The International Poker Rules have released the renewed set of poker rules. The main change is including the Big Blind Ante. Besides including the Big Blind Ante, the order in the rules have also changed.

Marcel Luske responds on the reason why the International Poker Rules adopted the Big Blind ante in the International Poker Rules almost one year after the announcement of the button ante. “The game of poker keeps evolving every year. New things appear and some things disappear in the game. We have seen so many changes through the years that I could fill a whole book with it. The ante is one of the latest changes in the game. Poker players were frustrated about the time it took for a dealer to collect the antes every hand again and again. The 1 player ante has been a very good invention, but there have been many discussions about using the big blind ante or the button ante.

The TDA is a big fan of the big blind ante. I’m a big fan of the button ante to be honest, but that doesn’t matter at this moment. We have seen that the TDA has found a consistent Big Blind ante policy in the last months. We believe we should implement that policy in the International Poker Rules and let the organizer of a poker event choose between the button ante and the big blind ante. The policy of these antes are different, but the most important thing is: There is a consistent policy for each organizer and each player in the world. This creates fairness in our game.”

Poker organizers who choose to play with the international poker rules can choose between no ante, regular ante, button ante and big blind ante. A poker tournament organizer should present the tournament structure on its website and this shall always include the blinds and antes. At the time  tournament registration is opened the player shall always have the ability to consult the tournament structure sheet to see the blind structure and the type of ante. In our opinion that is transparency and fairness to a player.

The International Poker Rules are free available for everyone in English. Currently there are a lot of translators working to translate the website to: Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, German, French, Czech and Dutch. Other languages will follow soon. Luske is still looking for people who are interested in translating the rules to their own language.

More information about translating the International Poker Rules is available here.