What is a Straddle And Why Would You Ever Use It?

If, like me, you started watching poker as a beginner some years ago, you probably encountered various players in the televised High Stakes games using a ‘straddle’ and thought – WTF is that?

Was it a blind raise from the player first-to-act? Do I have to put extra money in too? Can players do it whenever they want? All these questions, and more, need answers – so here’s a guide for you.

Let’s begin with an explanation of the basic straddle. There are various forms of it, but we’ll keep it simple and use a general $1/2 NLHE full-ring game as an example.

• The option to place a ‘straddle bet’ belongs to the player who would usually be first to act, that’s the person in the seat to the immediate left of the big blind.
  
• The straddle has to be either put out in chips or verbally announced before the cards are dealt. (Occasionally it can be done after the deal and before the player has looked at his cards, but I wouldn’t allow this unless it was a friendly home game. See the Jim Carroll article for why not!)
  
•  The straddle bet is double the big blind, so in a $1/$2 game the straddle would be $4. The game then continues with the player to the immediate left of the straddle having to either call $4, raise, or fold. Basically we have made the game $1/2/4 for this hand.
•  Since the straddler made a bet without seeing his cards, he then becomes in essence the big blind for this hand. When play gets back around to him he can either check or raise or fold.
•  Once the flop is dealt, the hand proceeds as usual and the straddle has no further effect except that the pot is generally bigger than it would have been normally.

 All fairly simple when it’s explained, although straddles can be much more complicated if you want them to be – ‘button’ straddles and ‘any position’ straddles’ also come into play. We don’t want them to be complicated, so let’s just stick to the basics for now!

Above - Jim Carroll is a Texan poker pro who uses a particular method of play which is designed to confuse and/or ‘cheat’ the opposition depending on your view.

How does the straddle affect my strategy?

The first thing to realize is that ‘straddle’ bets reduce the effective stack size of everyone in the hand. As an example…

In my local casino, I play £0.50/1 cash games. There is always an short-stack buy-in or 2 of £40. That’s 40BB, but in a straddled hand he is now only playing with 20BB – and that changes his game hugely. A loose game where people open for 5-10 BB regularly means that he has no post-flop strategy! So, if he’s playing a hand to a raise, he’d better be playing the pre-flop nuts or close!

My usual 100BB buy-in becomes effectively 50BB, again changing how my playing strategy works. Playing small pairs and suited connectors are more questionable against pre-flop raises, for example, as I’m not getting paid off the same way when they hit.

Is someone straddling going to cost me money?

Quite the opposite actually! The advantage to other players at the table of someone else ‘straddling’ are quite obvious when you think about it.

He has put in extra money before seeing his cards – you don’t have to until after you’ve looked at your cards. That’s a huge advantage, much bigger than most other edges you’ll come across in poker.

There is a strange psychological effect with the straddle though: players tend to not want to fold! There is more money to be had and the straddler doesn’t know what his cards are yet; and there is the element of not wanting to be the killjoy/spoilsport who ‘pussies’ out of the straddled hand or round.

So beware, the idea of either straddling and then raising when it gets back to you, or calling/raising and then staying in the hand too long are dangerous – and scaring people off when you’ve missed the flop is not so easy given the above!

Do I have to straddle?

No, you don’t – and I rarely do as my local games are loose enough at the best of times! I don’t object to the occasional round of straddles, however, and neither do most other players. 

But if you’re uncomfortable with the raised pots, just play a bit tighter than usual and you’ll make money out of it in the long-run – or nip to the bar while the others mess around for 10 minutes at ‘higher stakes’.

Is there a winning strategy using straddling?

In general no, but it can be effective when you’re playing against a lot of loose-passive or even tight-passive players at your table – basically any time you are playing against people who are uncomfortable about getting their money in or backing up their ‘big pre-flop talk’. Even then, do not get too tied to your strategy!

So that’s the basics covered, and I may return in a later article to look more deeply into the straddle, as mentioned there are umpteen different versions of it out there in the poker world. 

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