ToP - The Ante Structure - antes drive the action?

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
I play NL ring games. Playing more tightly when antes (blinds) are small seems counterintuitive to me.

[/ QUOTE ]
You are confusing a couple of things.

Suppose there are two stud games available. In one, the ante is $0.10 (ignore the bring-in). In the other, the ante is $10. Should you be very tight in the game with the smaller ante? No, the first game is probably $0.50-$1 while the second is $50-$100. You need to compare the bet sizes with the amount of dead money in the pot. When the bets are much larger than the amount of dead money, you need more strength to bet, and you need more strength to call. When the bets are smaller in relation to the amount of dead money, bets represent less strength, and you don't need as strong of a hand to call.

This is not closely related to the implied odds issues that tell you that while you can profitably play ATo UTG but not 75s when short-stacked, the reverse may be true with deep stacks.

The idea of playing more loosely when there is more dead money in the pot applies to NL in many ways, but you can also adjust the size of your raises based on the amount of dead money. If someone posts UTG and then disconnects and folds, you should be more inclined to limp or complete rather than fold with a marginal hand, but the natural raise also increases in size. The same is true if a loose player limps in front of you, or a player who raises with anything decent represents weakness by limping. These add dead money to the pot.

Stack sizes matter because they change the effective size of bets. If someone open-raises to 5 BB, all-in, this is a smaller bet than if someone raises to 5 BB, but has 2 BB more that may go in on any flop. The relationship between the nominal size of the raise and the effective size of the raise is complicated and is described in the book by Reuben and Ciaffone.