Continuation Betting

The continuation bet is the most common bluff in poker. The continuation bet, also known as a “c-bet”, is when you were the last pre-flop raiser, and miss the flop, and decide to raise it in the hope that your continued aggression will force your opponents to fold.

Why Should You Continuation Bet Missed Flops?

The continuation bet is very common in the micro-stakes games for several reasons.

Firstly, the continuation bet is very simple to pull off and contains little risk. A regular sizes continuation bet is considered half-pot size since this is enough to force weak opponents off the pot yet no too much as to risking too many chips. Also when you continuation bet opponents you’re unlikely to get re-raised so it c-betting can work well with a range of drawing hands such as open-ended straight draw or over cards too. If you think about it, if you’re opponent has hit a monster (trips, full house) than he’s not going to re-raise you too early in the hand since he’ll just be giving his strength away. You’re also unlikely to get re-raised by an opponent bluffing since this would be a really unprofitable spot for them to do so unless they have a HUD read on your that you continuation bet with 80%+ of your hands.

Secondly, a continuation bet plays on the idea that your opponent will miss the flop the majority of the time. Single opponents only hit the flop with top pair less than 40% of the time, which means if you put in a half-pot continuation bet you only have to be successful 1/3 times to break-even. In the micro-stakes games in particular, i.e. from $0.01/$0.02 up to $0.25/$0.5, weak opponents will fold a lot to continuation bets even if they pick up some sort of equity to cling on to such as bottom pair on a A74 board.

Finally, you can double barrel the turn for a second chance of taking the pot of your opponent if your continuation bet fails. Double barrelling is a riskier ploy than c-betting because it requires a larger commitment of chips, however the rewards from double barrelling and the fact that it massively increases your relative hand strength means your opponent is likely to fold most of his hands that aren’t the nuts.

Best Boards to Continuation Bet?

The whole point of continuation betting is to make your opponent fold; this means ideally you want to be putting in raises on boards that your opponent is most likely to miss.

Dry boards with lots of unconnected and unsuited cards are the best types of boards to continuation bet. For example 5d-9h-2s is not a dangerous board to continuation bet since it’s very hard for anyone to connect hard with this one. Other good boards to continuation bet are when you have one high card and two low cards (e.g. Kxx). When you board brings a suited flop such as 4d-7d-Kd it’s a lot more riskier to continuation bet, however if you do manage to get first raise in here than if makes it very difficult for your opponents to call without the nut flush. Even if they have a decent hand like TPTK they’re still likely to fold knowing that they could be way behind.

The worst types of boards to continuation bet are those with “wet boards” or with lots of middling cards that will hit your opponent’s pre-flop calling range. 573 for example is likely to hit your opponent hard because he could be calling with low pocket pairs or suite connectors such as 45s. Other terrible boards to c-bet are those with lots of high suited connectors and broadway cards such as Js-10s-Kd. Your opponent’s pre-flop hand range could hit any of these hard even if they only pick up a little drawing equity (such as a straight draw) they’ll probably have more than enough pot-odds to call your half-pot raise.