A Pro’s Journey: Continuation Bet – CBET

One of the most basic plays in poker is to make the continuation bet, which consists of continuing to bet on the FLOP after having made a RAISE pre-flop.

To decide whether or not to make a CBET, you need to know how to examine the board, the opponent, how many you are playing against, and what you want to represent with this bet.

Dry flops, which do not contain many draws, are the best for you to apply the continuation bet, as your opponent will often fold because he did not hit anything and does not have much chance of winning the hand against your range.

Dry Flop Example: 2 2 5, A 4 8, K 8 3.

Wet flops, which have a lot of draws and hit the opponent's calling range a lot, are the worst ones to apply a cbet when you have no equity at all, because you will get a lot of calls and raises on draws.

Wet flop example: JT 8, 7 8 9, 8 9 5 with two suited cards.

Now, before we decide whether to cbet or not, let's analyze our opponent: Is he a good player? Does he play well post-flop? Does he fold a lot to CBET? Does he check-raise a lot?

Knowing how to analyze the entire scenario as a whole will always help you make the best decision.

When we call on the CBET flop, when should we CBETAR turn?

Depending on some situations, we can give CBET turn:

• The opponent tends to fold little to CBET flop: he tends to give a lot float (call the bet to be able to steal the pot on other streets). In this type of player, depending on the board, we can apply another CBET on the turn.
• Our hand has gained some equity: We CBET air (with nothing) on the flop, but on the turn came a heart card that gave us a flush draw. We can take the second shot on this board, since we count the opponent's % fold + the chance of hitting the flush.
• We have a very strong hand: we will try to extract as much as we can. In some situations we will not CBET the turn with a very strong hand if the opponent folds a lot to CBET the turn and the board is dry, but you must analyze each situation.
• We have a strong but vulnerable hand: Let's CBE the turn to extract value and defend our hand against draws, making the opponent mistakenly pay to hit a better hand.

How much CBETa?

The CBET value can also vary depending on the board or player.

On dry boards we can cbet lower because we don't get many calls, while on flops with many draws we can cbet higher because we get many calls.

It is important to remember that you must mix up your strategy so that you do not become vulnerable and exploitable by good players. If you cbet low for bluffing, you should also cbet low for value.

I've seen good players cbet big on a dry board like 2 2 6 with AA and with TJo as well.

Analyze each type of situation well and you will be very successful in your post-flop game.

Questions, concerns and suggestions?