A straddle buys the right to act last preflop, and it doubles the effective stakes of the hand. It is optional and typically posted from under the gun.
It is almost always a losing play in isolation, because you are putting money in blind from a bad position. What it does is increase variance and pot sizes, which is why players with an edge sometimes want it and why the house is happy to allow it.
Its real effect is on everyone's stack-to-pot ratio: a straddled game is effectively played at half the stack depth, which shifts correct strategy considerably.
Whether a table allows it, and from which seat, varies. Under-the-gun straddles are the common form, but some rooms permit a button straddle, which reverses the preflop betting order entirely and puts the blinds in an unusually bad spot. If the option exists at your table, it is worth knowing which version before it is used on you.
Related terms in poker
- Pot odds — The price a call is getting, compared against how often it needs to win.
- Outs — The cards remaining that would improve your hand to a likely winner.
- Equity — Your share of the pot, meaning how often you win it if the hand plays to showdown.
- Implied odds — The money you expect to win later if your draw comes in, beyond what is in the pot now.
- Position — Where you act in the betting order, and the largest structural edge in poker.
- Button — The dealer position, which acts last on every postflop street.
Where an entry quotes a number, that figure comes from the computed sections of this site rather than from another glossary, so the definition and the derivation cannot drift apart. Each entry links to the page where the number is worked out.