I have finished reading 'Playing the Player' by Ed Miller, and I love his "Top 10 plays to try that you aren't using today" section and think it could make a big difference in my game.

I am most interested in Play number 4: Raise Continuation Bets and Play number 6: Semi-bluff raise the turn when your opponent bets a good barreling card.

The book briefly describes a time or two to make these plays, but I have tried these at 1/2 and 2/5 tables and they fail more often than they work.

Do you people use these plays, and if so, under what conditions?

Thanks.

I use them on the right boards (too long to explain) vs. tight players. It often works because I'm seen as fairly tight and my raises are respected. I occasionally make the play vs. aggressive players because, again, I'm seen as tight. I don't do it often, though.

I don't think it works often enough for loose/aggressive players unless you are against very tight / scared money players.

You can't apply them blindly. At 1|2 most players have a tight raising raise to begin with, so their c-betting range is going to be strong. Floating/raising these players doesn't work. You should try to play the vast majority of pots as the aggressor at 1|2. You'll find more aggressive players at 2|5 that will have wider c-bet ranges, but you still need to be selective when bluffing.

Raising the turn on a good barrel card doesn't make much sense. There is a reason it's a good barrel card. If you raise very much at all on a card that's good for the opponents range you're going to be very imbalanced. He's also likely to have a lot of strong hands willing to call you. The only time I see this working as an exploit is against very aggressive range-aware opponents who are likely to over-bluff good barrel cards.

I happened to see this in my feed and read the book and use the cbet check raise. Only thing is I do it online in the micros but from what I’m told and my small amount of live experience $1/$2 plays very similar to online micros.

The cbet check raise seems to work best when I am up against a somewhat thinking player. Someone that is cbetting a lot as the preflop raiser. There’s certain boards where I will do it with air (KQs, JTs T9s J8s etc). The boards I do it most on is low/mid card paired boards. Like:

662, 883, etc. Sometimes it’ll take a double barrel to work. A lot of lower limit players feel like that paid in to the flop so they have to see the turn.

You have to really know the villain though. The idea is to fold out villain’s high cards. It’s not to get anyone off any pairs they are holding or on a draw. At these limits no one is folding 99 or JJ on these boards. If they are cbetting AK ATs+ etc it can show a profit.