Large Antes

The size of the ante in a particular game determines how you play. The larger the ante in comparison to later bets, the more hands you should play. Since there's more money in the pot, you're obviously getting better odds, but there are other reasons for playing more loosely. Should you wait to get an extremely good hand in a high ante game, you'll have lost more than the size of the pot in antes by the time you win a pot. Furthermore, the pots you do win will be comparatively small because the other players, if they are decent players, will notice you are playing very tight and won't give you much action when you do play a hand. In fact, when you do get action, you're very likely to be beat.
As the antes go up, your opponents reduce their playing requirements, and unless you want to be eaten up by the antes, you too must reduce your playing requirements. These lower requirements continue to the next round of betting and progress right on to the end of the hand. In a large-ante game you might bet for value marginal hands you would throw away in a small-ante game. The principle holds true especially in head-up situations. In a large-ante seven stud game you might see two good players betting and calling right up to the last card, and then at the end one of them bets a pair of 7s for value and gets called by his opponent with a pair of 5s. As it happens, though, larger antes tend to make multi-way pots more numerous since more players are getting good pot odds to draw to a big hand. With many players in the pot, drawing hands (like four-flushes and open-end straights) go up in value, while mediocre pairs like those 7s and 5s go down in value.
Another reason for loosening up when the ante is comparatively high is that if you are playing too tight, it becomes correct for other players to try to steal the ante from you without any kind of a hand. I've been in games where some players played too tight for the ante. When they were the only players in the pot, I knew I could try to steal the antes, no matter what I had. Let's say it costs me $7 to raise the pot in order to try to steal $10 in antes. That is, I put in $7, hoping the remaining players will fold. I figure I will get away with the play approximately 60 percent of the time. Since I need to be successful only about 41 percent of the time to show a profit, I can try to steal with anything. The point is you cannot play too tightly for the antes unless you want to give up this edge to your opponents. To the contrary, as the ante increases, you yourself should try to steal more antes, especially if you are up against tight players.
If it makes sense to try to win antes right away when they are large, it makes abundant sense not to slowplay a good hand.1
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1 Slowplaying, or sandbagging, is playing a strong hand weakly in a round of betting to induce a call by a worse hand in the later rounds. (See also Chapter Fifteen.)

The reason is that if you don't raise with a good hand on the first round, you are giving an opponent with a mediocre hand the chance to come in cheaply and possibly draw out on you. With a large ante, he is not making a mistake on the basis of the Fundamental Theorem of Poker because he is getting good odds. In other words, if a player is getting 8-to-l odds or 10-to-l odds on that first round, it is worth it for him to come in and hope to catch a perfect card on the next round - even when he is pretty sure you are slowplaying a big hand. However, when you raise, you wreck the odds he is getting, and he has to throw away his mediocre hand. With almost any good hand, it is not worth letting opponents in cheaply when the ante gets up there. You are satisfied with winning only the antes. On the other hand, when the ante is low, it becomes more reasonable to slowplay big hands in order to suck worse hands in; you want to get more value for your big hands.
Let us summarize this discussion of games with large antes before moving on to small-ante games.
1. As the ante increases, you loosen up your starting-hand requirements. There are four reasons for you to loosen up. First, you are getting better pot odds. Second, it costs too much money in antes to wait for big hands. Third, your opponents are playing weaker hands. And finally, when you play too tight against observant opponents, they will give you no action when you do get a big hand.
2. As the ante increases, you loosen up on later rounds, too, because the initial weaker requirements carry over into later rounds. However, in multi-way pots, hands like mediocre pairs decrease in value while drawing hands increase in value.
3. As the ante increases, you try to steal antes, especially against tight players, because the play has good positive expectation.
4. As the ante increases, you raise with a good hand rather than try to slowplay it because a large ante makes it likely your opponents are getting their proper odds when you do not raise and let them in cheaply. Furthermore, when the ante is large, opponents may even call your raise when they are not getting proper odds, which, according to the Fundamental Theorem, is exactly what you want. They are even more likely to call your raise if they suspect you have been stealing antes with your raises on previous hands.