Continuation Betting

This article will look at the concept of continuation betting in Texas Hold’em, specifically when to do it and when not to do it, to enable you to make a bigger profit at the table.

Firstly, it’s important to understand exactly what continuation betting is exactly. A continuation bet (cbet for short) refers to when you make a bet on the flop after you were the preflop raiser. You show strength before the flop by making a raise and continue to show strength on the flop by continuing to bet.

There are two reasons for continuation betting, you can either do it for value or as a bluff. If you play a TAG game and raise a tight range of hands, because you raise such a narrow range you will usually have a strong hand on the flop. When you think you have the best hand you want to continuation bet for value to get your opponents to invest more chips into the pot with a weaker hand.

You should never consider slow playing your hand when you make a strong hand which is vulnerable to being outdrawed. However, you can not always expect to make a hand and you will be faced with the decision of whether or not to continuation bet. The main consideration when making a continuation bet is that you will very often miss the flop when you were open raising with a good top pair hand like AJ, AQ, AK. In fact, you will only hit the flop with these hands only about 1/3 of the time, so the chances are that you won’t make a hand.

Whenever you raise preflop, you are telling your opponents that you have a good hand by being the preflop aggressor and taking initiative in the hand, so you must continue to tell the same story even when you miss the flop. A successful continuation betting strategy will take into account the number of opponents still involved in the hand (the players who called your raise preflop), position, and the board texture.

The ideal scenario for successfully continuation betting as a bluff is when there is only 1 other caller before the flop and it’s a dry flop. For example, let’s say you open raised with the hand Ks Js in early position and a straight forward player who you know plays fit or fold poker calls on the button and you see a flop.

The flop comes Qh 3d 6s. Even though you have missed the flop it would be a great flop to continuation bet because the board is very unlikely to have hit the opponent’s range of hands and its a dry flop with one high card and two low cards. The other player could have a Ax hand but if they missed the flop then it’s impossible to continue with the hand, and so by betting the flop you get a better hand to fold.

The worst flops to be continuation betting is when you are involved in a hand with 2+ callers, so it’s a big multi-way pot, and it’s a wet flop. A wet board texture is one which is very coordinated and draw heavy. These are bad flops to cbet as a bluff because it’s likely to have hit your opponent’s range of hands, even if it missed they are probably on some kind of draw and will call.

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