Saw discussion of this in video. In live streams, people actually stand up until they win a pot, but that seems uncomfortable. The last person to win a pot pays everyone like 5 big blinds. Makes it harder for people like me to wait for good hands. Also, greats more action with small pots. More reraising and large raise sizes preflop to win preflop or get HU. Obviously leads to more bluffing. People may overadjust or not adjust enough. Has anyone played it?

No, it's a stupid game. Fun, but stupid.

So I can win 35 BB per orbit by simply folding every hand? Even the oldest OMC will be able stand for that!

It’s great for action. Forces people to play aggressively and widen their ranges. people play as if there is a huge 5-40bb ante with the size of the ante increasing as fewer people are standing,

If it’s 9-handed and if the first 8 players all win a pot, then the 9th player has to pay each of the other players 5bb. So he pays out 40bb to the table. So folding every hand is the worst strategy.

Never seen this, but like bounties, bomb pots, win-a-promo-with-our-special-hand innovations, anything to mix the game up and force people to think is good in my book. It's the postflop dynamic that makes things interesting...you're going to see a lot of zero equity bluffs run as people play out of desperation

I really love the stand-up game. It is like anything that people are unfamiliar with. If you play it well while other people play poorly, you will profit. I play the stand-up game with a $100 bounty per player in 5/5/10/25, and we joke that it's the only game people will blow through $2,000 to save $800.

One key is not to overadjust. If you have a tight image, that is good. Don't start vpiping 100%. When you do get involved in a hand, people will be more worried.

Early on especially, you don't need to be too worried about losing the stand-up game. There are 8 other players. On average people don't win hands that often, 1/9 times 9 handed. And with 9 players, chances are that a few players are going to run at least a little bad, being card dead, whiffing flops, etc. There is a good chance that you will get a decent playable hand and not have to do anything spectacular to win. If it gets to just a few players left though, you may want to make a move.

When you are still atanding up, open larger in the stand-up game. There is not set rule on this, I do it more based on feel. When the blinds are 5/5/10/25 I might normally open to 65 or 75. With the stand-up game on, I might open from $100 to $250.

For 3betting I would go larger and I would prioritize more high card hands. KQo, AJo I would 3bet earlier than normal. Instead of 3x in position you may go 4-5x, and even larger OOP. Also remember that your opponent's are going to be wider, so your stack of thresholds should be lower. Depending on the player, position, and stack depth. you might be 3bet jamming or 4bet jamming a hand like AK or AQ. Prime spot would be if there is one opener and multiple callers.

Go thin and relentless for value TPGK is a very high value hand. People are incentivized to bluff catch more. Checking pretty strong hands and letting players blast off is also a good strategy. IE, A9 as the preflop aggressor on an A high board. When you check, people will assume you don't have an ace and there is a good chance they will start bluffing. They may think you are bluff catching with a lower pair and if you check, they may not think they need to bet that much to get you off your hand. But if you start bloating the pot with your marginal hands on earlier streets, you may get in tough spots on later streets.

You want to be fairly sticky postflop with things like middle pair vs someone who is still standing up, but I wouldn't go top crazy of it's multiway. On paired boards, A highs are often reasonable floats.

When still standing up, utilize position. When you are on CO and later especially, you can open extremely wide to a large size. A lot of times you win pre or you take it down on the flop with a cbet with air, especially if only the big blind defended and on disconnected boards. For example, you are on button 200bb effective open to 6bb with J3o and BB defends. Flop is K84r, 12.5bb. You bet 9bb. Most of the time you're just going to take it down right there. But if I get called here, I probably give up. Villain is likely to fold better J highs, Q highs, maybe even weak A highs. It's not a comfortable spot for A7o.

Watch for people that way over adjust and punt.

Be wary of people that are already sitting down but are putting a lot of chips in the pot. They don't have to be very wide, but they are still choosing to be in the pot, maybe to catch punts, maybe with a really strong hand.

If you are sitting down, you can play defense and try to catch more punts. However, I would not open up that much and I would not be too passive. If you cold call with standers left to act, you are likely going to either get squeezed or face a multiway pot OOP. You can probably go back to more of a standard 3bet range. The nice thing is that if you 3bet a stander and don't get 4bet, you are likely getting called wide, which is going to be good for you. That said, you can probably go more linear with your 3bets. A5s and suited connectors are not the hands you want to 3bet against someone calling you with AJo, KJo.

Fwiw I think NL has been outdated for a while now and needs some wide scale adjustment. The current 2 blind structure makes playing tighter too optimal anymore.

So having said that ya I’d welcome changes like described in stand-up. Or the long term solution could be just adding a 3rd blind….

3rd blind is the answer. I personally like the button blind same size as the BB. Played that in a couple rooms recently. Action goes through the roof and way fewer omcs

I am not even sure that adding a 3rd blind allows for playing higher VPIP at equilibrium. Every IP preflop range is tighter in 3blind configurations — it does encourage every player to play more pots from out of position. Which is arguably less fun.

I would prefer to simply include an ante in NL cash. Maybe 1 or 2bb posted dead by the BTN. This would truly encourage loose play. But the nits will always protest.

If people roughly know what they’re doing (eg at mid or high stakes) the BTN blind/straddle absolutely kills the action. It’s simply too great of an advantage for the BTN to get a discount to enter the pot AND to have position. There’s a reason that blinds are typically posted from OOP.

