Continuation Betting Poker Strategy

Continuation betting is a bet that you make a bet on a missed flop after being the last person to raise the pot pre-flop. There are several reasons that you might want to take into account for continuation betting the flop. The most obvious is that if you showed strength in your hand before the flop then by continuation betting or c-betting the flop, you can continue your initiative in the hand and make it look like your hand improved. A lot of weak players especially in low stakes games will fold to such aggression, so in general it is a great way of increasing your equity in the hand and earning more money.

The size of a continuation bet should be based upon the size of the pot and your opponents’ playing styles. A normal c-bet should be 50%-100% of the pot. You can’t afford to raise any less than this as it’s just an invitation for opponents to call. You need to make raises at the higher end of this spectrum against loose players who don’t fold very often post-flop. On the other hand, a 50% c-bet should force the majority of weak players who’ve missed the flop in micro stakes games.

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When to Continuation Bet the Flop?

In terms of how often you need to c-bet the flop, I think this should be heavily weighted on your table image, the style of your opponents and the type of board on the flop. For example, if you have a reckless table image then your c-bet is unlikely to fold a lot of players off the hand. This is why it’s important to occasionally tighten up your table image and be perceived as a rock.

If you play less than 10% of your hands pre-flop and don’t c-bet the flop often, then when you decide to show aggression and c-bet the flop your hand will look legitimately strong. You will have a much easier time representing the top pair or nuts, and generally speaking you’ll take down the pot more successfully. On the other hand, if you have a reckless image by playing lots of weak hands like J7o and calling re-raises with 47o from the button then your continuation bet will not be very successful. If you keep playing this loosely then you will end up getting bluff-raised and re-raised from your weak c-bets the higher up the stakes you go.

Types of Boards to Continuation Bet?

Before you decide to continuation bet the flop you need to ask yourself what are the chances of my opponents hitting this type of board. For instance, the best boards to c-bet are dry flops where there are no flush/straight draws and the cards are largely spaced out. A-6-2 or Q-7-3 are both great boards to c-bet because it’s unlikely that any opponent will hit these hard.

I’m also a fan of c-betting suited boards like 5d-8d-Kd or 8s-10s-2s since it’s very hard for opponents to call your raise without a strong flush draw. Even opponents with a strong hand like Ax or QQ will be forced to fold a lot of the time since they could be drawing dead.

The worst boards to continuation bet are ones which could connect with your opponents’ calling range. A typical calling range from a pre-flop re-raise in low stakes games include broadway cards (JQ/QK/KJ), low-mid pocket pairs, suited connectors and middling connectors such as 5-6. You need to watch out for flops that primarily composed of low middling cards like 5-7-3 since these are the type that your calling opponents can connect with or make strong draws out of. The worst type of board to c-bet in my opinion is one like 10h-Jh-Ks. This gives your opponents lots of possibilities to hit the flop or draw a straight flush. It is almost impossible to c-bet theses flops successfully in the hand and a lot of the time you will end up getting re-raised off the pot.

Double-Barrelling Your Continuation Bets

While c-betting will win you a lot of flops against weak players and folding stations, you need to be aware that online poker is becoming an increasingly aggressive and competitive game. Nowadays opponents even in the micro-stakes games will have learned to adjust to positional c-bets on missed flops. Unfortunately, this means that more often than not your c-bet is going to be unsuccessful against most regular players. To offset this balance, you are going to need to bet out again on the turn (double –barrelling) in order to make better opponents fold. Whilst I still recommend c-betting 90% of the flops in micro-stakes games, I also think that you need to be more willing to follow through with your bluff by betting again on the turn to be most successful and make your c-bet worthwhile.

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