Thanks, good post
especially the progressive rise in raising limpers i'll have to try that.
So in terms of call stations would you suggest raising more earlier on in the hand or only value betting them? I'm not sure If when I 3bet light or raise pre vs the limpers/high pre flops raisers/loose players whether im making a profit doing this as they will just call preflop, float the flop then I give up on the turn - even if I were to throw in a turn cbet, what about the 1 in 3 times they hit and still don't give up? This has got to be -EV, but if I just check behind more when I miss make a delayed cbet this can be profitable or check fold if they donk out on the turn. what do you think?
With the calling stations we have to come up with a plan for getting the most out of these players, in my experience this usually comes down to a combination of prior knowledge or our opponent and the texture of the board, we know that most calling stations will be flatting your pre flop bet with a wide range which will include most Aces, some suited Kings, face cards, suited connectors and 1-gappers etc. What I like to do is grab a program like flopzilla or something like it and punch in the range you think villain might have pre and just start running it through flops and asking yourself "will they call 50% flop on this board? or would they check fold to any bet on that board?"
What you might come to realize is that what your opponent does has a lot to do with flop textures, villain is going to miss a board like Q 7 3 rainbow more often than A Q 9 two tone. What else is also good to think about is, even if it seems villain is calling on any boards, most fish aren't completely brain dead, they are just bad and therefore a call on the Q 7 3 will narrow their range more than a call on the A Q 9 board.
They won't be calling K4o for a half pot bet on Q 7 3, whereas on the A Q 9 board they may have a backdoor flush and a backdoor straight and think "all I need is 'x' card and then 'x' card". Which we know is not profitable thinking but they can't see that. Often this means that double barrelling is better on the disconnected unsuited flops, especially if an overcard hits, this is due to the fact that villains range can only really make weak pairs which they might continue with on the flop but are unlikely to see out big turn and river bets.
The fact that we know this information (and are able to change our minds when presented with new information) is the reason why we want the pots to be as large as possible when we play these players, thus raising preflop to get as much money into the pot is what we are going for. The job of getting the money from these players is easier if we choose a range for ourselves which is tighter than our opponents. (We can do more value betting when we hit on wet boards instead of giving up).
I see what you are saying with the delayed C-bet and this can be useful in certain situations, but lets think about it like this: if the flop comes down J 9 7 two tone we would expect our opponents to continue for a C-bet on this board with all pairs, any straight draws and any flush draws right? so does that mean that if a suited 8 or 10 or Q or K hits we are going to choose to fire our delayed C-bet? well the portion of our opponents range that made pairs on the flop may fold scared that we made a straight/flush but the larger portion of our opponents range either made their hand or made bigger draws/ bigger hands so we would expect them to continue for the delayed C-bet anyway. The times our delayed C-bet will work are the times that the turn is a brick card and our opponent doesn't have a hand but this isn't exactly great because if we had of made a standard C-bet we may have been able to get our opponent to fold their nothing hand on the flop without giving them a free card. Also if you think that our opponent has a drawing hand and will fold to a delayed C-bet if a brick hits the turn then why wouldn't we bet the flop even though they will call as that builds a larger pot for us to take down on the brick turns?
Again this leads us back to the board texture and whether we should C-bet or not, we can get away from the hand when we see the high wet boards. We can just check it back to the river if it runs out bad (straightening turns or rivers/ flushing turns or rivers) especially if we know our opponent doesn't like to give up pairs. We can C-bet and double barrel the disconnected boards and turns.
The times when our opponent has the random one pair hands and won't let it go are the times we get owned by barrelling, to counter these situations we need to take notice that villain is in fact never folding and there is nothing we can do other than wait for a hand and value bet it, C-betting these guys, even delayed C-betting won't work so we need to just play a tighter range and make better hands, these guys don't usually re load so one good hand can get all the chips and we don't have to deal with them again. (I will sometimes employ the strategy of limping behind them and try to make better hands/ bet them off their nothing hands but I wouldn't suggest this unless you are confident you know what you are doing - I think that I may be losing money trying this atm but if you never try different stuff you can't beat the curve right?)
Sorry for the wall of text but you did ask for what I thought lol.:icon_geek