Small Stakes Super Star

On the flop one of the most important characteristics of a hand is the ability for it to develop into a hand that can win bets on the turn and river. With a pocket pair you have a very small chance to improve, but when you do you can win big turn and river bets. My intuition says that you should usually bet any pocket pair on the flop in position unless you have a very large chance of being check raised. Let’s see how the math works out.

For the sake of simplicity I am going to assume that whenever we improve to a set we win the hand, which would be pretty likely on a dry board. Our opponent is folding to turn barrels 30% of the time and river barrels 40% of the time. They don’t lead the turn. This is an ideal situation because we get to realize our full equity. I’m also assuming that we don’t have the best hand when we are called.

The pot on the flop is 7 big blinds, and we are planning to cbet 5 big blinds. The turn bet will be 13 into a pot of 17. The river bet will be 30 into 43. When we improve on the turn we win 12 + 13*.7 + 30*.7*.6, or 33.7. When we improve on the river we win 12 + 13*.7, excluding the possibility we get two bets in, which is 21.1. When we lose, we lose 5 bb. Assuming 0 fold equity, we have 33.7*2/47 + 21.1*2/46 – 5*45/47*44/46, or -2.2 bb equity. That means we are only risking 2.2 big blinds to win the 7 big blinds in the pot. Thus our bet only has to succeed 23% of the time to be profitable, compared with 41.5% of the time when we have no equity.

Almost always we are going to have 23% fold equity on a flop bet versus one or two opponents. Consequently, we should be betting unimproved pocket pairs a high percentage of the time when we are in position and have a good spot to bluff.

A few days ago I wrote an article about flop continuation betting and I was explaining what boards are good for c-betting. Today I am going to test those assumptions that I made with data from my own play. For reference, my flop c-bet success rates over the 350k hand sample were 46% overall, 47% vs. one player, 39% vs. 2 players, and 36% vs. 3 players. I am not going to filter based on my hand strength, although that could be an interesting comparison due to blockers.

A dry flop with a high card: I am defining this one as any J or higher with two cards under a jack. I speculated that these flops would be good to fire with up to 3 players in the pot as a bluff, and only get better with equity.

*J high – 46% vs 1 player, 31% vs 2 players, 20% vs 3 players
*Q high – 51% vs 1 player, 51% vs 2 players, 33% vs 3 players
*K high – 51% vs 1 player, 49% vs 2 players, 68% vs 3 players
*A high – 48% vs 1 player, 44% vs 2 players, 44% vs 3 players

As you can see, the high card dry boards were all quite good to c-bet vs 1 player, and mostly good to c-bet vs 2 players. Since players are more likely to play hands with aces, the ace high boards got less folds than other boards. The jack high boards are more likely to get peeled by hands like overcards and middle pairs, so the success was lower. My hypothesis was correct for Q high through A high boards.

A low dry flop: I speculated that these are good to bet with any equity but not as a pure bluff. I speculated that in a 3 way or greater pot, these would be difficult to bluff at. I’m defining these as any board that is T high or lower that doesn’t have any possible straights on it, and a limited number of open ended draws. My c-bet success vs 1 was 46% and vs 2 was 29%. My hypothesis was correct.

Paired flop: I speculated that these would be good to bet with 100% of your range in a 2-3 way pot. My c-bet success vs 1 player was 51%, vs 2 players was 44%, and vs 3 or more players was 52%. My hypothesis was correct, and it looks like in general these are good to c-bet versus any number of players.

Wet flop: For all of these I am going to filter out paired boards and I am going to break them up into a few different categories.

*Single suited boards – 45% vs 1 player, 38% vs 2 players, 31% vs 3 players. These are marginallly lower than my average c-bet success rates, but only by a little bit.
*Monotone boards – 50% vs 1 player, 42% vs 2 players. These boards look good to c-bet with air vs 1 or two players. My intuition says that they are better to c-bet vs. competent opponents than weak ones.
*3 straight boards – Boards with 3 connected cards on them. They are unique in the fact that three different straights are possible. 29% vs 1 player, 36% vs 2 players. These are poor boards to c-bet as a bluff.
*2 possible straights – These boards have 2 connected cards with a third separated by a gap. 37% vs 1 player, 33% vs 2 players.

