It's very important that you don't complain about the straddling or in any way let others know that you don't like it. Don't let your words or demeanor contradict your actions on the subject of straddling. Try to look happy, and don't give your opponents anything to doubt your (fake) image, as a Loose/Passive player.

When one of the other players has straddled, here's what you need to consider:
1. The straddler will have a random hand since he raised before he saw his hand.
2. The raise has reduced your implied odds, and you don't know what the straddler has, so you should play only your very good hands.

3. If you do have a playable hand, you should think about coming in for a reraise. That would make it three bets to go for the players behind you, which helps increase the chance that you'll get head-up with the straddler. Your good hand against the straddler's random hand, plus the fact that you have position on him, all make you a big favorite to win the hand.

4. If another player reraises behind you, he probably has a great hand and is raising to eliminate players.

5. You just can't steal the blinds in this situation. Who's going to straddle and then fold when you reraise? Most of the time the straddler is going to reraise you just because you raised. You're always going to have to take a flop here so remember that ahead of time.

• Poker – Straddles, Kills, And Overs (0)
• Playing With An Ace In Poker Part3 (0)
• Playing With An Ace In Poker (0)

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.

• Poker – Straddles, Kills, And Overs Ii (0)
• Playing With An Ace In Poker Part4 (0)
• Playing With An Ace In Poker (0)

About 15% of the time, one of your hole cards will be an ace. That's about one out of every seven hands, six times per hour, or fifty times per eight-hour playing session that you'll be dealt an ace with another random card. It's very important that you learn to play correctly when you have an ace, as this one aspect of the game alone has a huge effect on your hourly rate.

If you're in a certain situation as many as six times per hour, and you have a chance to put as many as four or more big bets into play each time, then you can see what an impact playing your aces correctly can have on your hourly rate. When you're betting as many as twenty-four big bets per hour, you'd better know what you're doing if your long-term goal is to win one to two big bets per hour.

Here's the golden rule of playing with an ace: Every other player at the table also gets an ace one out of six hands. Getting an ace is no big deal, so there has to be something special about yours. Following are two tables of ace-related odds that will be helpful to you:

ODDS THAT YOU WILL BE DEALT
At least one ace 5.7-1
AK (not suited) 110-1
AK (suited) 331-1
AA 221-1

PERCENTAGE CHANCE THAT NO ONE
HOLDS AN ACE BEFORE THE FLOP
In a ten-handed game 13.3%
If you do (ten-handed) 25.3%
If you don't (ten-handed) 15.6%
In a five-handed game 41.3%
If you do (five-handed) 58.6%
If you don't (five-handed) 48.6%

Looking at this second table, you can see that in a ten-handed game, someone will be dealt an ace 86.7% of the time, if you have an ace, another player will also have one 74.7% of the time, and if you don't have an ace, someone else will have one 84.4% of the time. You see the importance of playing your aces correctly.

• Poker – Straddles, Kills, And Overs Ii (0)
• Poker – Straddles, Kills, And Overs (0)
• Poker – Playing With A Kill (0)