No ante's in O8 Tourneys--Why?

dj11

dj11

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There are no ante's in O8, apparently anywhere, and I can't find a reason why?

These days that makes O8 games last way longer than necessary.

Doesn't matter if it's limit, NL, or PL.

I can think of no logical reason for this. So, entertain me with why you think this might be the answer.
 
OzExorcist

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As in, not even in late stages of tournaments?

SB/BB only is obviously the most common version since it's a flop game same as NLHE.

If you're talking about cash games, I'm assuming it's because the game doesn't get all that much traffic as it is, so it doesn't make sense to divide the playing group up even further into ante / no ante tables.

I can't see any reason why the game wouldn't work with antes, but I also can't see there'd be any huge demand for that variant.
 
dj11

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As in, not even in late stages of tournaments?

Nope!

And this leads to, if anything, the reason ante's were invented (OK, at least a reason they are useful): Games lasting too long.

Late stage O8 tourneys these days are nit fests. It is very common for the end stage players to do nothing till the bubble bursts. They will sit out often, but more often they will eat the clock using a delay to make sure the next blinds take as long as possible to get back to them.

This primarily only happens in O8, most Omaha tourneys have ante's in the structure.

I must be missing some key info as to why O8 tourneys developed this way.:confused:

Ante's are not a factor in cash games. We really only see them in the STUD variants. Mostly anyway. Most all poker games originally had ante's, but then someone invented the blinds, probably because it was easier to keep track of and the blind structure was tweaked to what it is today. Recently I had seen that Stars had even begun to migrate blinds into the Stud tables. Weird at first, I got used to that pretty fast.

But in Tourneys, the ante's speed the game up.

Online, a 75 player tourney shouldn't take over 4 hours to finish. O8 tournies usually do. If there were ante's that started right after any re-buys and add-ons, that time would drop to somewhere around 3 hours.

I have played O8 tourney's live, and they wouldn't take that long! But they had ante's, and were a variant (5 card O8), intended to move along rather quickly
 
BriceNice

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Omaha is soul crushing enough as is, regular play is enough to eliminate people in a timely fashion for a tournament.
 
dj11

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Omaha is soul crushing enough as is, regular play is enough to eliminate people in a timely fashion for a tournament.

True, but it doesn't end up working that way.
 
vinnie

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My home game plays with an a button ante (button antes five small blinds)*. But, I rarely see it online. I remember seeing ante games back in Full Tilt years ago.

I think they would be fine for online tournaments. But, I can see why they wouldn't be the default option. There should be enough action anyway. Of course O8 is going to have a lot of split and quartered pots, so it might be wise just to speed the game along.

*There is no "good" reason for the button ante except it juices the pot. We would have pleny of action anyway. We use the button one because it simplifies antes for live games.
 
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Some games have antes to avoid nit fest and encourage people to play pots, whereas O8 is an action game for fish 😁
 
wilpinsi

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Imagine a game without before, it would be a torture, for sure they serve to accelerate the game, the longer it takes to finish, the more values go up, this makes the dynamics of the game and the player adjust to not be devoured, or By blinds, or by before.
 
dj11

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I play O8 tourneys pretty regularly on WPN, and they don't have any ante's in their structure.

What happens, for the most part, is that everyone turns into a nit until the bubble bursts. This makes the period between the end of late registration very slow, painfully slow sometimes.

The counter to no ante's seems to be that the big stacks start delaying. Eating the clock sort of tends to put the pressure on the short stacks, except that the short stacks don't realize this. Seems like those folks read somewhere that the delaying tactic is good poker. They didn't read the part about a big stack being needed for this to be good poker.

IMO, WPN has to much clock time for any tourney, and it seems to reset with each level to the full amount of time.
 
OzExorcist

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Yeah it sounds like they've got a whole host of problems with their tourney structures...
 
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Pot limit games don't have antes because it would make the initial pot too high and turn a traditionally post-flop game in to a shove fest. Limit games, aside from stud, don't have antes because the pot is proportionate to the betting limits. If you had antes suddenly someone is getting astronomical odds to call a raise pre flop and there would never be a value in folding. Crap shoot.
 
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