When should you continuation bet? Answers for no limit hold em cash games
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The dominant approach to low and mid-stakes no limit holdem cash games, especially shorthanded games, emphasizes a high level of activity preflop. While you’ll find plenty of articles and videos that deal with aggressive preflop play, you’re likely to find slightly less material that deals with what happens next - flop play.
There are several scenarios you might be facing after raising preflop and having an opponent (or opponents) tag along. Opponents might decide to lead into you with varying levels of strength relative to the pot, or you might end up facing a bet and a raise before the action gets back to you. The most common decision you’re going to be facing, however, is whether or not you should continuation bet (commonly referred to as a c-bet by the online poker set, to whom multisyllabic words are apparently anathema).
Deciding whether or not to continuation bet is a critical decision that shouldn’t be made on impulse or feel alone. The continuation bet is a far more significant decision than the preflop raise for a couple of reasons. First of all, it involves a good amount more money than the preflop raise. Second, your choices regarding continuation bets will potentially provide your opponents with far more definitive and exploitable information about your hand and your game. Finally, bets on the flop are, in many situations, the single most important bet of the hand, as they narrow hand ranges for all players involved, set the tone for following streets, and generally determine whether or not you’ll be playing for a big pot or a small one.
This article is the first in a series of articles we’ll be publishing regarding continuation betting. As with a lot of the articles I write about no limit hold em, this article isn’t going to focus on specific prescriptions. I’m not going to tell you how often you should be continuation betting or provide a comprehensive breakdown of scenarios where you should or should not continuation bet. If this were an article about limit hold em, that would be a totally viable approach; however, the choice to continuation bet in no limit hold em is largely framed by an individual player’s style. Instead, in this first article I’m going to do a quick drill down of the relevant factors that you should be considering when you’re trying to determine what the appropriate amount of continuation betting is within the context of your game. In future articles I’ll take a more example-based approach and try to illustrate some of these factors in practice, with an eye toward tackling some of the ways that interplay between individual factors can affect your decision-making and extending the analysis to explore some common opponent reactions.
For reader reference, this article is primarily informed by play at online 6-max no limit games in the .50/1 to 2/4 range.
In no particular order, here are the factors I think you should be considering when deciding whether or not to continuation bet: Flop texture, your image, opponent image, history with opponent, stack sizes, hand strength and position. Let’s take a paragraph or two with each and talk a little bit about how they can impact the decision to continuation bet.
Flop Texture
Flop texture commonly refers to the quantity of opportunities that the flop presents. You’ll usually hear people refer to flops as existing on a spectrum from dry to wet, with ‘dry’ flops being those that present very few opportunities for made or drawing hands, and ‘wet’ flops being those that provide several opportunities. The classic example of a ‘dry’ flop is something like:
… that provides no straight draws, flush draws or likely two pair hands. An extreme example of a wet flop would look something like:
… where you have multiple straight draws, pair and draw combinations, two pair combinations and the flush draw to boot.
Flop texture can be broadly employed to determine how likely your opponent is to call or raise your continuation bet. Generally speaking, the dryer the flop, the more likely it is that your opponent will lack the hand strength to continue when you show strength on the flop. It’s important to note that flop texture isn’t something you should be evaluating in a vacuum - that is to say the tendencies of your individual opponents should certainly play a large part in determining how ‘wet’ or ‘dry’ you believe a flop to be. Some opponents will call your preflop raise with any two broadway cards, while others are far more likely to toss weak broadway hands, re-raise you with big pairs and strong aces, and look to call you with suited connectors and small to medium pairs. Against the first opponent, a flop of:
… would be pretty dry, while the same flop against the second opponent would be relatively wet, as it fits in with a lot more of his likely preflop combinations.
Flop texture is also an important thing to consider from your opponent’s point of view, as their assessment of how wet or dry the flop is relative to your likely holdings will play a role in determining whether or not they’re going to continue with the hand.
Your Image / Opponent Image
The image you have at the table is a pretty critical factor in determining the relative wisdom of continuation betting. The more definitive your image, the more weight this factor should have in your decision-making process. As always with image-related discussions, it’s important to remember that recent events generally have a disproportionate impact on your opponent’s perception of you as a player.
Generally speaking, your image will determine the credibility of your continuation bet. Aggressive players who make a lot of continuation bets will usually be given less credit for having flopped a hand, while tighter players with a lower continuation bet frequency will be given more credit. An aggressive image will also result in more opponents attempting check raises against you on the flop. The same generalization loosely applies to players with losing and winning images; losers will get less credit for their continuation bets while winners will enjoy more.
As for your opponent’s image goes, you can employ a pretty similar spectrum. Aggressive opponents are likely to play back against your continuation bet with a broad range of hands on a broad range of flops, while conservative players are likely to play their hands in a more ‘face-up’ manner.
History with an Opponent
This factor works on both a macro and micro level. Starting with the macro: past confrontations you’ve had with an opponent are going to color their perception of your image in a broad sense. Consider two players, one that you’ve raised out of pots a couple of times in recent hands and another who was at the table for all of the hands in question but hasn’t been involved in a pot with you. The first is likely to have you pegged as a far more aggressive player than the second.
As for the micro-level, you should be very aware of past interactions between you and your opponent that mirror your present situation when you’re considering a continuation bet. While people are certainly capable of adjusting their patterns, knowing how your opponent behaved in situations with strong parallels to the present (e.g. how they acted last time they called your preflop raise from the small blind and the flop brought a clear straight draw) can be a useful piece of information, especially when you find yourself in a spot where continuation betting seems fairly marginal.
Stack Sizes
Flop betting has a big impact on where the pot size eventually ends up, so the decision to continuation bet is also often a decision about whether or not to build a big pot, and the decision of whether or not you want (or need) to build a big pot often comes down to the effective stack size of your opponent(s).
Short-stacked opponents present some unique considerations, as a continuation bet often puts you in a position where you’re committed to the pot (or close to it) with a wide array of hands.
Hand Strength
Ironically, the quality of your hand is often somewhat of a secondary consideration when you’re deciding whether or not to continuation bet. Continuation betting with very strong hands is generally a solid approach, as is continuation betting with very weak hands that have very little showdown value or chance to improve. The awkward decisions come with medium-strength hands, as you find yourself having to balance various needs like pot control, extracting value, defending against draws, protecting your equity in the pot and so on.
Position
Position is a bit of a meta-factor, insomuch that impacts your consideration of all the factors described above. Generally, having position allows you to draw stronger conclusions and being out of position results in weaker conclusions.
That’s the basic overview of the factors that should come into play when you’re deciding whether or not to continuation bet after raising preflop. Again, the list isn’t meant to be a definitive treatment or an absolute prescription. Instead, it’s meant to be a starting point for dissecting the use of the continuation bet in your individual game. Future articles in this series will apply some of these factors in real-game situations with the aim of illustrating the complex interplay and balancing of competing needs that often make continuation betting decisions some of the most difficult ones you face on a regular basis at the poker table.
