Would it be fair to say that an opponent who straddles a lot (almost every other time he's on the button) is a loose player?
I played my second live game last weekend, and had a hand where that read would have really helped. i had pocket Qs and one player went all in, and another called. i knew one of them had top pair As and the the other had a lfush draw, and if i had correctly identified the caller as a loose player, i could have put him on the flush draw and reraised him (which he had). instead, i put the all-in player on the flush draw, and folded my hand. thinking back i think i could have safely identified the caller as the loose player by recognizing how often he straddled and put him on the correct hand.
i think a straddle is just generally a bad play because i think i remember hearing somewhere that 70% of preflop hands are unprofitable. so youre blind betting with a 70% chance of getting a bad preflop hand. maybe if the rest of the table plays weak and fold easily it might be worth it, but if youre playing with one or more aggressives, you're going to lose money in the long run.
also, i think if you have a tight table image, you're going to lose that image for the hand because an observant opponent will recognize that now you're more committed to see the flop even if you have a bad hand.
thoughts?
as far as the effective stack size, i could see that advantage in that if youre deep stacked and your opponents are short, but is the stack advantage enough of an advantage to outweigh the disadvantage of betting blind? one of the other 8 or 9 players (if its a full ring) could easily get a high pocket pair and you could be stuck with 7 2 offsuit