From my analysis, it looks like my hypotheses were mostly correct. It is interesting to note that over my sample of hands, my c-bet success rate was extremely high. I would recommend doing this analysis over your own database to figure out what works in your games. Having this knowledge in your command will allow you to put more pressure on your opponents and cause them to make more mistakes versus you.

NLHE is a three street game, but a lot of our success in flop continuation betting comes by ending the hand on the flop. Our flop continuation betting strategy should be to take a lot of hands down on the flop but also to plan for the turn and river. Most of the time our opponents are going to fold a fairly wide part of their range to a continuation bet and you will frequently see your flop c-bet success being somewhere between 40 and 45% on average. With a total bluff that means we are making a little bit of money, but when we have equity we really cash in. Having a high c-bet percentage also makes it so our opponents can’t easily fold when we apply pressure postflop. In this article I am going to focus on my flop continuation bet strategy vs. thinking players based on different board textures.

A dry flop with a high card: Your opponent isn’t going to be likely to hit these kinds of boards, so you should be able to take the pot down frequently with a bet. These can be good to fire at least once even in a three-way pot. Your opponent’s main play against you is going to be to float your flop bet because raising on these flops doesn’t often get a lot of credit. Raising isn’t a great option for htem because it’s difficult to check raise dry boards frequently and represent a strong range. These boards are good to fire with 100% of your range. An alternate play can be to check raise with a bluff – players often will fire most of their range when you check to them and you can represent a strong hand and surprise your opponent.

A low dry flop: Your opponent isn’t likely to hit these boards but they know you aren’t either. With a typical cold calling range, your opponent is going to have a lot of pairs that they can call at least one bet with and they can credibly represent sets by raising and put you in a difficult position. Most players don’t raise you a lot on these boards, but if they do then making small 3-bet bluffs would be a good counterstrategy. Your opponents can float but you are often going to have pretty good steal equity on the turn, and you can barrel on most face cards out of position, and get two free cards in position. These are good to bet with any piece of the board – overcards, pairs, gutshots, and backdoor draws in a heads up pot. In a 3 way pot these are tough to bluff at without some decent outs or good position.

Paired flop: These flops are very hard to hit, but are favorable to the preflop raiser because of more combinations of overpairs. You can bet these flops with air three ways most of the time. They can be pretty good to double barrel as a bluff because many players will be sticky on the flop but fold on the turn with a float or low pair, especially if the turn brings a high card. In addition, many players will be raising their trips on the flop in a HU pot because it looks more bluffy than calling and raising on the turn, so their flatting range will be weaker. I bet these with close to 100% of my range.

Wet flop: On these flops, position is going to be more important. Now floating and bluff raising in position become more viable for opponents because they can represent a wider range of value hands and draws. You also can get paid off somewhat lighter because when you fire barrels your opponents can put you on a draw and be suspicious. On a wet flop your opponents are a lot more likely to have hit unless their range is very pair heavy. I only bet these boards if I have a pair or better, a gutshot or OESD, or a flush draw. I check fold a lot more frequently on these flops. In position, these can be good to bet with the intention of firing multiple streets. Your opponents are going to be raising their strong hands so when they call they either have weak made hands or weak draws. I would still start off with a reasonable range for c-betting though.

These guidelines are a little general but the less coordinated a board is, the more frequently you can c-bet as the preflop raiser. The preflop raiser has the advantage usually of having the strongest preflop hands in their range, while the preflop callers are less likely to have strong preflop hands. Overall I think that my continuation betting strategy is good, but a specific spot where I want to work on is button vs blinds, because the dynamic seems very different. I would give myself a B+ in this category.

When I used to have a backdoor draw on the flop, 3 to a straight or 3 to a flush, I used to think that was pretty much air. I also had a turn c-bet percentage of about 35%. That’s because I hadn’t figured out that backdoor draws are an essential part of constructing your ranges in NLHE. Backdoor draws rarely make a strong hand by the river, but they often improve on the turn. When you do improve on the turn, not only do you give yourself a good chance to win the pot with a bluff, you also give yourself a chance to win a huge pot on the river by hitting a strong concealed hand. The combination of these two factors makes it important to continue with your backdoor draws on the flop in a lot of circumstances.

