By curtains on May 6 2006, 01:30 AM

In this article we are going to talk about when it’s a good time to make a continuation bet and when it’s best to pass up this opportunity. Before I even get started, I want to discuss a few of the absolute basics when dealing with the topic of continuation bets.

What is a continuation bet?

A continuation bet (I will call them c-bets for the rest of the article), is when you have raised or reraised the pot before the flop and have gotten callers. The spots that we will be discussing are those times when the flop doesn’t help your hand, and you have less than top pair. Usually when you make these c-bets, you will be betting anywhere from 50% to 100% of the pot (in Sngs I usually avoid making full pot sized c-bets). The idea of making these c-bet is that in Holdem, your opponent will miss the flop a lot more often than the will actually hit the flop. Because you have the initiative due to your preflop raise, you are hoping that by making a bet on the flop your opponent will fold often enough to make it a profitable bet. I do not consider it to be a continuation bet when you actually flop something, instead I consider that a value bet.

Let’s look at some of the most important factors that one should consider when deciding whether or not to make a c-bet, in order of importance. We are going to assume in all of these cases that we have no pair on the flop, yet have raised preflop.

1. Number of opponents:
2. Flop Texture
3. Buyin Level
4. Value of a free card
5. Stack Sizes

1. Number of Opponents:

The number of opponents you have in with you is usually the most important factor in determining whether or not you will fire again in order to win the pot. This can be looked at very logically, as the fewer opponents you have in the pot with you, the more likely it is that your c-bet will succeed. The general school of thought is to c-bet quite frequently against one opponent, to c-bet significantly less frequently against two opponents and to c-bet very rarely against three opponents. If you are betting into 4 or more opponents with just ace high, then you are almost surely too brave for your own good.

I do warn the readers that I do not just blindly c-bet against one lone opponent. I believe in checking behind a lot more frequently than most players do, and I hope to explain the reasoning behind this in some hand examples.

2. Flop Texture

The texture of the flop is extremely important in determining whether or not you should make a c-bet. If you have 2 callers and the flop comes 876 with a flush draw, you should almost surely not bet into them with your missed AQ. If the flop comes K22, you can make a much better case for firing another bullet.

Another important factor is the presence of an ace. If you find yourself raising preflop with something like KQ and receive one caller, you should often bet any flop that includes an ace. The reason behind this is that it’s just so natural that the preflop raiser would have an ace, that your opponent will usually be less likely to mess around with you.

3. Buyin Level

This is an important factor where my advice is probably the opposite of most pundits. Most would assume that you should c-bet more often in higher limit games, because your lower limit opponents will call you with anything. I actually believe this to be false. Players around the $22-$55 level will see a lot more flops than the typical higher buyin player, however the will often just fold to a relatively small bet when they have nothing on the flop. When I played those limits I had to constantly force myself to make c-bets because I was just amazed at the frequency at which they would fold. At the higher limits, players are still not geniuses, but they are much trickier and aggressive, and are more capable of trying to put you on a hand. When the flop comes 763 they know that often you will have missed overcards and they will be able to make a play at you. It’s this extra level of thinking exhibited by higher level opponents that I believe makes it correct to c-bet LESS frequently in the higher buyins. The other reason to c-bet less often in the higher buyins is that the hands that you are called by preflop will likely be stronger than those that called you in a $33 sit and go.

It’s also good to remember that at the lower buyins, it’s less important to mix up your play. For example you will sometimes want to check behind with an overpair in a higher limit game against a regular opponent. This will make them understand that they can’t just bet you out of the pot every time you check. At the lower buyins where your opponents are thinking less strategically, the mixing up of your play becomes a lot less important.

