Ok, Im the first to admit when any area of my game is weak and at the moment cbetting is the weakest part of my game. I mean, theres so much to think about including board texture, stack sizes, stage of tourney, villain tendencies, etc. I find myself firing sheepish 1/3 cbets with my medium strength hands and im really having a hard time cbetting with everything...And i have an incredibly low double barrel percentage... Could anyone provide some really good articles or advice to get me started in the right direction?

Im not an expert by any means and I think im average at best, but something i have done recently that has helped with cbet judgment is thinking in terms of “is this board better for my range or villains?”

For example, if you raise from utg +1 and villain cals from bb, flop is AQKr or something, the. You should cbet 100% of the time as you can have all the sets two pairs etc. . If the board was 87Jcc or something, then it hits his bb defending range and he can have suited connectors 87 9T JQ etc. that are continuing. So lets say you have AK in this spot, i think its a x/f

Completely agree....i thik one of the biggest things is bet sizing...i never know what sizing to use on flop, turn, river.

I consider a lot of different things like what does my bet accomplish, how often is villain folding/calling, stack sizes, etc. I find myself getting passive when villain as a check jam stack postflop. Mainly because im never sure if im committed to calling.

Have you read any of the anthology posts? There is a ton of great info and discussion on all aspects of the MTT. I would also suggest finding a lower stakes game than you normally play and just cbet every flop as a way to get more comfortable with the idea. Learning to spot cbets and raising them is another thing to try in lower tourneys. You have to really cbet in a lot of spots. Cbet the nuts when you flop a boat or a straight because sometimes people will try to raise you off of them, like me.

Goes past the scope of this thread, no?

1) Let the board texture determine your bet sizing. In early MTTs, with 100BBs or more, I typically c-bet in the range of 1/2 pot to about 3/4 pot depending on the board texture. The dry boards get the low end, the wet boards get the higher end.

2) Start compartmentalizing your hands into categories: Value hands, marginal hands, draws, and junk/air. In general, c-bet your value hands and check the marginal hands. Then balance your value range from the draws first, then the junk/air range. The formula for bluffing frequency is f = b/(b + p), where f = frequency of bluffs, b = bet size and p = pot size. So if you bet 1/2 pot, your bluff frequency would be 33%. So if you have 50 hands in your value range, you balance that with 25 bluff hands.

*NOTE 1 - Against better players you cannot "always" check your marginal hands. You will need to randomize this to some extent for deception.

*NOTE 2 - The decision to balance your range is opponent dependent. Against unknown players or very good players, balance is usually the best option. However, against weaker players, unbalancing in one direction or the other may be best to exploit a tendency. Against players who will fold too often, unbalance in the direction of having more bluffs than the balance point. Against players who call too often, unbalance toward a value heavy range.

On the turn, repeat the process. Of course often your value range will change on the turn. Some hands that were value hands on the flop may now be downgraded to marginal hands.

On the river, do it all over again.

In fact, you should practice this at every decision point that you have in poker. And recognize that bet sizing and bluff frequency are inter-related.

Once you get good at compartmentalizing and setting your ranges, then you could manipulate the bet size according your range. For instance, if your range has a lot of draws and you want to bluff more of them, then the higher the bet should be. If your range has very few candidates for a bluff, then let the bluff range determine the bet sizing.

Hi all, new here and this is my first post so here goes:

I agree with first reply, but I would also suggest if your going to play your hand you need to commit to it so make your c-bets a bit meatier (even when you have it) so your either building a pot with your good hands or discouraging floats and weaker hands (that maybe ahead like bottom pr middle pair).

check "The Myth of Poker Talent" book. c-bet is described really well there.

Great post from pregler.

My advice: don't bother with books, listen to podcasts instead. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of incredible strat content available for free in podcasts. I follow 5 or 6 different ones and my game has improved exponentially as a result. Listening to how experienced players think through hands street by street is priceless.

Darth_maul I completely agree. I listen to smartpokerstudy but that's the only one that I know of. What are some of the best ones in your opinion?

keep in mind that Smart Poker Study guy plays cash games, not tournaments.

Yeah, I would love to get podcast recommendations as well)

Smartpokerstudy occasionally has some good tidbits but it is 98% focused on cash games.

Here are my favs in no particular order:

1) Thinking Poker Podcast - each episode is usually divided into a guest interview and a strat segment

2) Postflop Poker Podcast - they do strat plus field a question from a follower (they've even answered a couple of mine)

3) Poker on the Mind - focuses on mindset stuff

4) Mindset Advantage Podcast - another mindset one

5) Rec Poker Podcast - the host describes a spot or specific hand and then he shares responses from a few rec players and pros (Jonathan Little is a regular contributor)

6) Under the Gun - you have to sift through the non-poker content and the host is a cash game player but you can find some decent tourney content

7) Weekly Poker Hand with Jonathan Little - you can also get these as YouTube videos

There's also TPE but they hardly put out episodes anymore.

theres nothing wrong with listening to cash strat, you'll learn a lot more insight into the actual strategies than mtts which are more robot decisions at a base level

but yes obv as a sole learning block, pick one that deals with what you play

Thanks a ton darth... last couple days kind of jolted my confidence because i was running so bad. I reviewed a ton of my hands and found that I wasnt playing bad at all in most spots. Doesnt mean i dont have to keep studying tho. Always pushing myself to get better. Thanks for replies all