I have been playing poker for almost 20 years. 15 of those years I have played it as a fairly passionate hobby and in the last 5 years poker has provided me a very good income. In the 15 years I have played seriously (meaning had some idea of pot odds and such) the game has changed quite a bit. For instance, it might surprise a lot of people that No Limit was not the most popular game even say 7 years ago. Limit Holdem was and 7 stud was not far behind. Tournament poker almost did not exist. The games I played in ebbed and flowed but right before the recent poker boom the games were relatively tough. Lot’s of guys that had some idea, played premium hands and played those aggressively. The sophistication back then was not as high as it is now but it existed.

6 player tables did not exist. One of the first things I had to learn as an online player was to play short handed. It did not take me very long but those lessons certainly came with a price. The only thing was if I did not learn how to play short handed I had no future in poker.

So that is why I suggested recently when I was asked what can be done to get back some of the action that has been lost since the UIEGA bill was signed that cardrooms experiment with the blind structure. Personally I like the idea of antes more than anything. For instance $5-$10 with a $2 ante at a six handed table puts $27 in the pot preflop for players to fight over. As most people know if you do not have antes or blinds there is no point in playing anything less than AA or KK, so it is the antes and blinds that causes the action. Therefore, if you want to increase the action change the blind structure. Frankly I have no idea why this does not already exist somewhere, it only seems logical at this point that there should be a card room looking for something to differentiate themselves. This is as good as any.

The other option is forced straddle games, or three blind games. As a for instance $5-$10 would now become $2.50-$5-$10. Now I am not suggesting that they do this for all of the tables, I am only suggesting that they do it for some. When it was played in the past No Limit Hold em was often played with 3 blinds. There is also a variant called the Mississippi Straddle (which is most often used playing PLO) where the button is the straddle, in that instance $5-$10 becomes $5-$10 and then $20 on the button. I am not sure of the logic of giving the button even more power and I think over time these games would tend to get a little nitty but if the players would play them I do not see why they should not be offered.