Not sure if Theory is the best place for this question as in theory there could be a ton of different sizes. Question is though, in reality how many sizes are people using and what are they?

I've been playing around with a mixture of 1/3 and 1/2 pot cbets but wondered what others are doing.

I very recently defaulted to 1/3rd pot regardless of my holdings 100% of the time. If there’s really bad players that are fishy or calling stations and I flop super strong I’ll adjust of course. It’s opponent based.

Going to the 1/3 pot bet size has seemed to help with a leak I had cbetting 1/2 pot with air. I’m not losing as much when there are callers that are ahead.

When I am ahead or drawing it’s small enough to encourage action and bluffs on the turn from OOP players.

Been doing it the last 4 or 5 days so not long enough to say it’s something that’ll become permanent but seems to be working so far.

You should have variable flop bet sizings based on the situation (effective stack depth, previous action, relative position, actual position, opponents, etc).

I think a lot of people default to smaller sizings as an exploitation as people tend to under defend vs small sizings so they can bluff more frequently on the flop at a lower cost. Hopefully that's enough to compensate for a potentially higher folding frequency later in the hand.

Yeah I know, that's why I specified it's BTN v Blinds. Should probably have added I'm assuming 100bb effective though.

The sizes I mostly use on the flop are 34% and 78%, with occasional 55% bets as well, but I've been moving more and more towards the smaller size.

When I go with 34%, I'm doing it with most hands that have some sort of multi-street/backdoor equity. I often size up considerably on the turn. In fact, a line I've been using a helluva lot lately in position is 34% on flop, 181% on turn. The flop bets get called ridiculously often. The turn bets almost never do.

29.5 and 75 for me, occasionally I'll do 110-125 or something

Part of your C-bet range has to do with what position the call came from and the board texture.

If you open from UTG with Ad Qd and UTG1 or UTG2 calls, what kind of C-bet will you need when the flop is Qh Jh 8c? Does it not stand to reason that he may have a straight draw or a flush draw or perhaps both? How often do you get a call from an early position with a marginal hand?

With that in mind, does a 1/3 pot size bet actually work?

The pot is $900 and you bet $300 which lays 4:1 pot odds. If villain has 12 outs, (Flush draw + his King) you're giving him favorable pot odds because he has 2.9:1 odds of making his hand. Even if he has only 9 outs, he can still call because he has roughly 4:1 odds (4.22). If he has Kh 10h, this is also a monster hand where the only thing that might persuade him to fold is an all-in (18 outs).

So what's the best plan here? You need information, but how do you get it? Do you hit him with a check raise? Make a pot sized bet? Kind of a tough spot, huh? Should you just jam your whole stack and pray?

1/3 the pot doesn't work now, does it? He might have A 10 and call anyway for implied odds if the King hits the turn. A pot size bet is probably best here with top pair top kicker. He's likely to fold if he doesn't have the draws. A lot of people prefer to check a wet board like this however.

If however he called you preflop from late position, he's going to be doing that from a wider range of hands. It's less likely he has a monster like K 10 suited or A K suited. A 1/3 pot bet is more likely to give you the information you're looking for.

When you're OOP vs strong ranges, you do a lot of checking.

BTN v BB strategy is completely different to UTG v MP.

Small sizing works so well at the micros when you're overbetting the turn.

How many turn sizings do you have BTN v BB?

True, but you flopped top pair. Do you really want to check in that spot and let them see a flop for free when one of them might have 15 outs?

I probably check with top pair OOP the majority of the time, because I believe it has a higher EV than betting.
To turn your question around, how do you feel about your top pair if you bet and villain raises with a range that contains better hands and draws with 15 outs? If you c-bet the flop, you might get no action, or you might get much more action than you want.

I don't really want to potentially be playing for stacks OOP when half the deck on the turn is bad for me. Among other reasons, check-calling means that even if the runout is gross, I'm almost never facing an all in bet (i.e. I almost never get stacked), because villain would have to overbet to do that. He never has to overbet if you c-bet the flop, because he can raise and barrel for 'normal' sizes. That line makes it much harder to get away from top pair.

Mfw on a 50k hands sample my fold to flop cbet is like 43% and turn is 37%. I wonder if it could be variance or a leak.

Stack control. Easier to let go of a smaller pot if the run out looks bad. Can still bet for value on turn and river.

Although.....I was watching high stakes heads up as an observer and saw something interesting.

With assumed top pair I seen a flop overbet OOP. I’m assuming to give bad odds with a flush draw on the board. Didn’t have top pair when the cards got turned over after the river but had a middle pocket pair which was top pair at that moment.

Run out was sick. River gave a set but completed IPs flush and IP called the overbet on the flop so played for implied odds instead of the pot odds.

