Is it +EV? Often you get a limped pot which you can take a cheap flop in position against fish. Or you get a limped pot and you get a strong hand and can raise big to isolate one or two fish with a range, position and skill advantage at double the stakes.

Also surely our strategy AGAINST a button straddle would be to raise a slightly narrower range? Say a 35% CO range becomes a 25% range. They like to defend a LOT. And we shouldn't be limping.

I was once told this strategy for the button straddle:

-if you have a monster hand, raise
-if you have anything you would normally limp with, raise
-if you have absolute trash, raise

I've pretty much ditched that strategy.

I like to do it if I've had some action within the past orbit. And I'll only raise it up if I have something worth raising.

Been done before: Button straddle strategy question

Cliffs: It's not a good deal because button already has position. If your skill advantage is big enough though, doubling the stakes might be worth it.

Strategy adjustment against other people's button straddles is to tighten up, like you said. I would prefer to play in games that didn't have it because it cuts down your ability to play hands. It's a bit like having a LAG to your left.

Mostly we end up putting in 2bbs per orbit with a junk hand that we have to fold preflop / flop.

Also, doubling stakes in a capped game where a lot of opponents are sitting on 50bbs to start with is kinda pointless.

Gdisagree?G

If you've somehow convinced yourself it is profitable, then you should probably also be blind minraising your CO out-of-turn, no?

GandmaybeblindlimptheHJout-of-turn?G

It is massively +EV for the button, massively -EV for the blinds. Probably net neutral. If it makes the game looser/larger overall, that can be a good thing, and you don't want to be "the nit @ the table" for meta reasons.

There it is ... I like making the stacks shorter in tighter games since it forces the trappers to 'show' their strength by just calling/raising with stack in mind.

As generally an active player from SB to B you can get some loose callers against your straddle, but then you get 'heavier' folds since the relative stacks get short post-Flop when you are able to put pressure on them.

Of course the other night I was paying the waitress and 'missed' getting my straddle out there .. didn't matter, my AA beat UTG KK for a nice pot. GL

I dont get it. We always hear that a straddle cuts the effective stacks in half. We also hear that good players with an edge over the table want to play deep. So why would a good player want to straddle and cut the effective stacks in half, thereby limiting his edge by playing shallower?

^ This. /thread.

Because your edge from being deep doesn't come from having a high stack to blind ratio, it comes from being able to cover everyone (especially bad players who get lucky).

If everyone at your table has $10, your edge with a $20 stack is just as big as your edge with a $2,000 stack. Your EV is dependent on your ability to employ the optimal strategy, not your stack size. When $20 and $2,000 make a difference is the scenario everyone goes all in and one person ends up nonupling up to $90, and suddenly your $20 limits what you can win from the person with $90.

I mean this without a trace if hostility but you certainly realize that you fold way more than most people, right?

It's not pointless because your winrate doubles.

Let's say you post 2 bbs and lose a fraction of that on average, say, 1 bb. Now take what you were expecting to win on the BTN and double that because the stakes are doubled. So if you win more than 0.5 bb/hand OTB and lose half of your post, you come out ahead.

You could have a lower EV (which is money won divided by money risked) but a higher WR (money won divided by time).

Now I certainly agree that it's non-trivial to come out ahead. For one, you have to minimize the loss on your post by defending differently (you have to defend wider because you have position). Secondly, the action has to double (that is, you have to raise double what you'd normally do). But these aren't insurmountable risks, and often what happens is that people adjust poorly - they don't double their postflop bets when they are ahead and you do when you're ahead; they will fold hands they would have called at lower stakes and call hands they would have raised because the money gets too scary.

If you're allowed to straddle from the CO the calculations are done the same way but the numbers start skewing against you. As you lose each notch, the cost of posting goes up (more people raise behind you and drive up the cost of defending) and the benefit of position goes down (you play more hands OOP and fewer IP).

It may still be profitable to straddle the CO, but less likely so and less so. And HJ gets worse, and at some point not even the world's best player can overcome the plummeting value of posting.

Well, for starters, you don't get to screw over the natural blinds, so you lose a bit there. And people may not size their preflop bets to double the action, which takes away from the incentive to do it. But most importantly, you can't raise if it's limped to you, which means you get fewer IO on your good hands.

Your edge from being deep does come partly from having high stack to blind ratio, but that doesn't mean you want to move down to 0.01/0.02 so you can play megahyperdeep. Aside from contrived short stack scenarios, I would almost always rather double the stakes we're playing at than double stack sizes.

1) It doesn't double the stakes, because your V's don't play straddle pots correctly.

2) It tends to make the blinds play more optimally, as it forces them to fold a lot more OOP, and we'd rather they didn't do that.

3) High SPRs are a huge advantage for the better player, especially in position, as they let us play many more hands profitably.

Good stuff on both sides. IMO a significant portion of 'an edge' in a 1/2 NL format is applying pressure via betting 'real' $$ amounts into pots 'at the right time' and getting players thinking more about the $$ than the poker/card spot.

