Generally, if I raise before the flop, I'm cbetting after the flop comes out. There are, of course, some hands that I like to cbet more than others. If I have top pair and two suits are on board, I want to protect my hand. If I have two suited cards and I hit a flush draw, I want to semi-bluff. If I flop a monster, I want to start getting as much of my opponent's stack into the pot as possible.

What are, however, some instances where you don't want to cbet? I'm sure there are a lot of variables given your stack size, the texture of the board, your opponent's range, etc.

In my experience you don't want to CBet when they are going to call and you have nothing so in that case don't cbet. But if you have a value betting hand go ahead and cbet. So to sum up don't cbet if they call and you have nothing and cbet always when you have a hand for value betting when they always call but you can check back a super hand and hope they catch up then make a cbet on turn and hope to be called by worse don't bet to much as you want a call this time. so to sum up just try and play perfect.

There's a lot involved with cbetting. A decent rule of thumb is that you'll hit a flop about 1/3 of the time. That includes having an OP. At the 50,000 foot level if you are cbetting 100% of the time when you raise pf, it means that 1/3 of the time you have something and 2/3 of the time you have nothing. At all but the lowest levels of play, people are going to figure out that the majority of the time you'll have nothing and therefore will call your cbets. You'll be left with having to fold or continue bluffing on the turn. Both will be expensive.

Clearly you want to bet a lot of the time when you have a hand. If you don't, you want to cbet to take a hand down when the conditions are good. Good conditions include when the flop appears to hit your range hard and miss the villain's range. It also depends on the number of villains on the flop. The best situation is when your HU. If you use the 1/3 rule, most of the time he'll miss too and fold. If there are two villains, the odds of both of them missing is less than 50%, but a properly sized cbet will still make it marginally profitable. Above 2 villains on the flop, you're going to be -EV cbetting with air.

I'll note that checking on dry flops when you have TP can be profitable. You can often pick up two bets on the turn and river that would have folded if you bet on the flop.

If the blinds call I'm more inclined to c-bet. The reason is they have pot odds so they might be calling pre without a good hand just in hopes of hitting (ie playing fit/fold)

If someone in MP calls I'll usually to check to them because if they are playing well their calling range should (in theory) be stronger than my raising range.

However, sometimes c-betting is good not so much to rep a hand (no one falls for that anymore) but simply because it's bad to call a lot. The villain either has to call or bluff raise you and they often don't want to risk the bluff and when they do bluff you can catch them when you do actually have a hand.

Here is a thread in which we discussed c-betting

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...-cbet-1371502/

The above is to just put some "basic" math behind the c-betting to give a sort of framework in your mind for seeing how and why c-betting is profitable.

Thanks for the responses. Here's what I have so far:

-you have air and they likely hit the board
-you have a monster hand and they likely missed the board
-Above 2 villains on the flop, you have air
-dry flops when you have TP
-playing against someone who called from middle position
-up against a villain that will play back on boards that he knows missed me

When I play, I'm close to 100% cbetting, unless it's a special situation where I'm out of position against five opponents and I completely missed a wet board. I want to change that. I'd like my cbet percentage to be around 75%, making my play a bit more unpredictable and hard to read.

It depends partially on the game you are playing. For instance, you should be cbetting at a lower frequency live than online because live players are so sticky postflop.

"It depends" etc.

Mostly it depends on how exploitable your opponents are. If they fold everything but top pair or a decent draw (8+ outs) to the nuts, then they are exploitably folding too often, so you can c-bet with air more often. If they are calling at a high frequency, then you should cut down on your bluffs and focus more on value-betting.

Go back to the fundamental concept: If a villain will call with worse, or fold a better hand (or one with decent equity), then you should be more inclined to bet. (You bet for value, or as a bluff).
If a villain won't often call with worse, and will seldom fold a high equity hand, then don't bet.

