I've been reading some articles and watching training videos about flop continuation bet sizing and one thing thats become standard nowadays at high stakes and within poker theory is betting really small like 1/3 or 1/4 pot on dry boards. I currently bet 1/2 pot on dry boards and between 2/3 and full pot on wet boards. I have just been having a long conversation about this with my friend who is a good online grinder and he says this part of my game of never betting less than 1/2 pot is horrible and its not even debatable and long established that you should be betting small on dry boards. What do you think of it? The reason I don't like it is because at low and medium stakes players perceive these small c bets as weak and are likely to be very sticky and float you very wide, which doesn't see like something you want when your c betting on a dry board where your range is mostly air.

what is optimal vs one opponent might be awful vs another.
in general yeah its going to be easier/ideal to have a smaller sizing (granted, you can solve a simplified strat for large sizing and do just fine) so to say that you can NEVER do larger and win isn't true.

as per incentivizing sticky fish to fold.. using MDF as a bench mark, if u bet 1/3 and theyre folding more than 25% of time its instant profit, yes? so even tho it seems like theyre calling a lot.. are they really continuing more than 75% of time vs a 1/3cb? id be surprised if this werent just in your head

that being said, yeah there are opponents that you should adjust sizing on regardless of whether its a dry board or not, just to exploit. but as you move up and vs better opponents, a smaller sizing on a dry board is going to be advantageous in many ways, esp since its easier to memorize small sizing at high frequency.

[QUOTE=English Grinder;56142279]I've been reading some articles and watching training videos about flop continuation bet sizing and one thing thats become standard nowadays at high stakes and within poker theory is betting really small like 1/3 or 1/4 pot on dry boards. I currently bet 1/2 pot on dry boards and between 2/3 and full pot on wet boards. I have just been having a long conversation about this with my friend who is a good online grinder and he says this part of my game of never betting less than 1/2 pot is horrible and its not even debatable and long established that you should be betting small on dry boards. What do you think of it? The reason I don't like it is because at low and medium stakes players perceive these small c bets as weak and are likely to be very sticky and float you very wide, which doesn't see like something you want when your c betting on a dry board where your range is mostly air.[

If the purpose of cbetting is deny equity and build the pot for your value hands. On dry boards “AA2” it makes no sense to bet big your likely only getting called by high equity hands and betting small will still deny equity to the villains range without risking a lot of money . Also by betting small on this flop it helps you get paid by your Ax since it won’t fold out smaller pocket pairs. By betting 50% stronger hands will float you and your value hands have less EV also your bluffs have to work more often

Also I don’t think this is a good way to size your bets. You should size your bets based on who has the nut advantage ETC. For example BTN Vs BB AK2 rainbow is a dry flop however the BB has no 2 pair and only set “2’s”. In theory you should be betting 200% the pot with a very polarised range. Yes 200% .

Fried Meulders discussed this recently on the Upswing Forum. He is a 500z crusher if you don’t know who he is. He talked about a player in the 500z pool who has a very high winrate over a substantial amount of hands who never employs range betting and always uses 2/3 pot cbets in 2bet pots and 1/2 pot cbets in 3bet pots. While this is not “GTO” betsizing comes back to frequencies. If your play causes opponents to make bigger mistakes than another play would, then the former is the best play. They way this player is playing and structuring his ranges and frequencies seems to be working well against who he is playing.

I use range bets against certain types of players and polarized bets against others and more GTO based strategy against others. If villain never folds flop and turn bets for 2/3 pot if he has as little as a backdoor to a gut shot why would you ever bet 1/3 with range? Especially if he is going to call river with any pair he happens to pick up along the way. Likewise, if villain is a nit who folds to almost any aggression postflop why bet 2/3 when he is likely to fold to 1/3? Of course there are exceptions but the point is that what is “optimal” is good to know but you also have to know why and when to deviate versus a player based on their exhibited leaks.