It's not that I want to keep writing about straddles. But I play in the cash game streets two or three times a week, and they keep causing friction and dissonance at my table.
Games which would otherwise run smooth as silk keeping hitting potholes because some people want to straddle, others don't want to straddle, and a third group isn't 100% sure what the straddle is or how it works.
Straddle mechanics
I'll help out that third group here... Let's consider a $1/$2 no-limit hold'em game. The small blind puts out $1, the big blind puts out $2. The next player to act ('Under the gun' or 'UTG') can put out a straddle, typically to $4 or $5. Now the action starts to their left.
The popular narrative is that it 'induces action.' Nothing could be further from the truth – it just doubles the stakes. That also divides the effective stacks in half (a 100-big-blind stack is now a 50-straddle stack), making the game more mechanical and showdown-heavy.
We also have the Mississippi straddle, in which somebody can straddle anywhere at the table, and action begins to their left.
There's the button straddle, in which the player with the strongest position at the table posts a (normally two big blind) straddle and action starts with the small blind. From a theoretical viewpoint, this should force the small blind and big blind to tighten to an absurd level – in practice almost nobody plays as tight as they should from those positions.
Then there's the Dallas straddle, the worst of the bunch. In this nightmare the button straddles, and then has absolute last action before the flop. I won't go into detail, but suffice to say this destroys the balance of the preflop game.
There's also the double straddle, where the player to the left of the UTG position can post twice the previous straddle, and now the $1/$2 game is a $1/$2/$5/$10 game. Of course, sometimes there are triple and quadruple straddles. At this point, everybody has 12 straddles and it's a preflop shove-fest. I'm not sure who thinks this is fun poker – I certainly don't.
Did I forget to mention that in some clubs the initial straddle, wherever it is, isn't even restricted to twice the big blind? It can be any amount you wish, up to half your stack. I wish I were making that up.
Straddles do one thing: they make the game bigger
Don't believe any alternate narrative about the effect of straddles.
A straddle is dead money put in the pot before cards are dealt. The more dead money there is, the larger bets people are willing to make to win that dead money. It is the essence of the game we play.
When people say straddles produce 'action,' maybe they mean bigger (dollar) pots. If so, fine. But if they mean straddles incentivize people to play more hands, that's dead wrong.
Straddles create stakes dishonesty
Live cash poker is really the only place where straddles exist [1]. Straddles cloak the magnitude of the game and deceive potential players about its actual size. I wish I could take credit for the phrase, 'stakes dishonesty,' but it came from a fellow member of the Hungry Horse Poker Discord.
Do we want new and infrequent players to join us at the cash tables and make poker thrive? Does lying and overtly deceiving newcomers about the size of the game advance that? In fact, in a private conversation I had with poker mensch Charlie Wilmoth, he said, "Straddles hide the true size of the game from online listings, thus keeping those games off the radar of predatory pros."
Yes, Charlie. But more importantly, they deceive, confuse, and frustrate people who sit down at a $2/$3 game thinking that they will be playing a game with $2 and $3 blinds, and their $300 buy-in will represent 100 big blinds. I mean, yes, it does, but practically speaking, it represents 30 x $10 button straddles.
You don't like straddles, do you?
Last week, I got to participate in a livestream that Hungry Horse Poker co-founder Marc Goone hosted.
I asked Marc about straddles and the stakes dishonesty. He chuckled and said, "You don't like straddles, do you, Lee?" No, I don't. Though ironically, I'm the most reliable straddle-poster at the table if the straddle is usually on. I understand the social contract of straddles, so if I sit in a game that usually has the straddle on, I expect to play for the larger stakes, and I put the straddle on when it's my turn.
I love live cash poker. I want it to thrive and grow. Straddles and their stakes dishonesty create friction at the table and disrupt the orderly flow of the game. I've written about that before. But more importantly, they scare away the new, the timid, and the nervous.
Consider Anne, who's been watching from the rail for a month, and finally decides that she's ready to take the plunge. She goes to the podium and asks for the smallest game they have. "Yes ma'am, $1/$3 right over here."
Anne excitedly sits down with her $300 in chips, ready to be part of all the fun. Now Reggie posts the $10 button straddle, there's a raise to $40, Anne looks down at 7-7 and wonders what she's doing here.
She plays a couple of orbits, then quietly cashes out her $260, and goes back to the $10 blackjack table, where they actually accept your $10 bet and don't force you to bet $25. Pity, because poker is so much more fun than blackjack.
We can fix this
The thing that really frustrates me is that it doesn't have to be this way. We have two perfectly good mechanics to give the players what they want.
You want more action, more people in the pots, and theoretical permission to play more hands? Add antes.
The tournament people already did the math for us. Suppose, instead of a $1/$3 game, it was a $1/$3 game with a $3 big-blind ante. Now there's 75% more dead money in the pot, and the preflop VPIP charts change pretty radically. More action rather than just bigger pots.
Oh, you really do want bigger pots? Great, go sit at a $2/$5 table. Or a $5/$10 table. I want you to get to play the stakes you want to play, but not at the cost of the comfort of the people who want to play $1/$3.
If there's not a critical mass of people to play $2/$5 right now, then play $1/$3, start a $2/$5 list, or go somewhere else. But don't pressure or bully $1/$3 players to play $1/$3/$5 just because you want to play bigger.
Let's have the advertised stakes be the truth.
[1] Yes, a few online sites have a 'straddle,' but it's baked into the game structure, and isn't one of the wacky variants that truly throw preflop action off the track. It's more accurate to call such a game a 'three-blind' structure.
