Good I apologize. Definitely misunderstood.

I think we've beat this hand and the paused raise issue to death.

I'm still not convinced my tactic is an angle shoot but it is clearly questionable to some, so I won't do it again. I can accomplish most of the same thing by simply pausing and watching the Villains before announcing the raise. And I'll apply a bit of meta/masking in an early hand or two by seemingly struggling to fold a good hand, when I have every intention of folding a loser.

How is what you are doing any different than a string bet, but verbally?

If you are talking about the declare raise, pause, look, pause, act thing, like I said, we've beaten it to death. Opinions are split but in the interest of playing as ethically as possible, I won't do it again.

I'm pretty sure you're not asking about what I just posted that I will wait, consider, announce-act, but if you are, please explain what your objection is.

I don't know about the games you play, but where I play if a player announces raise and throws out calling chips first then stops to think, the rest of the players sit silently, no one says "come on buddy what'cha tryna do, my man?" or mention it to him.

It's also up to the dealer to make sure remaining players don't act out of turn and a good dealer will give the players a warning if they start to fold before the raise size was announced. I would rather call those guys out for giving a player free information instead of a player who announces raise then pauses. Some players are just mentally slow, or they could be new to the game, or other reasons besides them trying to get reads on the players who are waiting to act.

I agree that is a slight angle play but perfectly legal and reasonable as long as you don't take too long to act. Professional players do this all the time. Mostly because they only have a small amount of time to declare an action. They often don't have enough time to think it through to come up with the appropriate sizing of their raise. But they are playing much deeper stacks in three and four bet pots against much trickier opponents, so their decisions are not as straight forward. If you are in the HJ or CO and announce raise then subtly look over at the button to see if he is reaching for chips, it can influence your bet sizing and there is nothing wrong with that.

Playbig, it's like you were there. That is exactly what happens. I've even seen a dealer or two throw up his empty hand like a cop stopping traffic to keep the downstream players from acting.

Occasionally the Villains fold anyway and I don't even have to compute the proper raise amount. What they don't realize is that their presto fold this time tells me something about their hand next time when they don't presto fold.

I first started seeing people verbally declaring a raise sometime after it started in a WOSP, sometime back. In fact, I believe it was included in the tournament rules.

Like so many other things people see on TV, it made its way into cash games.

So, I'm lost as to why you think it's an angle.