A good rule of thumb is to to bet your strong hands, weak pairs, and your draws, check(-call) your mid strength hands (top pair with no kicker, middle pair) and check(-fold) your total air (hands that have little chance of improving on future streets).
So, to answer the main question: Don't c-bet mid-strength hands, or trash that won't be able to barrel.

e.g. If you raised in the CO and got called by a typical 5NL player, and the flop came K94 with a flush draw, you might bet KJ+ for value, QJ/QT/JT and flush draws as a semi-bluff, and A4/66-22 to pick up dead money with a weak pair, but you'd check KT/K8 (weak top pairs) and A9, Q9, QQ-77 (middle pairs) for pot control (and to induce bluffs on later streets), and check the total trash like 76s in the wrong suit.

The other simple concept to remember is "big pot, big hand", "small pot, small hand". QQ (or 88 or K8) on K94 is not a big hand, so you'd usually check it, planning to call if OOP, or see a free turn card IP by checking back.

EDIT: There's also my 3-part series on ABC c-betting at FR 2NL, where an exploitative approach is outlined.

That's interesting, checking your middle pairs. Typically, I bet there because I'm afraid of when a higher card comes on the turn. Basically, I'm protecting my middle pair and hoping to win the pot right away, which might not be the best strategy. So thanks for the food for thought.

Betting middle pair can be a solid strategy, but a lot depends on position, ranges, board texture and how your opponent is likely to react.
If your hand is particularly vulnerable (and unlikely to get to a cheap showdown), then betting as a "dead money grab" makes more sense, because you want to deny villain the chance to realize his equity. If your hand is less vulnerable (like QQ on K92r) then checking makes more sense, because when you're ahead there are very few turn cards that will give villain a better hand.
In a way, you bet your weaker hands to prevent going to showdown, but you check your stronger medium strength hands, because you want to get to showdown with a smaller pot.
The question of "Is this (made) hand too weak to check?" is entirely situational, which is why you'll see hand analysis discussions where some players will say "Check back the flop" and others say "I think betting is better". At the cutoff point (the worst hand you'd check) the EV of betting or checking will be almost identical.
e.g. With 88 or 77 on K92r on the button vs BB, betting and checking back likely have the same value, as you're only going to put money in the pot on one or two streets, unless you bink a 2-outer. Whether you choose to check the flop, turn or river doesn't actually make much difference, but I often check back the flop, in order to limit the action to a maximum of 2 streets of betting. When I check back the flop, for instance, I'm virtually guaranteed to see the river, because I've already decided I won't be folding the turn, unless something crazy happens. If you're not confident in your turn and river play, then c-betting middle pair to "find out where you're at" has some merit. Sometimes, all you find out is that villain had air, so you win a tiny pot. Other times, you learn that your hand is probably losing, and you basically just turned it into a bluff that didn't work.

Does that, in any way, telegraph your hand where if you checked the flop and called the turn, the villian knows you probably have a second-pair type of hand?

I guess that's where checking top pair on a dry board disguises your hand, where your opponent knows you could either have top pair or second pair, and has to decide whether to double-barrel on the river.

FWIW, I like to probe bet a K62r type of board w/ a bet of about 1/3 of the pot. The downside of that is you're vulnerable to a reraise, which a good opponent can exploit if he knows you cbet this board with air a lot. Now you have to decide whether to call the reraise with your top or second pair, inflating a pot that would have been better kept small.

I cbet based on a lot of factors. If the pot is multiway, I'm less likely to cbet. If the flop hits a wide range and I miss, I won't cbet. I also base a lot of my decision whether or not there are a lot of possible turn cards that help me compared to villains range. I don't want to c-bet a completely missed flop with nothing, I have to have possible backup plans. Even if I have AK and I miss the flop, a lot of the times I won't cbet if I don't think I'll get a call from a wore hand, or if I don't think he'll fold.

a lot of this is just flat out wrong.

