Continuation Bet
- Continuation Bet Sizing
- Continuation Bet Turn
- Continuation Bet Frequency
- Continuation Betting
- Continuation Bet Poker
- Continuation Betting Range
Continuation betting as a semi-bluff. Continuation betting as a semi-bluff is an excellent technique as it gives you two ways of winning the hand. Your opponents may fold, or they may call, and you make your draw on the turn or river. However, if you are in a multiplayer pot, the chances that all opponents fold are slim, so you must reconsider. Our continuation betting course is the most depth in c bet course online. Every area has been covered. We cover all the key areas of continuation betting. Whether it’s playing against a tight or loose player, in position or out, multi-way or not. In general, the size of a continuation bet should be between half and full pot. Various factors will decide where on the spectrum your bet should fall. If you have connected with a flop on a. Continuation Betting and Folding to it. The percentage of times when the preflop raiser bets again later in the hand is measured by the CB stat in Holdem Manager and CBet stat in Poker Tracker. This HUD statistic is very important for the simple reason that the particular situation occurs so often.
In the “old” days of Texas hold’em, players would only bet after the flop if they had something. If they missed the flop and didn’t connect, they would check and wait to see if they improved on the turn. As the game saw new and innovative thinkers working in, this all changed. These bright minds saw that this sort of repetitious behavior was exploitable, and hence continuation betting was born.
In this guide, I’m going to start by walking you through what a continuation bet is. I’ll talk about how effective they were in their early days and how they’ve had to adapt as people caught on to what was going on. Through this process, I’m going to give you an extensive lesson in how these bets can be worked into your game. I’ll talk about the common mistakes people make and how you can correct them.
Basically, I’m going to talk about A LOT. By the end of this guide, you’re going to be able to self-proclaim yourself a continuation-betting wizard.
What Is a Continuation Bet?
Before I can get into the strategic implications of continuation bets and how to implement them, I need to define what is and what is not a continuation bet. A continuation bet is a bet that you make after the flop when you are the pre-flop aggression. Basically, if you raise pre-flop and then elect to bet again after the flop comes out, you are making a continuation bet.
This does not refer to every bet that is made after the flop. It’s only the bets that are “continued” by the pre-flop aggressor. If someone else raises pre-flop and you call and then elect to lead out on the flop, you are not making a continuation bet.
Continuation bets can be made when you have a hand and when you are bluffing. In fact, the term really only came into existence when people started continuing their pre-flop aggression as a bluff.
Why They Are Profitable
To help you better understand the importance and effectiveness of continuation betting, I need to talk about why these bets are profitable. First, they’re profitable when you actually have a hand. When you have the best hand, they allow you to start building a pot. In the old days, though, people knew you had a hand because you would only bet if you did. This means that if you were betting, they would fold unless they had something as well.
Continuation Bet Sizing
But when you start mixing in continuation betting as a bluff, it makes it harder for people to know when you have a hand and when you don’t. This means that you’re going to leave your opponent guessing and you’re going to get paid off a lot more when you have a hand.
The second reason continuation betting is profitable is that it allows you to win pots when you don’t have a hand and your opponent doesn’t either. Let’s look at an oversimplified example of poker before continuation betting as a bluff and poker after. Let’s say that in the old days, you have AK. You raise pre-flop, and your opponent calls with 10-9 suited. The flop comes out 8-4-2. Since it’s the old days and you have nothing, you decide to check. Your opponent, who also plays the old school game, decides to check as well.
The turn comes out and is a 10. You check again and your opponent bets because they have top pair. You only have ace high, so you elect to fold, and your opponent wins the hand.
Now, let’s take a look at this hand as it would play out if you were mixing in continuation betting as a bluff. You raise pre-flop with AK, and your opponent calls with the 10-9 suited. The flop comes out 8-4-2. You decide to continuation bet as a bluff, and your opponent, who has nothing, folds their hand. You win the pot. Yes, you did have the best hand, but you were able to take the pot down.
