I frequently play in a home game but it's more of a casino game. Its 2 5 or 5 10 PLO depending on the night. The max straddle is 25 and 50 respectively.

There is a well know player who arrives early to the game, big gambler, not a great player. He straddles probably 20% of the hands.

Would it be to my advantage to sit to the left or the right of a known straddler?


Rather rightly or wrongly, I find myself playing tighter when I am directly to his left because of the unknown action of every player, however when I set directly to his right I tend to player looser due to the pot odds. Normally I would fold a 5 789, but when I am looking to call $20 into a $150 pot, it's really easy to justify a call.

Is he a really loose raiser post flop? In that case, you might like to sit on his right, because he will self isolate. If you're in a multiway hand with him, you can bet, he'll raise you, and this will chase out some of the other people.

Aside from that, and even if he is a loose raiser, you should prefer to be on his left. He's only in position to straddle once per round, and having position on his in all but one hand/round is to your advantage. Playing UTG to his straddle, I would tend to limp way more often than I'd raise coming in. I might limp my whole range unless I had a very good hand and could guarantee a favorable SPR on the flop.

The problem I had on his left was I had a few hands that were... Toward the low end of my range but playable that I passed on due to the numbers of players with action pending. It seemed that when I called the $20 straddle with AK89 double suited I was stuck with a decision of calling a $150+ reraise pre

I tend to agree with sitting on his left for position, but no players at the game are particularly strong except maybe 1 or 2.

In early position in PLO, regardless of whether there's a straddle, you should be ditching almost all questionable hands