Playing High Ante Short Hold’Em Poker

Playing a game of high ante short hold’em poker is one of the most exciting ways to spend a great afternoon or evening at the casino. The hold’em craze has certainly taken off, and it is one of the most exciting and popular of all ways to play poker.  Before getting started, however, it is important to understand some essential playing strategies – things like position and aggression.

For instance, let us assume that you are playing a game of no limit Texas Hold’Em and the table is short handed, meaning that there are free seats at the table.  The ideal table for the game of short hold’em poker is a game with four or five other players.

In order to ante you will bet pre-flop at the same time the initial blind bets are placed.  You will decide to ante on the pre-flop, and the ante bet will be equal to the small bet.  Let us assume that the table you are playing is a $2/$4 table, and that the ante is $2.

The purpose of the ante, of course, is to have every player put money into the pot in order to stimulate the activity at the table.  For the purposes of this article we will assume that you are playing every hand, no matter what the raises on the pre-flop.  This forces you to quit worrying about the pre-flop value of the hands and allows you to get right to the flop and post-flop parts of the game, since it is these parts that actually make the game so exciting.  In order to make the strategy work you will have to be aggressive, since the bets in this game tend to be higher than in traditional Texas Hold’Em.

In this situation the object will be to play the opponents.  You will need to make the other players draw for a hand with which to beat you. When pursuing this strategy, do not check; only call or bet.  In order to play the others in the game you will have to actually try to play their hands.  If you are able to correctly evaluate the hands of the other players then your own hand will not matter as much, since you will already know what you are up against, making it much easier to beat them.