I think the deep stack skill edge is diminished at 1/2 simply because there are plenty of players who are playing cards, not poker, and who don't 'see' the spot. Back to another one of my catch phrases ... If you can get them thinking about a 'tank of gas' then you have them exactly where you want them.

How many times have you heard phrases like "ATo is a $6 hand but not a $10 hand."? The straddle increases the $$ in the pot and it's not until the Flop and Turn that they realize that their stack is in jeopardy. This puts even more pressure on them to fold what they see as marginal/medium spots since it's something they would 'never' go all-in with otherwise.

I don't straddle 'every' time and there are tables where I wont straddle at all if I think the skill level is higher in too many chairs .. but ..

1) The straddle increases the amount of 'real' $$ a player must/may have to put in the pot, thus holdings that would be in the middle of a players range become marginal.

2) A straddler can use an ATC image to hopefully steal enough pots from position to make up for the times that the Flop hits a caller's range. This works both PF and Flop by applying pressure with bets/raises.

3) If table/opponent frustration sets in the straddler can then tighten up and take advantage of opponents pressing pots with marginal holdings ... with shorter stacks!

4) How many times have you seen someone showdown UTG KK on 89664 because they thought you were going to bump it from the straddle? You probably got 1-2 free/cheap streets holding 93/84/T5 here since the KK is stuck OOP on this board and feels like they can't raise into your ATC image. You would never make it to showdown if this hand were played 'normally' .. and if frustration sets in on the Turn and you just happen to be holding T6, happy days.

Straddling is not a single event/hand. It's developing a LIVE table dynamic that puts opponents into an even more uncomfortable position that you can 'play' with during a long session if the opponents stick around. GL

I agree with these when you are actually playing 'higher stakes' but I think at a lot of, but certainly not all, 1/2 tables you can mix in the straddle to keep the table off balance.

1) Figure out if your opponents are over-calling with marginal hands and adjust. If they are playing back at you just because of the 'straddle stigma' then you have them off balance and playing 'short'.
2) Yes, we can play more optimally IP, but we do narrow their range when they do call .. while our range remains just as wide (or wider) than it would be on the B otherwise. This makes it more important to 'know' a player's tendencies post-Flop.
3) Not much to counter this one .. implied odds are our friend IP for sure. We also get to play our marginal holdings at less risk PF.

I think a straddle is a good way to mix things up and just give your opponents more to think about. It also can get a tight game out of the muck. I certainly don't see it as 'religion' but it's effective enough when used in the right spots. GL

@ Calli

The two biggest losing spots at the table are the SB and BB. Obviously position has a lot to do with it, but a huge part of it is also the forced post. Yeah, the Button will have position, but this is unlikely to overcome a 2bb post (which is 2x what the losing BB is posting, and in my 1/3 NL game 6x what the losing SB is posting). And if you're suggesting we should be calling raises to our straddle more loosely (i.e. I fold too much), then I think you're quickly digging an even deeper hole.

As for my comment regarding doubling the stakes being pointless in a game that is playing short to begin with (as a lot of low stakes 100bb games will), what I mean is that we can already trivially play for 50bb stacks in limped pots (and at a lot of loose tables even upwards of 100bb stacks can easily be played for in position in limped pots, at least with regards to being able to play for stacks over 3 postflop streets without any unreasonable overbets being necessasry) so there is no reason to up the stakes. For a ridiculous example, if everyone is playing $50 stacks at a 1/3 NL game, there is obviously no reason to up the stakes to a 10/20 NL game. Basically, doubling the stakes doesn't double your winrate, cuz what you'll end up winning is exactly the same (except you risked twice as much, blind, to do so). Admittedly, this isn't true in a deeper stacked game (where this concept might carry more weight).

GimoG

This is my fundamental disagreement.

The conventional wisdom of LLSNL is that you make money by stacking someone when you both have strong hands but yours is very strong.

I don't disagree that this is *a* way to make money but there is another way - to win a ton of pots when you both have moderate hands but yours is slightly stronger. You win the same amount of money but you win it a lot more often.

If you play 10/20 with $50 effective stacks and end up playing the same range that you would play 1/2 with $50 effective, true, it's worse. But if you raise 2.5x preflop the big blind has enormous incentive to call (she gets 4:1.5 to call) so you can raise wider and she will call wider. Compare the LHE scenario where you minraise and the BB gets 3.5:1 to call and some people just call 100% because limitard ldo.

The Nash Equilibrium here is to open wide, defend wide, bluff a lot, and generally to be That Guy at the table. And when people at the table don't do this and you do, you get the benefit of raising the stakes whenever you have the BTN and playing smaller whenever you don't, and exploiting them.

I don't know if you ever played overs in LHE, but if you did, imagine if you could get an overs button whenever you were on the BTN and then give it up when you were in EP and blinds.

Who's likelier to have the stronger hand when we saw the flop blind?

And winning lots of small pots in NL is highly overrated, especially since the max tax is being applied (i.e. rake kills).

Also, I have no idea what your game plays like, but it's not as if our Button straddle is likely to get us HU with the BB. I'm pretty sure the 4 other girls who limped into the pot are going to keep us pretty honest.

GimoG