The No-Limit Toolbox — The Continuation Bet

The growing consensus is that too many people blindly c-bet and spew off their chips in certain spots. This is something I’ve been trying to work on lately. There has been some talk recently (half-joking, half-serious) about how the cbet is dead. I find this more and more to be true. When I started playing mtts I cbet 100% of the time when HU. Now, I don’t but I’m not always sure my reasons for electing to forgoe a cbet are correct.

What aspects of flop texture, stack sizes, blind sizes, position, # of players in the pot and (oh yeah!) hole cards effect your decision to cbet or not?

The c-bet is dead, long live the c-bet!

I believe another important aspect of the c-bet is your image, and player tendencies. I default to c-betting until information about the player tells me otherwise. Once I have noted a chronic calling station (will call down with any piece of the flop, bottom pair, Ace high or a small pocket pair – basically top pair top kicker, two pair are monsters), I alter to suit. Hitting the flop hard and betting for value more than compensates me for those small pots I give up by not c-betting against these types. I am an online TAG cash game player. After a few goes at this, I can sometimes turn a calling station into a folding station. Solution, switch gears, back to c-betting relentlessly.

To me, switching gears is the key.

There was an interesting article in Cardplayer recently where the author had analysed his stats for cbetting. To summarise, he found that a cbet is more likely to be successful under the following conditions:

- when the bet is 1/2 pot or greater;
- when there is a high card on the flop (an Ace being the most successful);
- when the flop is relatively uncoordinated;
- when you have two or fewer opponents;
- when the board is paired or same suited.

Ed,

sorry, but I don’t know where else to put this (maybe you could give us a “request-thread” ;)):

I’d be interested in your thoughts about betting on the river being last to act. In limit this is quite “simple”, but having switched to NL it’s giving me headaches.

Maybe your toolbox includes something like the “river value bet”, “river raise bluff” or even “river check through”…

This is something I’ve been trying to work on lately. There has been some talk recently (half-joking, half-serious) about how the cbet is dead.

Yeah, i made some post to that effect out of frustration several months ago on 2+2 Beginners. This single factor is leading me to believe that I’m not beating online NL25 as soundly as I should be able to.

It just seems like there’s a certain breed of player who focuses their entire flop play on taking away the CB by either flat-calling or check/raising OOP and raising IP.

I probably two-barrel a bit too much against the flat calls, especially without a read. In other words, I assume I’m getting call bluffed, but I’m really getting called with TPWK or middle pair and can expect a turn call. Of course once I know how that player plays, I can value bet TPTK or overpairs all day long. So much of my problem is just not having played consistently enough against the same opponents to know who knows what they’re doing.

I’m also thinking of experimenting with occasional replacement of the classic CB with a check/raise bluff, at least against players whom I know would bet into weakness. I think mostly folding my missed flops and occasionally check/raising them would probably make it sufficiently unpleasant for the autobettor and let me take free cards after a check. (Being able to check-check on the flop with unimproved overcards is nice; then I can CB the turn, or possibly hit my six-outer and control a smaller pot for one pair.) The downside is, check/raising puts a lot of money in the pot without much of a hand, so if the tricky flop bettor calls me I’m usually done with the hand.

Anyway, these are just some disorganized but hopefully productive thoughts about why I’ve found NL25 surprisingly challenging (compared to, say, live $1-2).