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Let's form some ranges: A couple seats to the right of a button straddle
So at my cardroom, there's a Mississippi straddle, and many LAGs and TAG wannabes alike take the opportunity to straddle the BU (and sometimes the CO). I find this leads to a lot of juicy steal opportunities, but I'm having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around target frequencies and hand selection and the like.
So let's say straddler is a TAG-ish player; mostly only comes in for a raise preflop, is active postflop with vbets and draws, etc. They raise their straddle option infrequently enough that they might only be doing it for value, but they are a bit defensive/stationy if they sense someone is trying to steal their straddle.
So button ($500) straddles at a 1/3NL table for $6. SB folds, BB limps, 1 other limper from some so-and-so loose-passive, and folds to us in the HJ. To clarify, there are two players left to act behind us: the CO (standard loose-passive), who has not VPIPed yet, and the BU, who already has $6 committed.
For more context, I'll say that I've found that $25-$30 is seen as too much money to commit to the usual J9o riff raff that loose-passives generally happily l/c preflop, but everyone gets sticky quickly if the same usual suspects are raising to that amount, and the blinds and EP players might even get a little trappy with their premiums. Due to sample size issues, I'm speaking with a mix of experience and speculation.
So how often should we be raising here? What kind of hands should we be raising here? Maybe the first time or two, straight equity hands will play the best, but as our image gets dirtier, we should only be doing it with semi-coordinated hands so we can barrel? Should we just thank villain for blindly committing money and building the pot for when we get a value hand? If so, what does the bottom of our value range look like?
And what's our limping range look like here?
Another spot I've gotten into is when it's just folded around to us (blinds included), and I pretty much just make it $18 in with like 50% of hands. Risking $18 to make $10 sounds like a wondrous price, but the fact that the continuer(s) will have position on me when they defend makes it hard for me to think we have a huge advantage by making them call a lot. The nice thing, I think, is that players don't really know how to play back in these games, even with position, but it still feels optimistic to think that I'm going to outplay 33% of ATC with K2o OOP.
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