Introduction to Postflop Play – Continuation Betting

Now we have the preflop foundations cemented, we can start thinking about what we do when we reach a postflop situation. In the lower limits, you will find yourself in a postflop situation very often, as players tend to be very loose. In this article we will introduce a valuable, well known strategy that is an absolute necessity in poker.

The Continuation Bet

The continuation bet, also known as a cbet, is one of the most important weapons in your arsenal. A continuation bet comes about when you have raised preflop and been called, this makes you the postflop aggressor. Players only make a pair or better around 30% of the time, which means the majority of the time your opponent will have no made hand on the flop.

This puts you, as the postflop aggressor, in the perfect situation to make a bet of around half the size of the pot (depends on the type of board, or ‘board texture’) and get your opponent to fold.

Whilst it’s true that the majority of the time you won’t have a made hand on the flop as well, putting the pressure on your opponent by raising preflop and continuation betting on the flop will often force them to fold.

This lets you pick up the pot a large amount of the time.

When Should You Continuation Bet?

A continuation bet should be made the vast majority of the time, around 75% of the time to be precise. This is because players at the lower limit just don’t want to continue without a made hand or a draw.

We should be continuation betting on the dry types of boards we discussed previously, and we should be continuation betting these with all our holdings as it is very unlikely that our opponent has a made hand. We should also be cbetting with all of our good made hands (top pair or better), and with our good draws (this is called a semi-bluff).

When Shouldn’t You Continuation Bet?

We should be continuation betting a lot, but there are situations when continuation betting can be a bad idea. The wet boards we have discussed are great examples of when we shouldn’t be continuation betting as a bluff. This is because it is much more likely that our opponent will continue on these boards.

However, when we do have a good hand on wet boards, we should be continuation betting larger than on dry boards, in order to make it expensive for our opponent to try and complete their draw.

Summary

• Continuation betting is a valuable tool that can consistently make you money at the lower limits of online poker
• You should continuation bet around 75% of the time total, as our opponent will rarely have a good hand to continue with
• Dry boards are the best situations to continuation bet, and when we have a good made hand
• Wet boards when we have no made hand are situations when we should be thinking about giving up on the hand and not continuation betting