Strategy for playing against straddles
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 24,904
Quote:
Originally Posted by outdonked
OK, so you want the regular UTG straddle and not the Mississippi, OK
Defense against maniacs that straddle every round and raises when people put money like a heroic FoS OOP in UTG blind .. haha big -EV
Regular straddle is done by the villain UTG. If you don't feel comfortable or don't want to call the straddle because he's raising most of them, this is what you do:
Pay attention and tale note:
You are in the big BB and I am in the SB and the straddle master is UTG. Now, when he's about to put his straddle down and announces "straddle" you immediately ask the dealer to give you the Missing Big Bling Button (is like you take a pissing break ..) and you stay out and force him to take the BB ... haha. On the next round if you want to buy the button you can do that but if he try again to straddle you tell the dealer again that you change your mind and you'll be pissing one more time but posting behind the button (same price 1.5bb,...0.5bb goes in the middle and 1bb in front of you). Now, that smart FoS dude will never the entire night be able to straddle again as long as you two guys keep the same seats. Got it? -- You actually force the straddle specialist-good-for-nothing dude to take BB and SB and on top of all this you still get the option to raise the hell out of limpers from a back position that is the C/O where you will be when posting behind the button. If he wants to straddle OTB when you want to post behind the button, you stay out one more hand (pissing if you need from so much beer) and post your missing blinds in the HJ.
So the dude get straddle nothing because you give him the both blinds to shove then up his ...., haha .. . Got it?
Note: .. when asking for the missing button tell the straddle dude that you got the need of pissing every time you get the BB ... hahaha .. just give it to him until he feels like a fool but don't move from the table. Stay there and ask him: "How come you are in the BB?" ...haha!
Why?
Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 105
Quote:
If "regular straddle" means UTG straddle for 2 BB, then essentially just treat the straddle as the BB and everyone's stacks as if they have half (or very slightly less than half) of their BB. You don't play significantly tighter. You will need to play slightly tighter because the bottom of your open raising range gets through 3 blinds less often than it gets through 2. But some of that is counteracted by the fact that there's an extra dead .5 "SB" (the natural SB) and you need to play looser with more dead money.
When someone straddles like this, they cost themselves EV while increasing the EV of everybody else at the table, with the LP players getting the highest portion of the free EV and the blinds getting the least. You can continue playing vs the straddle as if it were a real open raise UTG with a tight range (as in the way you said, only raise or "re-raise" when you have a huge hand), and it won't be part of a losing strategy if you play well in every other regard, but you will be foregoing some of the free EV the UTG player has provided.
Dead on
Join Date: Jan 2015
Posts: 105
Also, outdonked made me lol
Last edited by soreass3; 09-09-2017 at 09:19 PM.
Reason: mistaken quote
