Timbals

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Straddling for Profit

Straddling is one of the more loose necked tenets of house-rules online poker, where in a player can make an automatic third blind bet that then gives the hand they have straddled a higher potential for action, in that automatically, to enter or raise the pot, it will get more money in that on a non straddled hand.

While many online poker players considered straddling to be reserved for looser, more aggressive players who are more likely to gamble than, say, your average player, there are certainly situations where using the straddle can work to your advantage, and to profit.

The most use I ever got out of using the straddle was at a table where I literally could get no action on any hand, unless the other player had AA or KK. Sometimes they would see a flop with mid pairs, but unless they were making absolute monsters, they would not put their money at risk. I began to straddle literally every single hand I played (we were in Mississippi, so you were allowed to straddle from any position), causing player who wanted to limp with those big cards and medium pairs, who would then often miss, to have to pay a higher price to get in, where thereafter they would usually let me take the pot away from them when they missed.

Over a couple of hours of straddling, I managed to make quite a bit without any need for cards at all. I would either take the blinds, or collect the limpers’ money after the flop, and when they actually bet out or raised, it was easy to get away.

While obviously these kind of weak online poker tables are rare, the tenet holds that if you aren’t getting any action, might as well charge them for your time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 10:46 am and is filed under Gaming World, Having Fun, Wheel Of Luck. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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