Play in the Big Ante tournament has reached level 4 – the final level before registration closes – and so far it has attracted 63 players. Here are some photos of the pre-break action.

Photos from level 3

The second-to-last tournament in this year’s Playground Anniversary Series is an NL Hold’em Big Ante event. Everything about it is identical to any other NL Hold’em tournament – except that the antes are relatively larger than usual.

Antes are a key element of a poker tournament, in that before any cards have been dealt they put a certain number of chips in the pot – and when that amount is larger than usual, it changes the decision making on all streets – preflop, on the flop, and throughout postflop play.

The tournament gets underway at 12pm and late registration is open until the end of the break following level 4, which is to say until 1:30pm. As usual, we expect a large number of players to jump in during late reg – but even that decision is affected by the larger antes – the size of the ante really does change everything!

Good luck to all of the players today!