When not to continuation bet

Most poker players are already at the level of knowing what a continuation bet is and that they should be making them most of the time that they raise preflop and find a caller. A mistake I find with a lot of players however is that they tend to continuation bet too much. So rather than focusing on what a CB is and when you should make one, I’m going to talk about when not to c-bet.

Pages and pages could be written on this subject going into every possibly scenario but since space is limited I’ll only focus on a couple of situations that arise.

We're playing a 6-handed game of 5/10 NLHE. We're in the CO with 77 and raise to $35. The button, small blind and big blind all call. They are all fairly competent players. The flop comes down QJ8 with a flush draw and the SB and BB both check - should you bet here? Definitely not. Why?

Because this is the type of board that is likely to have hit the hand range of someone who calls a pre-flop raise and with three opponents usually at least one will either call or raise your bet and your money will likely be dead. Some people might say "but betting is the only way we'll win the pot" and while this is likely to be true, it is okay to sometimes let pots go. Poker isn't about trying to win every single hand, it's about trying to make your opponents make costly mistakes while you avoid doing the same and betting with 77 in this spot would be a mistake.

2) Same game conditions. We’re OTB with AKo and the CO raises to $35. We 3-bet to $110 and the CO calls. The CO is a bit of a wild card - he plays too loose to be profitable and is quite aggressive, making plays at pots in situations that might go against conventional wisdom. We can’t be sure when he raises whether he’s going to be bluffing or raising with a made hand - certainly not the easiest of players to play against. The flop comes JT7 with 2 hearts and we don’t have a heart. The CO checks and it’s on us - should we c-bet? No we shouldn’t. Why?

Our hand has a decent amount of equity against most hands at this point but it is not strong enough to withstand a checkraise. If we bet and the CO raises which he is liable to do with a pair/set/2pair or some sort of straight or flush draw (or even as a pure bluff) then we have to fold a hand which could have improved to beat the opponents hand (or may have already been ahead if he was raising with a draw). By checking behind we get to control the pot and use position to our advantage - we have 3 clean outs to the nuts (any non heart Q) and an ace or king might give us the best hand too to overtake him. While there is a chance that betting will get him to fold some hands ahead of ours, the value gained from that is not greater than the value in checking.

Same game conditions. We’re OTB with A2s and raise to $35 and the BB calls. The BB is an unknown player and we have no reads. The flop comes down AJ6 rainbow and the BB checks - should we bet?

This is a somewhat close spot that a lot of people will bet but I feel a check is usually better. Our hand is fairly weak and a bet won’t get called by many worse hands - and if we do get a call by a hand like QJ then it’s unlikely that we will get any more value out of them on later streets. The concept and question to ask in this hand is ‘how many streets of value can I get?’. If you check the flop you are able to induce bluffs from weak hands that would have folded to a flop bet, and you also get deception value and the chance to get more value out of a worse hand who doesn’t believe you because the opponent might think “why would anyone check an Ace on that flop? My QJ must be good!”.

by Mark Vos