In a previous strategy post, we looked at when is a good time to Delay our C-Bets or Continuation Bets. In this post, we are going old school like Barry Greenstein and looking at Good spots to put our money where our mouth is on the flop and Bet after raising Pre-Flop.
Look for good “Spots” to C-bet
You may hear this term a lot, what is a spot? Well, this can be a weakness in someone’s strategy that you may want to take advantage of…
For instance, you notice a player is loose preflop, so they call with a wide amount of hands, but tight passive post flop, meaning they will only continue with strong hands and not look to put in raises.
Because players will only on average hit a board 17% of the time with any two random cards, these players will make good candidates or Spots for a wide C-betting strategy.
C-Betting against Calling Stations
We need to learn how to counter players that are just going to call us down with anything or “Calling Stations” as they are known, the complete opposite to a tight player.
We will want to bet wider for value, so if we are going to get called more, we want to bet thinner for value to get value for their wider range… Make sense? Here’s an example…
Button: (HERO) Dealt 7♠ 6♠ Raise to 150
SB: (25) Folds
BB: (50) Calls 100
Flop: 9♠ 7♣ 3♣
BB: Checks
HERO: ?
We hit second pair on a wet board, against other players we may fear check raises and get blown off our equity in this pot with second pair and back door straight and flush draws…
However Vs a calling station that will not be looking to check-raise bluff as much but hero call us down with high cards, flush draws, straight draws and lower pairs than ours we have a decent bet for value against their possible range of holdings.
Quite often these types of players will be less savvy to pot odds so you can look to size up for value and protection against this type of opponent.
When to C-Bet against Tough Opponents?
So we have covered some pointers on how to deal with players that have some flaws in their game, what should we do in pots against tough opponents?
Try and think of your range in the situation, not just your actual hand and play according to how you would play most of your range… it’s a good idea to think about your opponents’ hands in a range form too, this way we can work out if we have an advantage on certain boards and play accordingly.
For example, we raise from UTG with a solid holding and the Big Blind defends…
Flop: A♣ 7♠ K♥
On this board even though we may just have hands like T9s or 66+ our range includes other very strong hands for this board such as KQo+ AJo+ ATs+ so when deliberating whether to bet these types of boards we should consider how our hand looks to our opponent and consider how their wider calling range plays on this board.
In situations like this we are going to want to C-bet fairly small, What does this achieve?
This will mean that our opponents will fold out all of their missed hands on boards like this and if they continue although it narrows their range slightly for future streets we will still have a range advantage in position with the betting lead, all positives for us playing the rest of the streets of action.
When do we C-bet on Wet Boards?
Well compared to dry boards with high cards there are going to be some more even flops as to who has the nut advantage, meaning who is more likely to have the best hand in their range given the board.
Let’s jump right into an example:
We raise from UTG with a solid holding and the Big Blind defends…
Flop: 5♣ 7♠ 6♥
BB: Checks
HERO: ?
On boards like this who has the nut advantage is going to be much more of an even fight, with our hands containing all the sets and overpairs, but our opponents range containing many pair and a straight draw, two pair and flopped straight combinations.
So when do we Continue on these boards?
We will want to do this a smaller percentage of the time with the parts of our range than connect the best with these types of boards and with a larger sizing of around pot sized…
What does this achieve?
This allows us to get value from worse hands and charge worse pairs and draws but by limiting the amount of times we will bet this we are betting with a stronger part of our range and thus less scared of getting check-raised, if we were to bet this board too often we could be outplayed and pushed off our equity too easily as we would be overbetting.