This also works when you don’t have the best hand. Let’s say you raise pre-flop with the AK again, and your opponent defends with pocket 3s. The flop comes out Q-9-6. Your opponent has the best hand with a pair of 3s. But you elect to continuation bet, and your opponent assumes that there is no way their pocket 3s are good on that board and they make the fold. You now win the pot with the worst hand because you elected to make a continuation bet.
Continuation bets will often win you the pot when both players have nothing and miss the flop. I say often because some people like to try and get tricky, which I cover in other advanced strategy sections. In the early days of continuation betting, people would fold no matter what if they didn’t have anything. You could continuation bet with 100% frequency, and it would turn a profit because it’s tough to hit flops.
People wised up to this and came up with strategies to combat 100% betting frequency. In response, people came up with MORE strategies to decide when they should continuation bet for maximum profitability. In the sections that follow, I’m going to walk you through how you should be deciding when you should continuation bet and also how you should be responding as a player against someone who is continuation betting.
Range vs. Range
The most basic way to start looking at when to continuation bet involves a little bit of theory into why these bets work. For now, I’m going to discount situations where you have a hand. When you have a hand, you should be betting most of the time. You already know this. What I want to talk about are the times that you miss the flop or think you miss the flop and need to decide what to do.
For continuation bets to be profitable when you miss the flop, your opponent needs to fold a fair amount of the time. For your opponent to fold, what needs to be going on? Well, your opponent is going to fold when they miss the flop. So, you should be looking to bet flops that miss your opponent’s range more often and hit your range more often.
Continuation Bet Turn
If that last sentence confused you, that’s okay. I’m going to work through it step by step. First, so we are on the same page, a range is the potential hands that a player could have. When you’re trying to figure out what your opponent has, you never try and put them on one exact hand. You put them on a range of potential hands that they might have based on the information available in the hand. Your opponents will be doing the same to you. They’ll be trying to figure out what you have and will be assigning you a range based on the information that you’ve given away in the hand.
So, what you’ll want to do after the flop is put your opponent on a potential range of hands. This will be based on how they normally play, what hands they like to call with, what hands they do or do not 3-bet with, what position they are at on the table, any live tells, their stack size, and anything else you can analyze to get a better idea of what they might be holding.
You also need to be taking inventory of what range you’re supposed to have. Remember, this does not have to do with what you are actually holding, but what the rest of the table probably thinks you are holding. For example, if you have a shorter stack in a tournament, are a tighter player, and raise from under the gun, you could have 7-2, but the rest of the table is going to assume that you have a monster hand. This means that you can proceed as if you have the range that you’re supposed to have.
So, let’s look at the example I just gave, but extend it out a bit. Let’s say that you raise from under the gun, you have a shorter stack, and have been playing tight. You’re holding pocket 10s. It folds around to the big blind, who elects to defend. You know that the big blind is a player who loves to defend and rarely folds to a raise in the big blind. You also know that the big blind player 3-bets 100% of the time when they have a big hand, regardless of where the raise came from.
The flop comes out A-K-4. Is this a great flop for pocket 10s? No, it’s a pretty terrible flop. But this is a great flop for your potential range. While you hate the fact that there are two overcards on the flop, you’re supposed to have hands that smash that flop. Your opponent, on the other hand, is supposed to have hands that don’t hit that flop. If they had big aces or big pocket pairs, they probably would have re-raised pre-flop based on your history with them. They also call and defend with a wide range of hands, so it’s much less likely that they hit this flop.
What does this mean? This means this is a perfect spot for a continuation bet. What’s funny is that, based on the information provided, you likely have the best hand. A continuation bet, though, could get your opponent to fold out a weak king or something that could improve to beat you on the turn. The point is, though, this is a perfect spot because the board hits your range much more than it hits your opponent’s range. These are the spots you’re going to be wanting to continuation bet.
Will it work every time? No chance. But it only has to work a small percentage of the time to turn a profit. You’ll also have situations where you can barrel the turn and get your opponent off of a better hand based on your perceived range. For example, let’s say in the above example that the flop came out K-Q-4. You bet because the flop hits your range much more, but your opponent calls. The turn comes out an ace. This is a spot where you can bet again and continue your aggression because this card hits your range so much more than your opponent’s.
