Cbetting by Eric "Rizen" Lynch

Good simple article on cbetting relative to opponent's expected range, position, and the board in last month's Bluff Magazine...

http://www.bluffmagazine.com/magazin...nc h-1616.htm

Continuation Betting

• February 2009
• Eric "Rizen" Lynch

When I first started playing poker several years ago, continuation betting was something that many players didn’t understand. The game was very passive and the idea of taking control of hands and using aggression and continuation bets to take down pots was foreign to many players. Back then, I probably continuation bet nearly 100% of the time in tournaments, and it was very successful, as most players played a very ‘fit or fold’ type of game.

Since then, through the many published poker books, online resources, and even through discussion on televised poker, continuation betting is something even casual players understand for the most part. This has made a strategy of continuation betting 100% of the time very exploitable and even very inexperienced players can pick up on and counter it fairly easily.

Certainly there are still players I run across who I continuation bet against nearly 100% of the time, but the game has become much more sophisticated and learning how, when, and who to continuation bet is a skill now that many poker players don’t fully understand. My continuation bet frequency is probably a lot closer to 55-60% now as opposed to the 100% it was when I first started playing. Let's run through a few situations and discuss the merits of continuation betting in each.

In all of these situations we are going to assume that our opponent is a tight, aggressive player and that we are somewhat deep stacked allowing for a little more play post-flop. We are also assuming that we have a somewhat tight, aggressive image, as having a loose image typically means you should continuation bet less but value bet more often.

In the first situation, we raise under the gun at a full table and the button flat calls us. The first thing we must do when deciding if we should continuation bet (assuming we are doing so as a bluff since we missed the flop, and not for value) is what kind of range our opponent is on.

Given that we raised in early position and our opponent is tight and aggressive, he is likely calling with hands like pocket pairs and suited connectors, and much less likely he is calling us with a hand like A-10 or K-Q. So dangerous flops for us would have lots of middle cards and good flops would have high cards.

So if the flop were something like 8-7-6 that would be a bad flop for a continuation bet. Sure, we raised under the gun which represents a big hand, but that kind of flop smacks our opponents range, and also there are a ton of scare cards that can come on the turn, so our opponent could flat call with lots of hands.

However if the flop were K-Q-10, even though that flop looks very dangerous it is actually a good one to continuation bet as it misses a lot of our opponent’s range and hits a lot of our perceived range. Even a flop like 9-6-4 isn’t an ideal continuation bet flop. We really want at least one high card in the mix.

The trickiest flops here are ones like K-3-3. These flops often require you to give consideration to having to two barrel if you’re going to continuation bet, since it is quite likely a hand like 7-7 or 8-8 may peel a card on these flops, but can’t stand the heat of multiple bets. Now obviously if our opponent has a looser calling range then a lot of this can change, but against a standard tight, aggressive player this type of continuation betting strategy is often a good one.

A second situation probably comes up more frequently. That is when we raise from late position and are called by someone in the blinds. These situations can be a lot tougher as our opponents are often calling with a wider variety of hands as well as types of hands.

Hands like Q-J, J-10, K-10 are all common to run into as are small to mid pairs and suited connectors. Even weak aces come into play here, depending on how aggressively the player defends his blind. Also, unlike the under the gun situation, our perceived range will be much wider, so simply betting high flops and checking low ones is not a good strategy, as now our opponent’s range contains more high cards and his perceived range of us contains more low cards.

What we are typically looking for in these situations for a good continuation bet are either very disconnected and dry flops, or very scary flops that our opponents would have a hard time calling down light on.

To illustrate this, I’ll show you two very similar flops, one of which is a lot better for continuation betting than the other: J-7-3 and J-8-3. Now my guess is most of you know which one is better, but can you tell why? The J-7-3 is a far better flop to continuation bet, because there are far fewer combinations that connect with it than J-8-3.

This may not seem intuitive at first, but the J-8-3 flop has many more straight draws on it, most of which are also in a blind defender’s calling range. Q-10, 10-9, Q-9 suited, 9-7suited, and even 10-7suited are all hands that players would defend with, and that’s not counting the hands that hit the flop.

The J-7-3 does have the potential for straight draws, but opponents defend with hands like 6-4 and 8-6 far less frequently than hands like Q-10 and 10-9 so when you look at the overall combinations of cards your opponent holds, they are far less likely to be willing to call bets on a J-7-3 fl op than a J-8-3 flop.

Another type of flop is scary flops. This includes high paired boards like A-A-9 or K-K-8 as well as high straight and/or flush boards like A-Q-J and Qc- Jc-9c. These can be good to continuation bet because it is very tough for opponents to call if they believe you may fire multiple streets at them. On the all-club flop you will sometimes get semi-bluffed by a dry ace, but often your opponent has a hard time calling bets even if he hit a piece of the flop due to the scary nature of the board.

The last type of flop that is often good to continuation bet in these situations is the very ragged flops like 5-5-4. Unlike when you raised under the gun your opponent’s range has many more J-10 type hands in it in this situation, so continuation betting ragged flops often becomes a good idea. The thing to be careful of is many players will call your continuation bet somewhat light on these boards and you must consider that you will have to fire a second barrel if a big card comes off on the turn.

Poker has evolved to a point where continuation betting is something that must be done more carefully. You must be able to assign your opponent probable ranges of cards as well as their likelihood of being able to fold hands in that range, then take that into account along with the fl op texture and determine how often you should continuation bet.

Alien,

I've found more and more players are floating me when I've raised pf and am out of position. It's definitely forced me to be more cautious when c-betting.

I agree with you about the importance of putting people on hand ranges and that's where player notes, I think, should rank as high in importance as some of the stat trackers like HEM and PT. Nothing like a good note to supplement statistical observation

great article, gave me a lot to think about