[FTR Quick Tip 001] To C-Bet or not to C-Bet (That is the Question)

by | Mar 4, 2024 | Poker Videos

FTR Quick Tip: Helping you plug leaks in 5 minutes or less.

In a new weekly poker strategy video series, we look at a few different situations and ask the age old question: to c-bet or not to c-bet? We hope to help you plug some leaks when continuation bets, in 5 minutes or less.

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Full Transcript

Hey guys. I’m going to be taking a look at a couple of C-Betting spots today and we’re going to be discussing some of the factors that you’re going to want to consider when you have to decide whether or not you’re going to C-Bet. Before I get started let me explain the stats that I have setup here in my HUD. The first two stats are VPIP and PFR. The two stats on the next line in blue are C-Bet and fold to C-Bet, and those are really the only stats we’ll be using today so you can ignore all the other stats.

This first hand here happens at a 25NL table, where I have Ace-Jack and the High jack and I make a standard open, and we get called by the Big Blind whose a 48/14 fish. This is exactly the kind of action that we want when we have any hand really, to get called by a fish. We see a flop here and he checks to us. Now we have to take a look at this flop, take a look at the player, take a look at our hand and see if we should C-Bet or not. The first thing to realize is that this flop hits the range of a fish, a cold calling fish, pretty well. He’s going to have a lot of one pair, he’s going to have a lot of like gutshots and overcards, he’s going to have pair plus gutshot. He’ll have a few flush draws. This is the kind of flop where he’s going to be continuing a lot. The second thing we have to realize is that we really can’t hit anything really good, we don’t have backdoor draws, we don’t have any draws really except we have the backdoor draw to a straight, but we don’t have any backdoor flush draw, we don’t have a gutshot or anything.

The third thing we want to look at is the tendencies of our opponent. As we can see here by looking at his fold to C-Bet stat, it’s only 45% and on a flop like this it’s going to actually in practice be lower because this is a flop that hits his range pretty hard. If we look at the pop-up stats here, we see that he actually raises C-Bets, although it’s a small sample we’ve seen him raise a C-Bet twice in a 11 hands. He’s definitely kind of a semi-agro fish post-flop and so taking all those three things into consideration this is a pretty poor spot for a C-Bet. He’s not going to be folding enough and we’re not going to have enough good turns that allow us to double barrel. Against this type of player we might not even want to be double barreling draws or anything on the turn anyway.

All things considered, I think this is a hand where we’re much better off checking back and just hoping to either get to showdown or maybe we can hit a pair on the turn and get some value that way. The next hand we’re going to be looking at, we have Ace-Queen in the early position, this is a 50NL table. We make a standard open, we get called. Now let’s take a look at this flop. This flop is pretty bad for us as well, it makes a lot of draws possible. Flush draws, straight draws, gutshot plus overcards and similarly our hand isn’t very good. We don’t have backdoor outs, we don’t have a gutshot, we don’t have a flush draw or anything. The difference between this hand and the previous one is our opponent’s tendencies.

If we look at our opponent here he looks like kind of a type, like taggy, kind of a roguish player and he is able to fold to C-Bet, in fact he folds to C-Bet 63% of the time. That’s over a pretty decent sample size. I think a player like this, he’ll fold out all his middle pairs, he’ll fold out all his unpaired, like if he was calling with Ace-Queen or Ace-Jack or even sometimes Ace-King, he might fold those to our C-Bet. Here I think we do have a very good opportunity to C-Bet and I think we should make the most it and go ahead and C-Bet here. Thanks for watching I hope you guys have found this interesting.

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