Your opponent will have to fold most of their floats (which we cover in another section) and queen pair hands, and they’ll be faced with a tough decision if they’re holding a king. Based on your tighter image in this example, a decent-sized bet will most likely get your opponent off of most of their king pair hands.
The more you understand ranges and the more you can dial down your opponent’s potential range, the more successful you’re going to be in picking the right times to continuation bet. If you’re always betting when they have a hand, you’re not going to see much profitability from your bets.
Board Textures
Continuation Bet Frequency
As I’ve already stated, continuation bets will win you the pot much more when your opponent does not have a hand. Yes, there are going to be instances where your opponents want to go to war, but that’s another discussion. In addition to looking at potential ranges, you can look at the texture of flops to help you decide whether a continuation bet should be warranted.
Is this any different from ranges? No, it’s actually just a part of it. But it’s a separate way you can look at flops to help you in situations where you’re struggling to make a choice on how to act.
Flops can be broken down into two main categories – wet and dry. The other terms you might use here are coordinated and uncoordinated. Let’s take a look at each separately and how this plays into ranges and continuation betting.
A dry flop is one that is uncoordinated, and you’re either going to hit the flop or miss it completely. For example, 8-2-2. You’re either going to have an 8, a 2, or absolutely nothing. There are no draws or any way you could kind of hit the flop. You either hit the flop or not.
A wet flop is one that is very coordinated where you can smash the flop, or you can somewhat hit the flop with draws. For example, let’s look at a flop like 9-10-J with two hearts. SOOOOOOO many hands hit this flop. If you’re holding even one 8 or one queen in your hand, you have a straight draw. If you have two hearts, you have a flush draw. Even if you only have the ace of hearts, you have a backdoor flush draw. So many more hands are going to hit this flop than are going to miss it.
Knowing this, which type of flop should you be more prone to bet? If you answered dry flops, you’re correct. The reason is because your opponent is going to miss this flop much more often than they hit it. This means that unless your opponent is stubborn, this is going to be a profitable play.
The problem with continuation betting on wet flops that you miss is that it’s much more likely that your opponent has a hand that they’re going to want to continue with. They might not have a super strong hand, but they’re often going to have a hand they’re willing to call at least one bet with. If the purpose of continuation betting as a bluff is to get your opponent to fold, it should make perfect sense why betting these type of flops is not going to be very profitable.
Frequency
I’ve already stated that when continuation betting started to grow in popularity, people were doing it with sometimes between 90% and 100% frequency. As you’ve seen in the strategy sections above, this no longer is something that can be done profitably. People are too willing to call down with more marginal hands, and people have a strange love and fascination with backdoor draws. While they do play a role in Texas hold’em, they’re much more important in games like PLO. You can probably blame PLO for the backdoor love trickling over into Texas hold’em.
So, this begs the question, should you bet every time that it’s a favorable range situation for you, or should you have some form of moderation? The answer is going to depend on a lot of factors. The best general answer I can give is that you should do it as often as you can profitably get away with it. The more pots that you can steal with nothing, the better, and the more you are betting as bluffs, the more likely people are to adjust and end up accidentally paying you off when you have a hand.
Frequency is going to depend on how your opponents are choosing to react to your bets, as well. If they’re “sticky” players who don’t like to fold, you may want to dial back your continuation bets a little bit. Remember, the whole goal is to get them to fold when you don’t have it, so if they aren’t folding, you may need to adjust. One way you can adjust is to dial back how often you are continuation betting. They’ll be less likely to fight you when you do bet, because they’ll give those fewer bets more respect.
On the flip side, if your opponents are playing too tight, you may want to up your frequency of continuation bets. Sometimes you’ll play with opponents who love to find reasons to fold and only like to continue after the flop with top pair, the nut draw, or better.
If you’re playing online and using a program like Hold’em Manager, you may want to spend some time reviewing the continuation betting results section. It will show you which flop types your bets are most successful on and which ones you’re failing on. With a large enough sample size, you can draw some pretty strong conclusions about the stakes and bank of players you are playing with. Small adjustments here can go a long way to strengthening your bottom line.
