Had a discussion elsewhere on this topic. Think it’s somewhat interesting but was more surprised by how many people approached this differently than me.

Here’s the scenario:

In a 1/2 game there is a button straddle for $5. Blinds fold, 2 players from MP call. Hero in late position bets $25 with a good but not premium hand.

Hero’s logic is that the straddle effectively increased the blinds. With an effective BB of $5, there are now 2 limpers behind him with a total of $18 in the pot. In order to attack with this hand he makes a slightly larger than pot size bet of $25 or 5 BB, which seems like a reasonable amount.

I felt this was a bad play. My reasoning is that the straddle is just a raise, and that the 2 players behind were callers. A bet of $25 is in my view a re-raise rather than a raise, making the size of that raise unreasonable. Despite the straddle, I see the blinds as remaining the same. Rather than an open raise to 5BB in order to attack 2 limpers, I saw hero as re-raising a 2.5BB bet to 12.5, which struck me as wildly excessive on the basis of the hand strength.

So how do you view it?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Straddle is same as a 3rd blind. It is done blind and therefore the straddler has any 2 cards. I've never heard anyone refer to it as a raise. My understanding is that it is always viewed as a blind and therefore your open should be upped accordingly. 1/2/5 = 5$ BB.

For strategy purposes the straddle should be considered a blind. The straddler is literally putting money in blind after all, and they can have any two cards.

However this doesn’t really matter that much. If you think $25 is excessive then you’re probably sizing too small with your raises and 3-bets. $25 over a $5 bet/raise and two calls is pot sizing which is pretty standard IP raise/3-bet sizing.

Regardless of whether you view it as a raise or a 3rd blind, the pot size has increased. Your friend's sizing looks standard, as they're effectively raising 20/23= 87% pot. It's actually a bit on the smaller size imo.

You should think of it as a blind. But be happy your opponents don't realize they're basically playing shortstacked 2/5. It should be easy to find several obvious mistakes they're making, and make correct exploitive adjustments yourself.

Also, against a button straddle (as opposed to UTG) your range should be much tighter and sizing larger. I generally overbet the pot slightly if I choose to open, and would go even larger against limpers known to have weak ranges.

Blinds are bets. They're literally "blind bets" which we refer to as blinds for short. Why do we call a 3 bet a 3 bet? The preflop raise is the second bet, the blind is the first bet