4. Value of a Free Card

The above two rules are the most important, however there are other factors to consider as well. Let’s imagine an example where it’s the first hand of a PartyPoker sit and go and you have AKd. Let’s say you have raised in MP and both blinds called you. The flop comes QT5 with one diamond and now they both check to you. In a situation like this I will most often check, because it’s quite unpleasant to get check raised. Your hand has a decent amount of value because a jack makes you the absolute nuts, while a diamond or Ace/King make you a decent hand on the turn. If you end up having to fold this hand because you are check raised, then you may have missed out on a great chance to win a huge pot. If for example you decide to make a c-bet on a flop of T73 rainbow, it’s usually much easier to fold if you are check raised, because there aren’t many cards that will improve your hand a great deal. I am not advocating blindly c-betting in the latter example, but I would surely be more likely to do so.

5. Stack Sizes

This is a relatively unimportant factor but can be important. If you have doubled up to 4000 early in the tournament and are facing another very healthy stack of about 3000, they are usually going to be somewhat wary of tangling with you. When your opponents are scared, they tend to play more straightforwardly, thus there is usually a smaller chance they will raise you or check raise you with nothing. If you reverse the stack sizes so that you have 3000 and they have 4000, they now are more likely to feel this psychological dominance over you, and may make a move on you with no hand.

This factor becomes quite important if you happen to be shortstacked. Then you are often not worried about being checkraised and it will simply be correct to just move all-in in order to win the pot right away.

Ok so those are five factors to think about every time you want to make a c-bet. I don’t think that these are the only important factors (i.e. position of the callers is also important), but I believe strongly that factors 1 and 2 are extremely important in almost all cases.

There is one other important idea to discuss and that’s the idea that checking behind often gives you extra information. If you are considering a c-bet on the flop, you have very little information on your opponent’s hand, because most people “check to the raiser” no matter what. If your opponent is not especially tricky, you can check behind in some situations, and if they check again on the turn, you are now much more likely to pick up the pot with a bet than you would have been on the flop.

Of course there are very clear problems with this idea, as your opponent may bluff bet the turn or may hit a nice turn card. Your opponent may even check raise the turn as well. Even though this idea is far from full proof, it’s important to understand that every time your opponent is forced to act, you are gaining some information about the quality of their hand. In my experience the opponent’s turn check is more likely to be sincere than the flop check.

Now let’s move onto some hand examples that deal with each of the above topics:

1. Number of Opponents Hand Examples:

Q1: Ok this will be the first hand of the tournament in a PartyPoker $55 event, thus everyone still has 2000 chips. We raise to 110 from 3 off the button with AQo. The button and both blinds call. The flop comes K97 rainbow. The pot contains 440 chips. What is your play?

A1: I would not bother firing a c-bet here. You have 3 opponents on a relatively coordinated board. Even if they don’t have a king, there are numerous other hands they can call you with as well, such as JTo, A9, 88 etc…..yes calling with 88 isn’t a brilliant play but you aren’t playing against geniuses most of the time. I would strongly recommend a check here.

Q2: Same situation as the above but only the BB calls your preflop raise. Now what is your play?

A2: You make a standard c-bet in this example, because the chances of getting played with are significantly lower. I apologize if this is too obvious but it’s extremely important to be more careful when there are multiple opponents and you have missed the flop.

So you should get the general idea at this point. When there are 3 opponents you should not be c-betting too often. When there is one opponent you will bet often but not 100% of the time. You should especially check behind occasionally at the higher buyins. When there are two opponents is where you really need to use your judgment. I would suggest that you should check more often than bet if you have missed against two opponents, however most of the other factors I’ve laid out in this article (Flop Texture, buyin level, stack sizes etc) will come into play for such decisions.

2. Flop Texture Hand Examples:

Flop texture is extremely important when deciding whether to fire another bullet after missing the flop. Number of opponents is more important but really easy to gauge. If you have a lot of opponents check, if you have very few you can bet more often, so it’s pretty simple. Flop texture is much harder to gauge. Let’s take a look at a hand and assume it comes from a $109 buyin:

Q3: You raise to 120 from 2 off the button with Ad Jc. You are called by both blinds making the pot 360 chips. Now I’m going to give a list of 6 flops, and you decide whether you will bet when the blinds check to you:

Flop 1: Kh Qc 3s
Flop 2: Tc Td 3s
Flop 3: 6s 5s 4d
Flop 4: Qs 9h 3c
Flop 5: 9s 5c 2d
Flop 6: Kh 8h 4h

Flop 1 Answer (Kh Qc 3s): I think this is a good flop to check behind. First of all the presence of a king and a queen is annoying because these are both reasonably likely hands for your opponents to hold. There are also many straight draws possible as well. The other factor that would lead me to check is that by checking I could make a huge hand if a ten falls on the turn, and it would be some shame to get check raised off of this hand. Note that you will sometimes be able to win this hand without improving, even after checking behind on the flop.

