A GLOSSY LIFESTYLE I guess when the big female glossy monthly magazines start doing features on their readers who make a living playing poker online you can be sure all sections of the population are totally bitten by the bug. I was very curious to read about the whole range of age groups and income brackets becoming involved. One 24-year-old lady from London admitted to having become nocturnal, thoroughly enjoying confronting Americans who are awake at two o’clock in the morning her time. Her habit is to play online between the hours of seven am to around five pm. She spends on average thirty hours a week at the PC enjoying Texas Hold’em. Apparently she started betting with her £500 student loan and now regularly bets £1000 a night. What interested me was her comment, “I switch between playing lots of hands, and then just a few, to confuse opponents.” This would help to explain why she’s up approximately thirty thousand pounds so far. Mixing up play is a simple but effective strategy. Her highest win was £8000 and her biggest loss was £400. Not a bad ratio at all. (What am I doing reading womens’ magazines?) Know your enemy, say I.
THE STRADDLE RAISE At the outset let me make it quite clear this has nothing to do with playing against females, just in case any of you guys are reading this in the hope of gratuitous entertainment. The “straddle raise” is actually a very powerful play in poker and is not used very often for good reason. It’s dangerous and not for the nervous. Let’s say you’re sitting “under the gun” (the seat to the immediate left of the big blind whose job it is to open the initial round of betting). If you were to post a double-bet before any cards at all are dealt, that would be a straddle raise. You would in fact be committing yourself (and anyone who wants to gamble with you) to a raised pot before you’ve even seen your hole cards. It’s dangerous because you are committing expensively to playing an unknown hand from one of the least favourable positions at the table. So why would anyone do it? Good question. Let’s say you’ve come to a big money table and it’s the first game. A big straddle raise is the best way I know of creating a “loose” image to the rest of your opponents, some of whom may never have even seen such a bet. A really experienced player might have a good long term reason at such a table to want to create a “loose” image. A swift change of character during a later, more crucial game, may unleash a “snare” (a trap) which will more than compensate for the initial straddle bet.
