posted October 19, 2009 at 18:01 EST in Poker School Texas Hold'em
Using Flop Texture to Continuation Bet
These days, the use of the continuation bet is so widely known that its use is getting somewhat negated. It is still a very powerful tool of course and making a continuation bet in a heads up situation when your opponent has missed the flop will still take down the pot a very high percentage of the time.
But in other situations then you definitely need to look closely at the texture of the flop to see if making a continuation bet should be on your agenda in this particular situation. Let us look at an example, you raise with the A-J from the cut-off and the button and both blinds call you.
Already this is bad news as three opponents combined will tend to have some kind of hand. The flop comes 9-5-4 rainbow and both blinds check to you here…..should you make a continuation bet? The answer is no for several reasons. Firstly you have not connected with the flop and if your opponents are taking you for high cards then they know that this flop hasn’t hit you in anyway.
Plus you have three opponents and one of which has position on you so making a continuation bet in this instance is far too risky. Now let us look at the same situation again only this time the two blinds have called you but the button folded. Here your situation has improved immensely but it is still a marginal situation for continuation betting.
You still have two opponents who called your raise and you have still not connected with this board. Your two opponents both suspect that you haven’t connected with this board and may just be checking to the raiser so you cannot simply assume that they are weak. In this instance I would still lean towards checking the hand back. Essentially I would be raising pre-flop to create either of two situations. That is to either take the pot pre-flop uncontested or to get the pot heads up preferably with position.
Both of these objectives have failed so it is time for caution. I have seen players needlessly go for large chunks of money in these situations and sometimes their whole stack trying to force a strong hand to fold or a calling station to fold top pair. You really need to keep in mind not just the flop texture but also how many opponents you have as well before you make an automatic continuation bet.