You want to try to be as balanced as you possibly can. What does this mean? This means that you can’t be doing the same thing every single time. If every time you check you don’t have a hand, people are going to auto-bet 100% of the time and steal all of these pots away from you. What I recommend doing is mixing in a few times that you don’t continuation bet with the best hand. Then, you can call down or check-raise the flop. Doing this a few times will keep your play balanced and stop your opponents from trying to rob you blind.
Firing Again
In the prior section, I left out something that is important because I wanted to cover it in full here. I first said that if people are calling your continuation bets too often, your response should be to continuation bet less. While this is one way you can adjust, there are other ways. One of the other ways you can combat this is by following up your continuation bet with a turn bet, and in some cases, another bet on the river.
Now, I want to start off with some words of caution. When you start barreling multiple streets, the pots get more expensive when you make mistakes. This means you need to exercise a little more caution and you need to be right as often as possible. While I’m not going to go fully into turn play today, I do want to leave you with a few thoughts to get your mind working in the right direction.
If you’re playing against an opponent who loves to call flop bets with very marginal hands like bottom pair or ace high, you may want to look into upping your turn bet frequency. While they may have the guts to withstand the first bet, it’s going to be really hard for them to stand up to a second and much larger bet on the turn. This will eventually get them to adjust and stop calling you on the flop as marginally.
You need to be ready to readjust if they do that. If they stop calling you so widely, it means that when they do call you on the flop, they’re going to be more likely to have a strong hand that is inviting more bets.
You can also look to bet more turns on cards that hit your range much more. Earlier in this guide, I had an example of betting an ace turn as it hit your potential range much more. Again, you need to be careful not to do any of this 100% of the time, because your opponents will figure it out and will adjust to exploit you.
The name of the game with firing on the turn is what you can and can’t get away with. You’ll know this based on who your opponents are, how they react to continued aggression, and where both of your perceived ranges stand. Remember, it’s not always about the cards you hold in your hand. A lot of times it’s just about what the rest of the table and your opponents perceive you to have.
Continuation Betting
Sizing
The last thing that I need to talk about regarding continuation betting is sizing. There are A LOT of different schools of thought here, so if you feel differently about this, you might not be wrong. I’ll give you what I feel is best and my reasoning behind it.
Typically, I like to continuation bet bigger on more coordinated boards, and slightly less on boards that are dry. Regarding the dry boards, your opponents are either going to have a big hand, or they’re going to have nothing. It’s going to be tough for them to make a call of any size if they have nothing, which means you can get away with a smaller bet. The times they do have a hand, you will lose less.
Regarding wet boards, you’re going to be betting more when you have a real hand to protect your hand. If you bet less when you’re bluffing, you’d be pretty easy to exploit. Your opponents would raise you every time you bet small and fold every time you bet big. The idea here is that you have to be congruent with what you would do when you had a real hand.
That’s the best rule of thumb that I can give you. Bet how you would if you actually had a hand that connected with the board. Otherwise, you are going to open yourself up to being exploited pretty easily and pretty quickly.
Putting It All together
I sadly miss the days when blindly continuation betting was profitable, and people were easy to steamroll. Though those days are gone, continuation betting is still a profitable play, as long as you exercise a little bit of discretion and timing. It still helps to turn a big profit, as long as you don’t become predictable and allow yourself to be exploited.
With the tips I’ve given you, you should be ready to start employing this in your game or tweaking your current use of it. Remember, it all comes down to identifying ranges better. The better you are at reading what your opponent might have and reading what they are thinking you have, the better decisions you’re going to be able to make. This isn’t just true with continuation betting, but with all facets of your poker game.
The continuation bet, or c-bet, is the first advanced poker strategy that most players learn, because it's almost impossible to sit through a poker game without seeing this trick used a great deal. A continuation bet takes place in a game of community poker (such as Texas Hold'em or Omaha) when a player makes a small raise before the flop and a larger one after the flop, regardless of whether or not the flop has improved his or her hand. This becomes a 'continuation' of the previous bet-- thus giving this maneuver its name.