Backdoor draws often make a breakeven play +EV when you are considering c-betting, raising a c-bet, or floating. If your opponent is like most regulars who are fairly loose c-betting the flop, but fairly tight c-betting the turn, then backdoor draws make a great addition to your c-bet calling range in position. When you improve you can either bet the turn when checked to and win a high percentage of the time or you can call the turn again and potentially bet the river if checked to. This works best on dry boards, because by calling twice you are telling your opponents you have a strong hand, and they would continue firing their strong value hands, but check their hands that they expect to be doing poorly against your range.

When you c-bet a backdoor draw, you have even more cards that can come to help you than if you float a bet. In addition to any card that can improve your hand, which would be 10 per BFD and 8 per BSD, you can catch any overcard to the board and any card that gives you top pair. That will give you a fairly decent opportunity to c-bet the turn profitably.

It’s important to pay attention to your backdoor draws on the flop. Learning how to effectively play your backdoor draws is crucial to avoid playing too fit or fold postflop. Recognize when backdoor draws give you significantly more steal equity than if you had air.

Raising continuation bets light is an effective strategy versus regulars in NLHE because players tend to c-bet with a range that is either balanced between air and value hands or one that is overly weighted towards air. In my game, I had a difficult time finding the right spots to apply this concept. It’s easy to raise a continuation bet when you have a very strong hand and I recommend doing so most of the time. There are two spots where you are going to have to make tough decisions whether or not to raise a c-bet: with a bluff and with a medium strength hand.

With any bluff we need to evaluate two things: our chance of winning the pot immediately and the chance of improving on a later street. Check raising with total air is unlikely to be a very profitable move in itself, although it is somewhat likely to be breakeven if the situation is average or good. The profit we make from it can easily be equated to our chance to improve on later streets and get value.

Out of position we want to be check raising hands with a significant chance of improving on the next street. Besides the obvious flush and open ended straight draws that are strong enough both to call or raise with, we want to use our back-door draws, because they tend to give us a lot of cards to improve with on the next street. Take a hand like JTs on A93 with one of our suit. When we check raise this board we represent a fair number of hands for value like 99, 33, and A9. Then we have 16 cards to continue barreling with on the turn, a full third of the deck. Any Q, 8, or card of our suit is a good barrel card. If we do end up making a straight or flush we are likely to get paid off.

This move can be even more effective when you have a backdoor flush on a 2 flush board. That way we can represent the flush if the turn brings a 3 flush to the board. The only downside of these boards is that our opponent is more likely to 3-bet his strong hands on the flop.

In position we can be more liberal with our raises as bluffs. Hands like gutshots become a lot more viable to bluff raise because we can see both a turn and river card usually to complete our draw. Gutshots have a fair amount of equity: 16% if our 4 outs are all good. If we can take it down about half the time with the raise and then win the pot when we complete our draw, this is going to be a quite profitable play. The downside with these hands is that fewer cards improve our hand on the turn.

With a medium strength hand it can also be advantageous to raise as opposed to calling. Here is a perfect example. Our opponent raises from the button and we call in the big blind with Tjs. The flop is J73 and he c-bets. If we simply call there are two negatives; our opponent is unlikely to bet again as a bluff or with a weaker hand for value on a blank, and any Q K or A provides him both with a good bluffing opportunity and possibly the best hand. Check raising in this spot gives our hand some protection and our opponent also sometimes calls and checks down with a weaker hand.

Most people don’t compare calling and raising, they evaluate each individually. If you compare raising to calling it often only costs a small percentage of the pot. In this particular spot you want to make your raise a little smaller; usually the size of his bet + the pot. If he bets $4 into $6.50 you can check raise to $10.50 or $11. For that extra $7 you give yourself a decent chance to immediately pick up the $15 in the pot and protect your hand.

In general I think if your raise c-bet is under 15% you are probably missing out on some profitable spots to raise people’s cbets. There are two consequences to this: your opponent can start folding some of his stronger hands to your check raise if they have enough information, and you also miss out on those profitable spots that you could take advantage of. Look for the spots where you are likely to have good bluffing opportunities later or make a concealed made hand. Also look for the ones where you need to protect your hand to win the pot.