What are reasons for bets in general?
Harrington listed three possible reasons for making a bet:
- Make better hands fold.
- Make weaker hands call.
- Make draws call at unfavorable odds.
All three reasons can be summarized as follows:
We bet in order to increase our equity. This is worthwhile if the increase in equity is greater than the price we pay for it. However it may not always be the best option.
There is another possible reason for making a bet, or in fact any action we take. We may bet in order to deceive our opponent, to confuse their idea about either our actual hand, or about our general strategy. In the latter case we may sacrifice immediate equity for metagame purposes. However you cannot deceive somebody who does not really pay attention to your actions. Hence against the typical opponents at the micro-stakes, deception plays a minor role.
What are continuation bets?
A continuation bet is a bet made by the preflop aggressor when nobody has bet before him on the flop. Here, the preflop aggressor is the last player to have put in a raise before the flop.
Making a continuation bet makes good sense for a number of reasons:
- The preflop aggressor has shown strength by raising, whereas all opponents have shown weakness by calling. Thus the aggressor is perceived to have the stronger range. C-bet as value bet
- Most flops miss everybody. It is hard to call a flop bet without a hand. Hence, the first bet on the flop often takes down a pot. C-bet as bluff
- If you bet the flop when you hit and check when you miss your opponents can exploit you simply by folding when you bet, but betting when you check. Hence against observant opponents you need to bet sometimes when you miss, or check sometimes when you hit, or both, in order to avoid giving away too much information about your hand. C-bet for deception
Here we will concentrate on the decision whether to make a continuation bet or not. We leave out the issue of bet sizing, however feel free to pick it up in discussion.
Factors to consider
- Our hand.
- Number of opponents.
- Our position.
- Our image.
- Opponents' tendencies.
- Flop texture and ranges.
Our hand
When people talk about continuation bets they often think about bluffs when we missed the flop. However, every once in a while we get lucky and actually hit a hand. In these cases we should mostly valuebet unless we hit the flop so hard that we have a virtual lock (think full house, quads, maybe top set on a dry board, things like that). If we flop a monster we should give our opponent some rope to hang themselves. If we just hit a good hand there is usually little value (and a decent amount of risk) in slowplaying, in particular against the weak opposition we strive to face. As the villains get better we may have to start checking some of our good hands for balance.
In what follows we will mostly consider c-bet bluffs.
Number of opponents
Quote:
|
You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. - Lincoln
|
If you face many opponents the chances that somebody has hit the flop increase quickly. Suppose that every opponent misses the flop 70% of the time. (For the mathematically inclined we assume that these events are independent.) If you have two opponents both miss it 49% of the time; with three opponents the probability shrinks to 34%. So the more opponents you face, the smaller is the chance that your c-bet takes it down.
This leads to the recommendation to play rather straightforward in a multiway pot. You can c-bet liberally heads-up, but tone it down a bit three-way. If there are more than two villains you need very good reasons in order to c-bet as a bluff.
Our position
As always in Poker, position is knowledge, knowledge is power, and power is money. If you were the preflop aggressor, you are in position, and everybody checks to you, you get some information about the strength of their hands. (Although some players check to the raiser as a matter of course.) So you can pound away.
If however you are out of position you have no indication as to how your opponents like the flop. So you will have to proceed a bit more carefully.
It should be noted here that some players try to exploit frequent c-bettors by cold-calling in position, then calling the c-bet and betting on the turn when checked to. This move is known as
floating, and there will be another Concept of the Week devoted to this topic. However you may want to start to think about how you would counter this strategy.
Our image
How our opponents perceive us has a great impact on the success rate of our bluffs. If we have been nitting it up for 30 hands and we raised in early position, our continuation bet has a good chance of success. If we have played the wild man, mixing it up aggressively, and raising from the cut-off, chances are that observant villains may start calling us down a bit lighter (or, God forbid, raising).
Note the word "observant". Luckily, many weak opponents are not observant at all. In fact that's what makes them weak. In particular it is more difficult to notice if somebody plays very tight (unless you're using a HUD); on the other hand most people will notice loose aggressive play just because it's annoying. Finally, noticing an image and correctly adjusting to it are two different things. Hence the uNL mantra: "They're not playing back".
Thus, in ideal situations our own image plays a minor role, but it should still be considered.
Opponents' tendencies
Any information we have on an opponent helps us in our decision whether to cbet. If somebody plays fit-or-fold after the flop (meaning he will fold to a cbet unless he hits at least a good pair or a good draw) we can profitably bet half the pot 100% of the time, although this may not be the optimal strategy. On the other hand against a notorious calling station we can forget about c-bet bluffing altogether and just take him to Valuetown.
Note that preflop stats may be deceiving. If somebody plays very loose preflop he is less likely to hit the flop well, and thus possibly more likely to fold to our bet. On the other hand a tight player starts with good holdings and thus may be more difficult to get off his hand. So, postflop stats such as "fold to cbet %" or "flop check raise %" are more reliable than a general tight/loose classification.
One note on postflop stats: Many will argue that they are reliable only after a large sample of hands since the various situations occur so rarely. However I think that it is wrong to ignore stats from small samples. Even if they may be misleading they are all the information you have right now, so they give you some indication about your opponent. If you see an opponent calling cbets in position twice he is more likely to call a third one as well. Ignoring this amounts to saying: I don't like a sample of size 2, I'd rather use a sample of size 0. To me, this doesn't make sense. As always you wouldn't bet the farm just based on stats. But use all the information available to you.
One last thing about small samples: If I have only few datapoints on an opponents fold-to-cbet stats, I'm actually more inclined to make c-bets into him. One reason is that they do work well against generic opponents. The more important reason is to actually
get more data on that opponent. So I put him into a situation where he needs to tell me something about his tendencies. In a sense, I c-bet for information (if the other factors are somewhat favourable, of course). Naturally I'd prefer the other players to do the dirty work for me, but we can't always rely on that.
Flop texture and ranges
Finally, to connect to last weeks topic, we need to consider the board and how it connects to the various ranges. If the flop hits our opponent's range smack in the face but clearly misses us, it doesn't make sense to bet. On the other hand if the flop hits our range but possibly gives our opponent a better hand that he is able to fold, we need to bet.
For more information on the various flop textures have a look at Bostik's article.
One final note
It is generally known that it is a bad idea to bluff idiots. The reason is the following: You will generally lose money on your bluffs; this money is some tax you need to pay in order to get paid off with your good hands. If you were never to bluff good players would just fold to your bets. Bad players will call you in any case, so the tax you pay is simply wasted.
The reason that continuation bets appear to form an exception is that they are relatively inexpensive, and against the right opponents (read, weak-tight fish) they are profitable in themselves.
Cliff notes
When you're heads up, in position, on a dry flop containing one broadway card, make a continuation bet.
When you're multiway, out of position, on a dripping wet flop, don't.
For everything in between make a decision based on the cards, your opponents tendencies, and your image.
Points for further discussion: Bet sizing; c-betting as a semibluff.
Two Plus Two
Q
7
(2 players)
Linear Mode
