Villain 1 (MP) $200 - fit or fold asian reg, does not respect hero on a personal level and is always looking to see a flop against me.
Villain 2 (SB) $230 - 20 something asian thinking player. Loose with preflop limps. Views me as a decent player, hasn't seen my spewy side yet.
** only history that night with v2 is when I stationed him down in position with KT in another limped straddled pot. I was straddle flop came T high and he barreled 3 times with middle pair on a decent run out.

Hero (straddle) $800
Villain 3 (restraddle) - irrelevant.

Preflop **straddle and restraddle are 4 and 6.
v1 limps, v2 limps, bb folds, hero raises to $30 w J2o, v3 folds, v1 and v2 call.

Flop ($98) T J 5
v2 bets $15, hero???


OP notes -- I think my sizing pre could have been a bit larger.

Does not compute.
You want to take a hand that is toatl garbage, and play a pot where you will never win pre flop, will rarely flop and sort of hand post flop, and play it in what looks like an OOP spot against a villain who is mostly short stacked and won't fold any piece of the board likely after putting in >15% of his stack?

This seems like a huge disaster to me.

I'm not sure why we don't just fold pre flop, take the $30, get all singles from the cage, go buy a pack of matches and light them in fire one at a time. Seriously.
You'd prolly have more fun doing it, you'll prolly lose less money in the long run (as you won't put more money into pots when you have little/no equity) and you won't be tempted to raise a hand like this again in the future with this table dynamic, stack size, and reads on villains.

Just fold pre.

Moving past all that:
I guess as played, I'd raise to $125 here and call if either of them shove.
This can fold out a lot of stronger Jacks with marginal or even good kickers (prolly J9 and lower, and sometimes QJ.) We will often gii against combo draws and naked flush / straight draws but we have a great price with the pot. JJ/TT are very unlikely so we should only see 3 combos of sets ever here. JT is pretty possible, but that's just the way it does down sometimes.

Or you can just fold. Which isn't a bad idea. Calling is the worst choice imo.

I can see why the villain doesn't respect you when you're raising J2o pf. I'd fold pf.

On the flop, your choices are to fold or just shove. Any type of real bet is going to leave you pot committed anyway. Might as well shove to punish yourself so that you don't straddle in the future or raise with trash like J2o again.

Tip: don't post hands here where you straddle from UTG. If you are going to straddle (I'll admit that I do it occasionally when I'm up big for image reasons in) try a Mississippi straddle from the button. Last time I straddled I ended up all-in on the turn with a bad hand (got lucky on the river), but kicked myself for almost losing $300 just because of a straddle.

Why not?
Because we are going to tell you that it's typically a -EV play to put money in blind, OOP, bloat the pot, and reduce your ability to play poker?

Or because you don't want to hear people telling you what some of the possible leaks are in your game?

I think posting hands here is good for trying to size bets, put opponents on a range, etc. Most of the responses here advise you to play like a NIT. I personally do like to win at poker and post and read here to understand how to win, but it's not my profession and I have no intention of ever being a professional poker player. I play poker because it's fun and because I can make money doing it.

It's obvious that straddling UTG is -EV for that particular hand (it could possibly be +EV in the long-run if the occasional straddle significantly changes your table image) and unfortunately the advice that posters will be given will focus on the fact that you shouldn't straddle rather than what to do on the flop now that he got himself into a bad spot.

A note to the OP - when you decide to steal after straddling, no one is going to respect your raise. In fact, raises in general are respected less in straddled (especially double-straddled) limped pots because there is so much dead money out there to steal that players (especially the straddlers themselves) are tempted to raise with air.

Now that you flopped top pair, I'd push all-in and hope that I'm not beat.

I've only had one table in my whole life where I would do something like this. This table isn't it. I mean, I would even pick a better spot to do it in. So, rescinding my comment, I would never do this at even that table, though it could be +ev there are much better stealing hands. I would also never straddle more than once in 25k hands unlesw the table straddled. As played... ****... V is showing a lot of strength given that we have absolute trash. Fold against V2. I can't see how we are beating a good, thinking player's micro bet donk range here.

Neither of the first two posts before yours even mentioned his straddling UTG.

LOL. Good thinking player's micro bet donk range. Wow, idk, maybe he knows something about you

Venice's post directly above mine said:

"Might as well shove to punish yourself so that you don't straddle in the future or raise with trash like J2o again."

That is what I was responding to.

people can still give advice on the actual hand and remind OP that stradlling = lighting money on fire, imo.

as played since the whole plan seems to be spewing to the max i would raise/call, and wonder why i play J2o since i can't stack off comfortably when i flop top pair in SPR<2 pot.

The majority of the table has been straddling and restraddling so I was just returning action. The table was as juicy as it can get and I was contributing. I know v1 is not really thinking how much % of his stack is in the pot. He's playing ATC against me and is going to fold the flop the majority of the time.


Hero raises to $80, v1 folds, v2 calls.
Turn ($258) T
v2 checks, Hero ???

*** v2 actually had about $300 to start the hand.


Is the overall consensus not to attempt to steal the straddle with total trash? I'm guessing yes because we are very shallow and my raise automatically pushes us to be playing for villains stacks with J2off. For me it was villain dependent but there are always better spots, as this is just too lagtardy.

Depends on the game - but in this game (and most of the time) - yes.

I straddle a lot if I'm/the table is deepstacked, especially if a bad rec player is a couple spots to my right. Not to mention it's also good for my image. But squeezing just isn't going to work often enough to be profitable at these stakes.

So to recap, the board is TJ5T and Hero has J2

Pot is $258 and V2 has $190 behind. Hero covers and V2 checks to him.

In a way the T is a good card because it gives me more outs to chop the pot to another J. The bad part is you no longer have your 2 as an out so you are drawing dead to win the pot against another J.

I'd check behind on the turn and evaluate a call on the river. If he has a strong draw like KQ, he has a ton of outs on the river. If he has a J or T you are already toast.