3-bet.
Who is 5️⃣ the player in the big
blind?
If the player in big blind is weak or passive then we want to loosen 5️⃣ up and take
advantage of them folding too many hands. Against loose and aggressive players in the
big blind, tighten 5️⃣ up and consider using a slightly larger open size to make their pot
odds worse.
Button and Big Blind Antes
Button and 5️⃣ big blind antes are a hot topic. Many
tournament formats are moving toward this style, and many professionals approve. There
5️⃣ is some debate about whether the ante should be paid by the button or the big blind,
however, but we’ll 5️⃣ leave that discussion for another day.
A button or big blind ante is
simply where the button or big blind posts 5️⃣ the entire ante for the table. This is done
in lieu of the tradition way of collecting antes, where each 5️⃣ player posts 1/9th of the
total ante (assuming a 9-handed game) each hand. There are two major advantages to
having 5️⃣ the button or big blind posts the entire ante:
it reduces the need for smaller
chip denominations
it speeds up live tournaments
How 5️⃣ should we adjust our strategy if
we are playing in this type of ante format? It might seem like it 5️⃣ needs to change,
since just one player is posting the entire ante each hand.
The truth is, when playing
30bb+, our 5️⃣ strategy does not need to change much. The pot size is still exactly the
same, and we are still posting 5️⃣ the same amount in antes each orbit. Therefore, our
open-raise range should remain roughly same in either ante format.
There is 5️⃣ one spot to
adjust, though: when we are playing with a short stack. We may need to loosen our
shoving 5️⃣ ranges depending on stack-size and if the full ante is approaching. For
example, if we have 10bb and the big 5️⃣ blind/big blind ante is approaching, then we may
want to loosen our shoving range before this to avoid 20% of 5️⃣ our stack being committed
in one hand before even being dealt any cards.
There is likely some meta-game to be
aware 5️⃣ of as many players are not familiar with this format yet. You should look for and
exploit players who are 5️⃣ over-adjusting. For example, you may realize the button or
cutoff is now opening way too loose with a big blind/button 5️⃣ ante in play. You can take
advantage in the blinds by increasing your 3-bet percentage.
Conclusion
To sum up: try
to differentiate 5️⃣ your ranges into pre-ante and post-ante, because it does really make a
difference. And don’t be a nit when antes 5️⃣ come into play. Go after that dead money!
As
always, I’m happy to review and discuss today’s topic in the comments 5️⃣ below.
Note: Want
to upgrade your poker skills? Get free preflop charts here and start playing like a pro
before the 5️⃣ flop. Download now!
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