Poker Antes

Hey, I’m Nicky Numbers, Professional Poker Player, and today I’m going to talk to you about antes.

Antes are a forced contribution that every player has to put into the pot to play each hand. You might be familiar with blinds, which are two forced bets which occur after the button.

So say this person across from me over here is the button and there are blinds of $100 and $200. Each player at the table would then often have to contribute 25 chips to the pot. So if there’s 10 people at the table, each player is going to toss in a chip from their seat. The dealer is then going to collect all the antes. Oh, this player forgot his. And there should be 10 in the pot.

Antes typically make up around one big blind. So when antes are in play versus not in play, the pot starts out instead of one and a half big blinds, often with two and a half big blinds. So there’s a lot more dead money out there that’s worth fighting for. And that’s the purpose of the antes, to drive the action.

So that’s what antes are, and how they work at the table. Remember, if you’re at the table, you want to ante before the dealer has to ask you to. So once antes come into play, make sure you do it every hand before the cards are even about to be dealt.