Flop 2 Answer (Tc Td 3s): This seems like a great flop to bet. The board is unbelievably dry and it’s very likely that it missed both of your opponents. The bad news is they will probably at least call you with a middle pair, but for the most part, betting about 200 chips here will be a +EV play.

Flop 3 Answer (6s 5s 4d) : Clear check. There are a ton of draws that are believable for the blinds to have. The board looks like it missed a preflop raiser, and many of your opponents may even call with pure overcards. I doubt you will get folds here often enough to make betting a good play. I would also tend to check this flop against one opponent.

Flop 4 Answer (Qs 9h 3c): Again I like checking. The queen and nine are quite dangerous cards for you and your hand value is practically nil. I would tend to bet this flop against one opponent here, yet would be somewhat more likely to check behind with AK. The reason I would bet more often with AJ is that folding is so painless if I’m check raised. With AK my hand doesn’t have a tremendous amount of value, but it does have quite a bit more then AJ. This doesn’t mean that I would always check behind with AK against one opponent, it just means that I would be more likely to than if I held AJ.

Flop 5 Answer (9s 5c 2d): This is a very reasonable flop to bet as it’s quite possible that no one has a piece of it. I still am a big fan of checking the flop early in sit and go’s when I miss against multiple callers, and would be more likely to check behind here. However I believe that on a flop like this it’s more a matter of style and that betting is extremely reasonable.

Flop 6 Answer (Kh 8h 4h): This flop I would check for certain against two opponents. The problem with monotone flops is that they give your opponents a lot of excuses to call/raise you. For instance many will call with any heart and check raise with a high heart. They may call with any pair or check raise with top pair. Also you will often have extremely few outs. You don’t want to make a habit of betting on boards where there are going to be many excuses your opponents can make to play with you.

It’s very important that you are constantly thinking about flop texture. It’s one of the most important things to look at in almost every single NL Holdem decision. This holds true whether you miss the flop, or hit the flop hard. For example if you have AK and the flop comes QJT, you should generally avoid slowplaying, because the texture is such that it’s likely to have hit your opponents and there are very cards that can come later in the hand that will convince your opponent to play with you. If you have JJ and the flop comes J62, you can strongly consider slowplaying due to the fact that it will often have missed your opponents and many cards can come later in the hand to encourage your opponents to play. The key is that in almost every postflop decision you make you should be looking at the texture of the flop and using it to influence your decision.

3. Buyin Level Hand Examples:

We are just going to take a look at a very simple example here. Let’s say that you have raised preflop to 120 from the cutoff with AcKd. The BB is the only caller. The flop comes 9s 8c 2s. What is your play:

In a $215 buyin?
In a $55 or lower buyin?

$215 buyin:

I would check here more often than I would bet, but it would depend on my opponent. This is the kind of flop where a tricky player will often make a move with nothing against a preflop raiser. At least they will do so often enough to make things annoying. This combined with the likelihood of them actually having a hand/strong draw leads me to check behind here a decent percentage of the time. Note that checking doesn’t simply give up. Yes if your opponent bets the turn you will often have to fold, but the will not bet the turn anywhere close to 100% of the time. You will often win with an unimproved ace high, you will often win by betting the turn on a relatively harmless card (this is often referred to as a delayed c-bet). If you are playing against a regular whom you see often, it’s important to occasionally check behind here with something like AA. Please don’t take this advice too far however, as most players really don’t pay attention to stuff like this, and they also probably won’t see your hand at showdown.

