Learn Texas Holdem

Question: Great site. I played low limit hold'em in a card room for the first time a couple of weeks ago (The Mirage in Vegas). One guy kept "straddling the bet", which seemed basically to be a blind raise by the person immediately to the left of the Big Blind. Can you please explain what "straddling the bet" is, and why would someone want to do it?

Answer: A straddle is exactly what you said it was. It is when the person directly after the big blind (the person "under the gun") raises before getting his cards. There are two kinds of straddles: the live straddle and the regular straddle. A live straddle means that the action will return to that player. That means instead of the big blind getting to act last then the straddler gets to (so he could even raise again if he liked).

A regular straddle just is a blind raise preflop and you don't get to act last like the live one. Normally the people who do this are just gamblers. They like the wild games with big pots and this is a way to achieve that. You'll also find people occasionally doing it to try to get the game moving. If they see someone "gambling" then they will get involved. A couple things to keep in mind when you are playing against that type of player...

First, just play regularly and don't let the extra bet detour you from your normal game. Secondly, sometimes you'll find people who try to "isolate" a person who is blind raising. Isolation means that you reraise the straddler preflop to try to get heads up with him. If you do that remember that they can get good hands too and also you have to beat everyone in the hand and not just the straddler.

In some casinos if there is a live straddle preflop then the amount of raising goes up by one. So if normally a "cap" (the max raises in a betting round) is four then it goes up to five. Sometimes you'll even have multiple straddlers. You have one guy putting out two bets, then another one putting out three bets and so on, all before they even get their cards. That can be fun.