Rdale,

the games are really wild. The minimum buy in is about 70dollars, no max. Most people buy in for 100dollars. The antes are about 3.3USD. The game is NL.

In fact, all the tables I have seen in casinos here in Santo Domingo dont have a max buy in and a few of them use antes instead of blinds. I think the purpose of this is to make the betting bigger, and rake more money. I spoke to the owner of the table and he told me he might change the antes for blinds if the players agree...

what do u say about the strategy??


AlexMR

I'm just guessing because this isn't like quite like tournament poker with antes and blinds. Tournament poker with antes and blinds you have the advantage of being able to make strong position based plays with 98s or any two because of the effect of bubbling near the money and your relative stack size to the opponents following you, and how aggressive vs. passive they play, you can win a pot every few rounds and maintain hoping to play a monster pot that gives you some real edge later.

Antes add a new dimension to hold'em, but mostly in raise size and playing their tendencies as opposed to hyper gamble happy game you describe where every one has 1/10 of their stack in 9 hands. Usually antes work something like this, average stack is 10k there 300 people left blinds are 100/200 with a $50 ante it is costing you $750 to see a round, if you are above average at 10-20k you are fine to wait it out, if you are average you are going to have to pick a hand in the next 25-30 to play a real pot, if you are below average you need to gamble it up soon.

I would say that I would want $500 minimum in my pocket to sit down for a session and 2000 to be playing recreationally and much more probably like 5k-10K in my roll to handle the swings but only because the average buy in is so low. If the average buy in or texture of the game changes you will have to readjust your thinking on the edge that you have vs. the volatility of the game.

Lets say this is a 9 player game, you are paying a total of a bit more than $27US a round. While it may not appear to the average opponent in this game that makes it a 10/20 NL game being played with $100 stacks.

With the buy ins so short to the antes it makes hands like AK seem huge and TT a monster. I can't say this is really a form of poker, but more poker roulette.

I would probably move all-in preflop with 99 or better, and if i'm feeling frisky flip coins or take a 4:1 dog with 22. The more of a lead you can get in the game, the more room you have to tighten down and hammer. If you have $500 in your pocket, this allows for the same effect whether you put it on the table now or later. You will be flipping a lot of coins and praying in this structure. I don't know if it is truly a soft game or just experiencing the effects of short stacks playing a bigger game than they can afford, so you are seeing more push and a prayer hands. A badly structured tournament plays the same way favoring who ever has the most luck that day, it will boil down to poker roulette at some point if even money stacks are duking it out to ever increasing blinds.

My random thoughts on how the house can make this game better for the house and the players:
If this game where 2/4 blinds with a $1 ante given the relative stack sizes I think it would be more maintainable for the house and long term rake wise more profitable, while giving you room to manuver instead of play poker roulette with a $300-500 stack. It would give the fish buying in for $100 the illusion they can win long term and the tough opponents a shorter bankroll of about $4k needed to sustain a living and handle variance on a roll as short as 4k. The house would have a minimum pot of $15 and probably an average pot of $50. The rake wouldn't break the players if it is capped at $10 and is taken at a rate of 5% up to $200 and the game can thrive instead of being swallowed up by avarice. As it stands you will experience more variance than I'm tolerante of to play this game as it is currently structured.

I could be way off base, you might have walked into a poker goldmine, but I don't know if I can handle the swings and historically I'm a slightly loose passive aggressive player.