$55 or lower buyin:

In these buyins your opponents tend to play a bit more of a fit-fold style postflop, and they also play less aggressively when they do have a hand worth playing. For instance if you fire a bet, and your opponent has JT, they may simply call with their open end straight draw. Quite often you can check behind the turn and river and simply win with ace high against such passive opponents. Your life will not be as easy on this flop in the higher buyins. Please don’t bet the entire pot size as well. If the pot contains 250, bet something like 150-175, and they will usually just go away if they have nothing.

4. Value of a Free Card:

¬ This factor is an interesting, although not quite as important as the ones above. What it generally means is that you should be more likely to bet if you don’t mind being raised. For instance, if you have AK on a QT4 board, it’s a little annoying to get check raised, because you know that if a jack fell you might have won a nice pot. If the flop is Q84, you don’t really care as much if you get raised because you have no real hand anyway.
The best example of this is when you flop the nut flush draw but have multiple opponents. For instance if you have Ad Td and the flop comes Kd 8d 7c you may often want to check behind, although this depends very much on the stack sizes….

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES:

Hopefully the above examples will help you to determine whether or not it’s a good idea to make a continuation bet. Please note that all of these examples assume you are playing a sit and go, although for the most part I agree with these plays even in MTTs. One key difference of MTTs and STTs is that it’s much more correct to gamble early in MTT’s. That could change the dynamic in a lot of situations like those listed above.

I asked two players about the six examples involving FLOP TEXTURE. One of the players who has a very long history of success at the $215s agreed with my play in every example. They said they would usually bet in hand 5 and this is the only slight difference. The other player I asked is a well known MTT player. He disagreed with a lot of them, often betting where I would check (3+4+5) and checking where I would bet (2). The MTT player does profess to being not very experienced in STT play. To be honest I don’t think the correct play should change very drastically whether it’s a STT or MTT, I just want to make it clear that there are other players with proven winning track records who would approach the above situations differently.

POSITION: You should generally be more careful when you are out of position for a few reasons. First off when your opponent calls you and isn’t in the blind, they are likely to have a stronger hand. Secondly, if they call your flop bet, you can’t just check behind them on the turn for a free card. Most of the time if I have nothing and am OOP (out of position) I will check on the flop, however as always it depends on the texture of the flop, the opponent who called and so on.

It’s also important in higher limit games to check raise in these spots a lot more often. A preflop raise followed by a check is a signal to a lot of players that you are just giving up on the hand, so against regular opponents you are going to need to mix it up sometimes, and occasionally even check raise with nothing. However this type of stuff should be reserved only for the highest limit games and the most regular players who aren’t extremely tight preflop.

PSYCHOLOGY: I want to discuss one more factor, which is the psychology of c-betting. I believe that c-betting too often causes players to want to play fewer hands postflop. What happens is that when you think about raising preflop, you also sometimes feel that no matter what you also have to fire a large bet postflop. This way instead of risking like 2.5-3x the BB, you are actually risking something like 7-8x the BB, just by making a simple raise preflop. Thinking about this can often cause players to get sick and tired of raising with marginal hands and can stifle their creativity. When I first started getting decent at poker I would c-bet practically every single flop where I had raised before the flop. As soon as I cut down on this habit and started to use logic to decide my play my results improved dramatically and I felt a lot better about playing more hands because I knew that sometimes I could just check behind the flop and that I didn’t have to lose a ton of chips every time I flopped nothing and my opponent flopped something.

SUMMARY: One of the main points of this article is that it’s very important not to be robotic when you play poker. You need to take into account many factors before each decision and use them to come up with your play. With practice you will be able to more accurately come up with the correct solution. The trap that you don’t want to fall into is to start making your decisions in a robotic, preconceived fashion. When you think to yourself too often, I will raise preflop and bet the flop no matter what, then you are probably making some mistakes. There are many spots where I do raise preflop and bet the flop almost 100% of the time, but this is due to many other factors present in the situation and it’s not my default way of playing.

Just be sure to constantly take into account every little piece of your surroundings.