I have no idea if you have a leak or not (I fold to flop and turn c-bets more than you, but I'm exploitable too), but I was specifically talking about how microstakes players appear to call too often vs small flop bets, but overfold to turn overbets.
I think a lot of micro players call too much on the flop and turn in general, but slightly overfold on the river. I think it's because they call pre with too many speculative hands, call two streets with too many draws (and weak pairs/underpairs), and then obviously fold the river when they don't get there. This is kind of why you can still make money c-betting more often than GTO in the micros. You can get two streets of value from hands that shouldn't even be in the pot.

I think in practice BU vs BB you'll be better off with a more polarized flop strategy. This is due to the fact that players under 3bet their BB massively. This means that postflop equities run much closer than they should in theory which will make 1/3rd range cbets worse.

Against SB flats it can change radically based on player type. Regs usually flat SB very strong so you want to be very polarized most of the time.

You won't face a raise from that spot too often.

I always ask myself:
"How can I win this pot?"
"Is there even a way that I CAN win this pot?"

The way I see it, there's really only two options in this spot:

- Bet at least 3/4 of the pot minimum and win.
- Check, hope he bets and then come over the top and win.

Against a non aggressive player, the first option works almost every time. If you're up against a very aggressive player, the check raise usually works.

However, if it goes check-check and the draw card hits, you lose. You can't bet and must check. If he checks again, you can't bet the river either. You have to fold to any bet and lose the hand. Betting in this scenario is how you lose money.

If the turn card misses the draw, you can bet. If he calls, you have a tough decision to make.

So the best option is to bet big and take the pot down oop.

Yeah, I think I read this in one of Hellmuth's books.

I think the winning the pot mentality can lead to bad play.

I believe a better thought process to consider is "what's the highest EV line for this spot right now" and proceed appropriately.

This mindset allows you to consider lines like checking that certainly have a positive EV some of the time, and can be the highest EV option.

Did I fall asleep and wake up in 2011?

While the strategy of bet-folding is still sound as an exploit for low limit live games, this is the poker theory forum, where we're more concerned with theoretically optimal play.
The great disadvantage of being OOP is that you can't close the action and control the size of the pot if you bet. When you check, you keep your options open, because you can check-raise if you want to play a big pot, you can check-call if you want to play a small pot, and you can check-fold if you don't want to play at all.
Against good players, theory (as "proved" by solvers) dictates that the pre-flop raiser should be checking more often than betting when he's OOP (in single-raised pots with a high SPR, at least).

P.S.
If you bet the flop, that doesn't magically stop the draw getting there on the turn. You still lose, only this time the pot is bigger than if the flop had gone check-check.
When you're OOP, you generally want to play smaller pots on dynamic boards, since by betting you end up in gross spots where you've built a big pot and are not winning by the river.

Right, but isn't that in multi-way pots and not HU?

Opposite. Academic Solvers generally only solve for 2 player games. Not sure about commercial software as I have never used it.

You should be checking a "lot" (it depends on the board) OOP as the PFR in HU pots too.

Bear in mind that when an optimal player on the BTN flats an UTG open, he does it with a narrow/strong range that often has 50% equity or more. The advantage of position means he can put the pre-flop raiser in a cage on many boards that are bad for the raiser.

When I studied 40 flops with Snowie for UTG vs BTN, UTG had an average equity of 47.4%, would only c-bet 33.4% of the time, and usually for a small size (average of 41% of pot). The more intriguing/shocking stat was that Snowie said BTN should only fold to those c-bets 12.6% of the time. On boards that aren't Axx or Kxx, BTN should do a lot of floating. At 100bb effective in a SRP, position is apparently extremely advantageous.

Do people cbet 1/3rd pot even when they are 100bb or 150bb deep? Well if you have an overpair on a J 10 6 board with 2 clubs and you have say 2 red aces... well you are giving very good pot odds when you cbet 1/3rd the pot. I assume if board is wet, you are betting at least 2/3 or close to it right? Who started this 1/3 or even 1/4 pot bet? Its like when you do this, you are asking to get floated, called or played back at. The only thing i could see it being good is if you are betting very small either wanting a fold which is small percentage... or want a call and then barreling the turn bigger size to win the flop bet most of the time?

Not always. Sometimes they go for 25% of pot. I've even seen RedBaron c-bet 12% of pot for lolz.

Sometimes you want to get floated light, and sometimes you want to make the cheapest successful bluff you can get away with.

What is the logic for cbetting that low? If you cbet 25 percent... you aren't really keeping their range narrow. If you bet bigger, you now know they are have something most likely. If you bet big, you know their range is more tight. But i know people say to keep ranges wide. But isn't betting that small like 25 percent or 33 percent a good way to like blocker bet in a way? Example say you got AA and the board is like 8 7 5? Because well if your opponent has a big hand like a set, and you get called... well you made one street cheap. Because if you bet big, well the pot can get bloated. Of course the other player could raise your flop bet.


I seen people would cbet 1/4 or 1/3 pot in like a Q 10 7 board with 2 diamonds. Isn't that almost incorrect if that is your standard bet size on that board?