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Straddles, kills, and overs are related because they affect the structure and limit of the game you're playing. When you take a seat in a $3-$6 or a $l-$4-$8-$8 game, you know what the limits are, and you have an idea of how much it would cost to play each hand to its conclusion. You therefore also know what an appropriate buy-in is for that game.
Playing the overs or playing with a straddle or a kill increases the limits. All of these plays require you to invest more money in the hand than you might originally have intended to when you sat down in the game. That in turn means that you might be busted out of the game before you realize it. Let's look at each one of these subjects separately.
Playing With A Straddle
A straddle is when the player to the immediate left of the big blind raises in the dark (before he gets his cards). In most cardrooms, this blind raise does not count toward the maximum raise limit, so, if your card-room has a three raise limit, you'll be playing with a bet and four raises if there's a straddle. With one possible exception, you should never straddle the pot yourself. Take a minute here to see if you can think of what that exception might be.
Got it yet? This is one instance where it's useful to think outside the game. The one time you should straddle concerns your image. If you're in a game full of loose, wild players who are playing and straddling almost every hand, you should also straddle the blind once in a while. You don't want to stand out as a tight, conservative, no-action rock, especially in light of all that action going on around you.
The one extra bet that it costs you to straddle is really more of an investment than an actual bet. If you get into the spirit of the game and appear to be one of the loose players, the pots that you win in the future will have more bets in them, on average, than they would if the other players perceived you as a too-tight player.
If you've decided you're going to straddle, the most important thing you need to know is: do it as soon as you can after you've made the decision. You only have to do it once or twice so that the other players can see it and think that you're just playing for fun. The earlier in the game that you straddle a hand or two, the more time there will be for you to take advantage of your looser image.
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