Raising Continuation Bets Light
Raising continuation bets light is an effective strategy versus regulars in NLHE because players tend to c-bet with a range that is either balanced between air and value hands or one that is overly weighted towards air. In my game, I had a difficult time finding the right spots to apply this concept. It's easy to raise a continuation bet when you have a very strong hand and I recommend doing so most of the time. There are two spots where you are going to have to make tough decisions whether or not to raise a c-bet: with a bluff and with a medium strength hand.

With any bluff we need to evaluate two things: our chance of winning the pot immediately and the chance of improving on a later street. Check raising with total air is unlikely to be a very profitable move in itself, although it is somewhat likely to be breakeven if the situation is average or good. The profit we make from it can easily be equated to our chance to improve on later streets and get value.

Out of position we want to be check raising hands with a significant chance of improving on the next street. Besides the obvious flush and open ended straight draws that are strong enough both to call or raise with, we want to use our back-door draws, because they tend to give us a lot of cards to improve with on the next street. Take a hand like JTs on A93 with one of our suit. When we check raise this board we represent a fair number of hands for value like 99, 33, and A9. Then we have 16 cards to continue barreling with on the turn, a full third of the deck. Any Q, 8, or card of our suit is a good barrel card. If we do end up making a straight or flush we are likely to get paid off.

This move can be even more effective when you have a backdoor flush on a 2 flush board. That way we can represent the flush if the turn brings a 3 flush to the board. The only downside of these boards is that our opponent is more likely to 3-bet his strong hands on the flop.

In position we can be more liberal with our raises as bluffs. Hands like gutshots become a lot more viable to bluff raise because we can see both a turn and river card usually to complete our draw. Gutshots have a fair amount of equity: 16% if our 4 outs are all good. If we can take it down about half the time with the raise and then win the pot when we complete our draw, this is going to be a quite profitable play. The downside with these hands is that fewer cards improve our hand on the turn.

With a medium strength hand it can also be advantageous to raise as opposed to calling. Here is a perfect example. Our opponent raises from the button and we call in the big blind with Tjs. The flop is J73 and he c-bets. If we simply call there are two negatives; our opponent is unlikely to bet again as a bluff or with a weaker hand for value on a blank, and any Q K or A provides him both with a good bluffing opportunity and possibly the best hand. Check raising in this spot gives our hand some protection and our opponent also sometimes calls and checks down with a weaker hand.

Most people don't compare calling and raising, they evaluate each individually. If you compare raising to calling it often only costs a small percentage of the pot. In this particular spot you want to make your raise a little smaller; usually the size of his bet + the pot. If he bets $4 into $6.50 you can check raise to $10.50 or $11. For that extra $7 you give yourself a decent chance to immediately pick up the $15 in the pot and protect your hand.

In general I think if your raise c-bet is under 15% you are probably missing out on some profitable spots to raise people's cbets. There are two consequences to this: your opponent can start folding some of his stronger hands to your check raise if they have enough information, and you also miss out on those profitable spots that you could take advantage of. Look for the spots where you are likely to have good bluffing opportunities later or make a concealed made hand. Also look for the ones where you need to protect your hand to win the pot.