I think that’s maybe a remnant from traditional antes? When you were playing a T25 tournament, starting at 25/50, it didn’t make sense to use a 25 ante until the blinds got to what, at least 200/400? And I think I remember that’s how casinos and cardrooms got us used to the big blind ante - wait until after the first break.
When I used to do traditional antes in base 25, the first ante level for me would be a25,100-200. And I would try and keep the ante between 1/8 and 1/12 of the bb.
So I would structure like this
25-50
50-100 (before I adopted the 25-75 idea)
75-150
100-200
**Break**
a25,100-200
a25,150-300
a50,200-400
a75,300-600
**Break** (color up 25 here.)
a100,400-800
et cetera...
So you can see where traditional ante after one break can work.
But now with table ante, you don't have to wait for the blinds to get big enough where a one-chip ante makes sense. I think introducing BBA on Level 2 is the best option. Just repeating level one's blinds so it's not the double whammy for whoever gets it first.
But the purpose of the table ante is to approximate the sum of individual antes but consolidate it to one player. Looking at my traditional ante structure above, you can see in an 8-10 player game, the sum of individual antes approximates the big blind and I see no reason to start with less than that.
Now I have heard of big blind ante tournaments where they drop to a small blind ante when the field is down to the final 5. I don't know how widespread that idea is, but it is consistent with the idea of picking a table ante amount that would approximate the sum of a hypothetical individual ante. So if you would ever introduce Small Blind ante this would be a logical reason. But not up front, to ease players in. The first table ante should be for the BB. The way to east players in is the first BBA level should be of the same blinds as the first level.
In other words,
This would be my base 25 structure
25-50,
25-50 * START BBA
25-75
50-100
75-150
et cetera.
(Basically along the lines of
@TheRealStephen12 's post above.)
And with base 100 is now common in casinos in the BBA era. I almost always see tournament structures like this.
100-100
100-100 *BBA
100-200
100-300
200-400
et cetera...
Didn't mean to write so much, and I know
@Preditor 's question was for a game from a month ago, but I guess I just wanted to add to the after the fact discussion.
Hope this helps someone.