It is simple math. If we are up against 2 villains are less, we should be c-betting at an absolute minimum of 50%+ of the time. Truth be told, vs 2 villains or less, I'm c-betting at least 80%+ of the time. The only boards I'm not c-betting are ultra wet semi wet boards like
T 9 7
J 9 6
7 6 5 and I hold black AK

sure, those type of boards vs two villains I'm probably going to just let go and not c-bet or if weakness is shown on later streets do a delayed c-bet. But barring that, c-betting should have almost nothing to do with our hand but rather our villains' ranges and their post flop tendencies.

There are some villains I play with that will respect and fold to a double barrel. There are some villains I play with that donk bet and if you raise their donk bet they will fold. There are some villains I play with that 100% put you on AK and as long as no A or K is on the board they will not fold ANY pair.

Basically, you need to re-think your stance on c-betting. Optimally, whenever we raise preflop, we need to be c-betting vs 2 villains or less 70% of the time as an absolute minimum.

Where does that 70% come from? Well, we will miss the flop roughly 70% of the time. So we drop an easy 30% of the time we just completely whiff and don't c-bet (this 30% should be comprised of wet connected boards that completely miss us like the examples above). This means the remaining times we c-bet, roughly 50% of the time we've missed and 50% of the time we've actually hit. Then throw in that our villains likewise will have missed the flop 70% of the time. Against two villains collectively they miss the flop against our 70% roughly 50% of the time.

So c-betting 70% of the time, we will win those outright 50% of the time, then the remaining 50% will be divided half in half with hands we whiff and hands we hit. The hands we hit we are usually ahead of our villains, the hands we miss we can check back turn and river and possibly catch up. So when you add it all together, roughly 75% of the time we c-bet we will win and 50% of the time we c-bet and get called we will be ahead of our villains and able to extract even more value. Not to mention this goes hand-in-hand with deception which will enable us to get paid off when we do hit.

Now, if you manage to balance and use phantom cards as well (i.e. you raise with QJ but your villains put you on AK so you get the benefit of extracting great value when Q or J hits while simultaneously you get to rep an A or K if you whiff and an A or K hit the board) now you are talking some serious higher level poker and even more value!!!

This is why thinking winning players just seem to dominate the tables they play. When I play, my villains are always whining about how I'm always raising, always betting, and they just can't "get me".

Image comes into play as well...

basically, c-betting when we "miss" the board is a crucial element to higher level poker. If you are "only" c-betting when you hit or "only" c-betting when you have some equity (i.e. flush draw) you are leaving money on the table not to mention turning your hand face up vs thinking players.

I agree with the above with the exception that I think a lot of the profit might actually come from bad folds and not from good cbets.

You want to be betting and calling if you think you are ahead. You might not even have a pair. Maybe you just think your ace high is good enough. Fine. Bet. There is value in just betting for so many reasons.

As a secondary goal, you might want to bet if you think you can get a fold but you really can't complain if the better hand calls you. I'm not a fan of pure bluffs. But c-betting with a range that is strong than your opponents is never a bad idea.

Yes, a decent player can recognise when your range is capped at "mid-strength" one pair hands, and some of them will attack a capped range with a ton of aggression. To counter this, you can "protect your checking range" by also checking some monsters and decent draws with SDV.
Range-balancing gets very complex when you study it, and isn't a major concern at the lowest stakes, but the principle of dividing your range into different relative strengths is relevant at all stakes. If your opponents are incapable of recognizing when you have SDV, then checking and bluff-catching with one pair becomes very profitable.
You're a well respected poster whom I usually agree with. This time, I take the opposite view, once we clarify that live games are really quite different to online. AwesomeDonk's post is pretty much spot on for contemporary online play, imo.

It must be nice to play games against opponents from 2005. If only I could get my time machine to work.

Exploiting fit-or-fold opponents might work in live games and at 5NL against terrible players.
Unfortunately, it's 2015 and Barry Greenstein (who laughably still c-bets 100% of the time, presumably because he likes "simple math") is essentially busto. C-betting at a high frequency is fundamentally incorrect in theory and practice when faced with players that have half a clue. It does not maximise your EV to c-bet with woefully unbalanced ranges, because players are not woefully unbalanced in their reactions.
Online players are only folding to c-bets about 42% of the time, and that's when you choose "good spots to c-bet". While it would be profitable to c-bet 50% of pot on every flop against a "bot" that folded 42% of the time, it's not actually the most profitable way to play, especially given that you have to play two more streets when called.
If you want to beat 5NL or higher, you've got to be more selective in your c-betting strategy, because advice like "C-bet 80% of the time in 3-way pots" is akin to saying "Burn your money", frankly.