They get to pay the same price as everyone else and unlike the button straddle, the BB still acts last. Totally different concept and they are forced to put in with all kinds of trash. My experience button straddle kills the action. Button blind is amazing.

i like the idea of the stand up game. similar to bomb pots it tricks people into playing a game they don't know how to play because it looks similar to what they know (NLHE). theres constantly changing ev incentives for everyone involved and you can see how confused people get in unfamiliar situations. similar to what mlark said, some over adjust, some way under adjust. there's a good amount more math behind the scenes than most people realize imo and thats why you see changing open sizes. there are places where it can be correct or at least justifiable to open jam 100bb or whatever, things that look absolutely stupid in the context of a normal NL game. very interesting and itll take an extremely long time, maybe infinite, given changing variables and lack of incentives, for anyone to solve them which is a huge positive for games.

my experience with straddles / third blinds has its mostly been a universal negative for games its introduced to where people get much tighter / more passive because the game is too big for them. average pot size increases, but i dont think there's more action. if anything, i think CE is right where people play tighter pre. i'm surprised antes haven't caught on, but even with them i dont think it changes the game enough to dramatically increase action. NLHE just kind of sucks as a cash game, especially 8-9 handed.

SU game is the nuts.

I like how it starts as normal NL with splashpot odds. The wheels turn and minds are incentivized to be lost.

It also puts people on nuclear tilt when they dust off.

Makes more sense. However, I think an ante game with the BB paying everyone's ante would be a better game with no blinds.

I saw a video on this on crushlivepoker and thought it was interesting. It was a hand from a 10/20 NL game. NLHE cash is my least favorite game, but it is what is most available.

If people want more action at low stakes casino games, BTN ante seems the obvious way to go. Extra blinds and esp. BTN blinds are bad vs. anyone with a clue, but at 1-2 there are people who don't adjust so the BTN can straddle and print ... which can make it seem like a good idea.


Standup game seems interesting but I can't see it being usable at a casino, at least until you are paying time.


Have played a few bomb pots at random 1-2 tables, so it's possible (and nobody knows wtf they are doing). But it doesn't happen often, so again BTN ante is going to average out a lot better.

Antes are the best thing for action. Button blind / straddles are the worst, and the only good thing is that if they are optional and people do it they put more money in blank, but it is more + EV for everyone else at the table if there is an up front straddlet 3rd blind.

I am not sure about what the best number of blinds is. I know that in a straddle + ante structure, the game is looser than with 2 blinds and no ante. That is, 1st to act is looser when there is an up front straddle + antes than first to act with 2 blinds and no ante. Same is true of second to act, and so on. Where this gets tricky is once you get to the small blind. In a 3 blind + ante structure, the small blind gets to still be pretty loose when first to act or facing a LP open. But the more restraddles/ blinds you add, it very quickly starts becoming a terrible position. I would imagine that if they game were 9 blinds with the last blind being on the button, that would be less action than the 2 blind structure, because now every position seems worse than its relative position in the two blind game. But, there is also tons of dead money.

As someone who plays a lot of games with lots of restraddling, I am now starting to get very curious if the straddle really is good for the game overall, and at what point of restraddling, if any, does the game actually get worse? If we want to play a bigger game, are we better of playing 25/50 instead of 5/5/10/25/50? With the caveat that if we did play 25/50, some players would then want to straddle to 100/200 and then a lot of people (myself included) would not want to play anymore.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot???

The truth is exactly the opposite: A straddle makes opening ranges wider. See, e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulXns1P5MeA

I’ve never played the standup game but i watched a Triton cash stream where the standup game was on auto and the action was wild.

Huh? Every single player has to contend with an extra uncapped range in the blinds so RFI will be tighter in every position in a straddled pot. I thought this was common knowledge,

For example the video you linked has BTN opening 31% frequency for 3x in a straddled pot. GTO frequency in a 2-blind configuration at 3x would be 40-45% for the BTN.

Where in the video does it say to open wider with a straddle?

Don't think in terms of postflop position; think in terms of how many players an open has to get through. In a straddle game, the button's range should (modulo effects of pot size) look a lot like the cutoff's range in a two-blind game.

Look in particular at the opening range of the big blind in a straddle game compared to the small blind in a two-blind. Because of the extra dead money from the small blind, proportionately speaking, the straddle's minimum defense frequency is larger and so they should defend a wider and therefore weaker range, which in turn means that the opener can also open wider.

Optimal VPIP averaged over all positions is going to be wider in a straddle game than in a two-blind game.

If we imagine an eight-handed game with five straddles, the button acts last postflop but is under the gun preflop, and their open has to get through seven other players. But while that calls for a tight range, the extra money in the pot means that UTG in the seven-blind game opens dramatically wider than UTG in the two-blind game.

"All poker begins as a struggle for the antes," wrote a man who occasionally got things very right. With more in the pot at the start to struggle for, the more vigorously we should struggle.

I watched the first 10 minutes of the video and I now see the part you were referencing. Sweeney says that UTG RFI in 3-blind (8max) is wider than UTG RFI in 2-blind (8max). But this is comparing apples to oranges because these aren’t even the same positions on the table!! It would be more accurate to compare UTG RFI in 3-blind to UTG+1 (LJ-1) RFI in 2-blind because these are identical positions on the table!

Later Sweeney compares 2-blind BTN with 3-blind BTN RFI and gives frequencies of 33% and 31%. So the BTN is tighter in the 3-blind config, which is what I expected. Although, I am surprised the discrepancy is not more pronounced. Generally, I am surprised that the BTN RFI in 2-blind is so low at 33%. I have seen some custom Monker solves for 3x BTN RFI that has frequency of around 42%.

I have to admit my first comment in which I said it is undeniable that RFI is tighter for 3-blind assumes that the stack sizes are 100bb in both cases. If you assume the stack sizes are only 50bb for the 3-blind configuration then I am not sure how that would affect the ranges honestly.

Yeah at 100bb baseline is about 4% tighter rfi from the button when there's a straddle.

Unless you're like 300-400bb deep then it's around the same.

Oddly HJ is looser by a few % in straddle at 100-400bb. CO is only like 1% looser with straddle. Interesting.

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