CONTINUATION BETS
The continuation bet and when to use it can be confusing to some players.
The ‘C' bet is an essential piece of your armoury. Whether you are a TAG (Tight aggressive), LAG (Loose Aggressive) or just entirely passive in your style you will have to use the C bet at some point.
As an aggressive player you will find more need than most to utilise the ‘C' bet, I will try to address when, why and size of C bets.
It would be easy for me to give a blanket statement and suggest that you should fire in a C bet 100% of the time but that's just simply not true. You have the read the situation, take the table dynamics into consideration and know your opponent.
As previously mentioned you as an aggressive player will find yourself in many situations having raised pre flop and been called by a player in later position. You find weaker players tend to make a stand against an aggressive player by calling and hoping to hit where a more proficient player will make the decisions tougher for you be re-raising you constantly pre flop. Some will just call with big hands and try to trap you and as the aggressor you have to be aware of these minefields and tread carefully.
Let's look at some scenarios;
If I am raising pre flop from position and get called by a player out of position, if he checks to me on the flop I am almost always making my C bet. There are a few exceptions to this rule which we
will come to later.
Bet sizing is very important and my bets will be very consistent, sized between 2.5 and 2.8x the bb. So we have a stack of 8k make a steal from the cut off with J8 suited, with blinds at 200-400 antes 30 we raise to 1075 and small blind calls us (stack 9k). We don't have much information about the SB but he seems quite solid.
The flop brings A92 which misses our hand, the SB checks to us. I am 100% representing this flop. We have raised pre flop and have the power of position, he has already shown weakness twice in the hand (calling pre flop and checking the flop) so with 2750 in the pot I am firing around 1625. In my experience this C bet will meet no further resistance in a majority of occasions.
Remember that 85% of the time a player will entirely miss his hand on the flop and those times he does connect, a number of times it will be a weak second pair or top pair with weak kicker. He is faced with having to put in over half of his stack to re-raise and define his hand and that is no longer such an attractive prospect.
Poker is all about asking questions (what do you have, do you like your hand, did you hit the ace?) and I believe it is of paramount importance to find the smallest bet size to ask the question thus protecting your stack. In the above example a bet of 1625 is strong enough to ask exactly the same question as a bet of 2300, yet when we get re-raised and have to fold we have saved 625 chips. If you make your bet sizing consistent throughout the tourney whether you hold the goods or air nobody will ever be able to get a read on you from your patterns.
Now let's adjust the scenario slightly, we make the same raise with the same hand (J8 suited) and you are called from both the SB and BB. The flop comes 794, both small blind and bb check to you. I am again an advocate for C betting here but I don't believe its automatic like in the last case.
We now have a gut shot draw to the nuts and we have been given a free card to hit it. The pre flop raise has been called in 2 spots and there is a decent chance one of them has connected. It would be very disappointing to C bet and get raised off of our draw. I don't mind peeling a card here; you still have position and can make an informed decision on the turn and by checking it allows you to control the size of the pot.
Whatever the turn brings, if it's checked again you can pull the trigger with almost certainty it will get through.
If you are lucky enough to hit your middle pin you can make your decisions according to your opponents. Given this set of circumstances I believe I would be C betting 70% of the time and checking behind 30% depending on my opponents.
Remember poker is very much based around instinct and intuition and sometimes you should listen to the voice within, if something tells you not to bet it should not be ignored.
On other occasions your pre flop raise is called by a station, there is little point making a C bet unless you connect, sometimes it just makes more sense to give up rather than spew chips.
To give a ballpark figure I believe you should be continuation betting in the region of 80-85%. It is another example of one of the simplest +EV moves in poker.
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