The best players online players today are c-betting around 50-65% of the time. There are certainly outliers, but generally speaking, anyone c-betting much more often than that at 10NL+ is usually a losing player.

Ed Miller advocates c-betting and barreling about 70% of the time in low stakes live games. I don't doubt that it works. But I think it's important to point out that it doesn't work so well online once you get beyond peanut stakes, and see a lot fewer 55/8 whales and a lot more 22/18 TAGs and 16/12 nits (6-max).

Dgi didn't express an opinion above. That's what 100% of good poker players do.

Since they're rules and not opinion the next step is to figure out how you profit from people who don't follow any of the rules that he listed.

Because that's why they're rules: You make money from people who do something else.

I just wanna know where i can find these tough 10NL games.

I have the same question as the OP.

I play NL4 and NL10 "zoom" on PartyPoker (VPIP/PFR: 24/18) and am barely above breakeven.

When facing a single villain in position on the flop, my cbet% is 90%. All my flop cbets are immediately profitable (I win more from the fold equity alone than I bet).

Still, winning players (who are better than me) only seem to cbet around 70% of all times in this situation. Why do they do this?

Is there any reason not to cbet on the flop if the fold equity alone would make the cbet profitable? Any examples?

Thanks!

Over what sample are you break even ? Over whats sample are your Cbets profitable ?

Maybe you have other leaks post flop, like not being able to lay down your hands after they did call your Cbet while the high succes rate of your Cbets clearly shows they are not continuing with crap.

Personally, the chance i Cbet varies very much from one villain to the next. If my hud shows them to fold a lot on the flop, my Cbet will near 100%. If i see them to fold very little, it might get down to like 50%. My total Cbet is 73%.

BTW, what do you mean with *all* your Cbets being directly profitable. I just checked my holdem manager and it tells me that my Cbets succeed 52% vs 1 player. Since i bet less than the pot most of the time, that means as a whole, they are also immediately profitable.

That does however not mean all of them are immediately profitable. Similarly like for example opening a 50% range on the cutoff might be profitable, that doesnt mean every hand in that 50% range is profitable. Its just means the part of that range that is profitable outweighs the part that is not profitable.

Unfortunately i only have a 5000 hand sample so far, so i cant yet say anything about more specific cbet situations and their profitability.

I also think it is important what stakes you are at. My little sample is at 2NL. people rarely raise on the flop so even when your cbet is called, you probably still have equity. Therefore i do indeed think that with 52% and 2/3 - 3/4th potsized bets the margin is big enough that all cbets are profitable indeed. At bigger higher stakes however, the success rate is probably slightly lower and when they dont fold, it is probably more often raised.

110K NL4 hands (at 3BB/100, but too much variance to consider myself a winning player).

Cbets (in position): ~3000

If I bet 50% (IP), villains folded in 49% of all cases
If I bet 75% (IP), villains folded in 56% of all cases
If I bet 100%(IP), villains folded in 63% of all cases

So my cbets (in position) are profitable.

I am indeed looking for a leak, because other players seem to have higher winrates when they see flop in position. And one thing they do differently is cbetting less often on the flop.

As a very general rule you can get away with betting top pair + for value, checking all hands with SDV that are worse than top pair, betting all hands with 4 outs or more without SDV as a bluff, and check-folding all hands with no equity. At the lower microstakes, you can probably bet that last category on very dry boards (K72, 522, A93, 333 etc).

What difference do you make IP and OOP ?

Cbet less oop, can't really be more specific than that without being waaaaaaaaaaay more specific

After being called, wouldn't weak pairs essentially be "trash that won't be able to barrel"?