Fled the frigid northlands yesterday for the 65-degree warmth of Rapid City. Naturally this means I eventually found my way into the Black Hills and to the 4/8 tables at the Gold Dust. Feeder table was a bunch of drunk college kids (my kudos to the guy who helped cap the betting preflop and on the turn with KQo while I was holding rockets...bigger kudos to the dealer for allowing them to actually hold up)

When I got over to the "main" 4/8 table though I had an ecclectic mix to deal with. Two loose can "kids" who loved to pop in back straddles of $8 before the cards were dealt and a lot of your typical local casino tight "regulars," including the one guy who hasn't raised with less than KK since the Kennedy Administration. The loose guys were 2-3 seats to my right so I spent most of the time popping their straddle to $12 when I had a marginally good hand and flat calling it with my higher-premium hands in the hope of getting some of the tighter regulars into the act as well so I could check-raise through the young guns on a later round if I hit.

How do others contend with frequent straddlers in live casino play? I was really torn between playing to isolate them and chip away at their generosity 8-12 bucks at a time or play for a bigger pot using them to get the action triggered for a bigger pot.

You can almost treat it like a more expensive loose-passive game because people start calling like crazy, so your odds stay the same. Isolation doesn't work unless your positioning puts you in the CO or button when they're UTG/UTG+1 and that only works when everyone else has folded. You're gonna be making more important decisions on the flop whereas your preflop desicions are as basic as they would be in a lot of other SS games.

Like I said, I was deviating between two strategies. Because of the tightness of three of the four guys immediately behind me I did more isolation-type stuff than normal thinking that if I had a good (but not great) starting hand the raise might keep the tight players from coming in at $12, leaving me with one or both of the straddling-prone guys, both of whom have looser opening requirements than I did. If one of the reg's came in behind me I basically knew I had to either hit the flop hard or shut down.

It was an interesting case study...especially when I caught myself saying "y'know, this will make a good strategy post for PF" while still sitting there at the table. It was also fun to watch them burn through so much money doing it and never figuring out why.

Just wish I hadn't caught an almost two-hour freeze on hitting flops while at that table. Really put a crimp into the win rate for the night.

As an aside, also got to watch something I'd never seen before in a casino...a 5-50 spread limit game. Very interesting to watch...can't believe people actually tried buying into that game with only 300-400 bucks.