So far, I've yet to have this play fail. I wouldn't attempt this unless I'm familiar with the table.

You know when you're at a table and a straddle becomes a common fixture? Then you'll see a certain player who notices nobody is raising his straddle, and starts to squeeze often from his straddle position.

When I see somebody starting to play like this and I'm in EP, I limp with pretty much any two cards (87s, J9, JT, 23s; not absolute trash, though). I pay very close attention to see if somebody has actually picked up a big hand. Since the table is already not raising very much and since I called the straddle in EP, the action tends to stay low. When a few callers come in, the straddle raises as expected. This is when I jam, unless for some reason I actually believe they have a top hand.

I feel this is a good dead-money scoop play. Definitely I would prefer to have an A for a blocker as well.

Also, if you have more balls and a deeper stack, a LP straddle call/back-raise would be more profitable in terms of dead money. With the assumption that a player or two called the straddler's expected raise.

Never failed yet, but not often used. What are your thoughts on the risk factor of this play?

Some straddlers will be sticky, which is a problem. Also, other people may see the same trend but wait for top 5% hand and limp behind you, straddler raises, you reraise and then they call with position or gii.

I make sure as best I can that the limpers aren't capable of that limp with a very large hand. You pretty much have to have JJ+ and make a late limp with the same idea. The spot doesn't come up very often. It seems to snag a good $40-60 of dead money. Maybe if I lose my stack 1/5 of the time or even 1/8 of the time, it'd be a B/E scenario. But even then, it's adding the "all-in factor with nothing" into your range. I've probably only done it about 5 times? Maybe +$250 overall.

It's a strong play in the limp-fest lower buy-in games.

But the stacks have to be deep enough - at least $100 or so...

Otherwise in my games I'd get called down by three of the limpers...

I think your move just doesn´t work at nofoldemlowstakesholdem enough to make up for the times we get called and are in terrible shape.

If you are sure the straddle will raise, then overlimp big hands in LP, he will raise, maybe some callers, and you can go to war in a bloated pot with the best hand and position too as a bonus.

Sounds like fun. Keep score & let me know where you stand this time next year.