Even if you are a looser player, all that Ante does is encourage your opponents to get braver against your loose style.
If you are a tight player, you can't properly read hands as there is far more grey area as to why someone is raising since raises will happen far more to 'scare off' than in non-ante cash tables.
In tournaments there's limited number of hands and a rate of blind increase which perhaps gets evened out if you force everyone to gradually pay more rather than hit some players harder than others by timing the blind increase onto them which is a fair enough reason to have antes as the form of chip leakage there instead of purely blinds but in cash games blinds don't increase so what justification is there to have antes, it doesn't even anything out it just makes you have to play much dumber to make back what you lost.
Now since I know I'll be wrong according to you. Lets start there is a fine line between being brave and being stupid. Not to mention desperation of antes and blinds eating away at your stack.
It's not to scare off, it becomes a fight for the dead money.
I am going to steal quotes online about these antes and why..
The 'ante' in poker is simply a wager you have to make before you see your cards. It is the fundamental reason why poker is a game of skill, as these endless blind bets
force players into
making plays with hands outside of the very best ones, which creates the endless conflicts that define the playing landscape in poker.
If the ante is very small, you can sit back and play a very small percentage of hands (especially in games where the other players are playing very loose), as the cost per hand of folding is pretty low. However, as the cost per hand rises,
you need to start fighting for blinds in order to stop this endless drain of small bets from destroying your stack..
So in essence these supposive brave people are doing what they are supposed to do, fight for the blinds including antes so your stack doesn't get destroyed. Which while it is getting destroyed you become forced to make plays with hands outside the very best ones. Someone on a short stack has their range of hands increased to call, go all in, because folding doesn't really become an option.
You don't become much dumber, again desperate I prefer to call it. But the shorter your stack becomes while having the antes destroy your stack as well, the more your range opens way up.
Now last quote.........
M vs average big blinds. First it's important to explain the difference between M and avg bbs in terms of how it relates to your life expectancy in a tournament. M calculates the number of rounds you can last if you ante off. So for example, if the blinds were 400-800 with a 100 ante at a 9 handed table and you had 8400 in chips, your M would be 4. 2100 per round, giving you 4 rounds. In terms of big blinds, you'd have 10.5.
Lower antes increase your M, which allows you to go into survival mode on a short stack for a longer period of time without feeling the pressure of going all in. Average big blinds per player in the tournament is what you'd look at to see how much "play" there is in a tournament. The higher the average big blinds per player is, the more streets will be bet, and the more maneuvering will occur post flop. A tournament that boasts a higher bb per player average is one that is clearly more skillful because more intricate decisions will be necessary. Deep stacked poker is just harder, plain and simple.
Now you can say wrong or I believe, go knock yourself out