Why Make a Continuation Bet
There are a few reasons why you might want to make a c-bet. First and foremost, you don't want to let your opponents know if you didn't make the flop and are holding out for a draw or don't quite have the nuts. When used this way, the continuation bet is a bluff that is meant to give you some protection, as other players with hands of medium strength and those waiting for draws are more likely to fold, given that it seems like you now have something good in your hand. The problem that a lot of players run into is this: after first learning about continuation betting, they make a c-bet on every hand, which sends a clear message to your opponents that you're going to throw money into the pot after the flop, regardless of what comes down. This isn't a good way to play, and it negates all the good that the continuation bet can do. Some players, however, will use this methodology to trap their opponents, which brings us to the second big reason that you might be c-betting.
A continuation bet is also good for getting other players pot-committed when you have a very good chance of coming up with a draw (but the other players don't have as good as a chance at it). This is a sophisticated form of trapping, and it comes with certain risks, so it's not for the casual player or the light-hearted.
You might also make continuation bets to trick your opponents into thinking that you're c-betting on a future hand. If you make a series of c-bets early in the game, while the minimum bets are low, you can invest in building a reputation as someone who throws good money after a bad flop. This way, in later hands, you can bet post-flop when you have a good hand and the flop did help you, and other players will assume that you're bluffing and will be eager to call you. This is an excellent method of trapping other players (and like many trapping methods, it takes a while to create).
When Not to Continuation Bet
While continuation betting is an action that requires a lot of personal evaluation, there are some times when you definitely should not make a c-bet. C-bets are wildly profitable when used correctly, so avoid betting in these unfortunate circumstances, and you should do okay.
When you're getting predictable
Continuation Bet Poker
If you c-bet too many hands in a row, people are going to start to get suspicious. Generally, this is something that you want to avoid. While waiting to trap other players when you finally get that great hand is a good tactic, it could be a while before that good hand comes, and if you're not in the opening stages of the game where the blinds are lower, you shouldn't waste your time trying to appear predictable so that you can take advantage of other players-- you'll likely end up shooting yourself in the foot.
When you're out of position
Continuation betting works best when you're in late position, because this gives you the opportunity to assess the status and hands of the other players at the table, letting you know whether their hands are strong enough to call you. If you try to c-bet from early position, you risk being met with multiple callers-- a definite sign that you should fold. Folding from a c-bet sends the clear message to your opponents of exactly what your strategy is, so it's best to avoid making c-bets that you're not going to be able to follow up on.
When you don't have the fold equity
Fold equity is one of the many mathematical terms that's a part of advanced poker strategy-- it's one of the things that professional players take into consideration while playing, which allows them to place bets and proceed through a game regardless of what hand they have, much like Annette Obrestad demonstrated when she won an online tournament, looking at her hand only once the entire time. Fold equity is basically the chance that an opponent will fold on a given pot and is used to calculate which move is the most profitable. Since the entire purpose of a c-bet is to get your opponent to fold, you need to know a bit about how each player plays. Likewise, if you have too many opponents who call your pre-flop raise, the fold equity goes down, because the more players you have, the less likely it is that they'll all fold. If you can't get everyone to fold, continuation betting runs the risk of getting you pot-committed against players with better hands.
Continuation Betting Range
When the board has high draw opportunity
If a player thinks that he has a good shot at nailing a draw, he probably won't fold. Since the entire purpose of a c-bet is to bluff and get yourself protection, getting other players to fold, if you're looking at a board that offers multiple opportunities for a flush or straight draw, it's not a good time for continuation betting. The last thing you want is to throw more money into a pot that you're not going to win. If the board comes down something like 10hQh9s, it's the kind of board that you're going to want to stay away from.
When the flop isn't promising... for anyone
If you're going to bluff your opponent and try to trick them into believing that you have a winning hand, there's no point in c-betting on a flop that's ultimately worthless for everyone. For instance, if the flop comes down 2h4s8d, it's not going to do anyone any favors. At best, a player might have a pair of eights (the nuts hand with this is trip eights, but it's highly unlikely that a player would raise with a pair of eights and then hit a third one on the flop), which is easily beatable. With a flop like this, you could also have a straight draw, but you definitely don't have a hand that's worth aggressive playing, and any opponent worth his or her salt is going to call your bluff.