C Betting Tutorial Request

Ok guys this is a really huge request to make, and if no1 is interested that's completely fine, but i think myself and i'm sure a ton of other FTR BC members c bet too much in general. I've read the stuff on c betting in ftr, and a ton of other sources, but its just not my strong suit.

If anyone or multiple experienced players would be willing to post a series of flops where they did/didn't c bet without posting what they did, and let us noobs try to do it on our own without anyone posting/explaining on the thread, followed by an explanation by the OP a day or two later, i think that would help my game (and im sure alot of other people's as well) a ton.

Sorry if this is the wrong spot for this and thanks a ton to anyone considering getting involved.

Probably the best thing to do would be to start posting hands where you're not sure whether or not you should cbet and ask for advice. I think you'll benefit more from discussing hands that you actually played in because you'll get to explain your thought process and those giving you advice can see where you're going wrong.

I think I can offer some general advice that works for me.

1) You should be cbetting more often in position and less often out of position.

2) Cbet less often in multiway pots. At the micros, I don't think its horrible to give up on most 3 way pots where you miss the flop, especially in the presence of stations or aggressive players that will try to outplay you often.

3) Against villains that call a lot, cbet less often when you miss especially on drawy or co-ordinated flops but widen your range for value betting at the same time. So don't cbet a 9TQ 2tone board with 22 because you can expect to get called a lot but do go ahead and bet for value with middle pair.

4) Some of the time its a good idea to check back dry flops with hands that you would only expect to get 1-2 streets of value with. Don't get carried away with this one because we really should be value betting most villains at the micros every chance we get. Against somebody who folds to a high % if cbets, we generally cannot hope to extract a whole lot of value with AQ on an AJ7 board. He's going to fold all of his pp's that he setmines with to a cbet. If he's the type of player that knows not to flat preflop raises with weak aces then it gets really hard to get 2 streets from hands like QJs, but very easy if we check back a flop once in awhile. Against regulars this also helps send a message that we sometimes have a hand when we do not cbet.

I'd also like to recommend going through some hands in PT3/HEM and have Pokerstove open. Plug in villain's range for seeing the flop and then try to figure out how much of that range he is folding on the flop to a cbet. This should give you a pretty good idea of how often he should be folding the flop. This excercise can also help to clarify situations where you should be value betting as well as some where you are ahead of his range for seeing the flop but you're behind his continuance range for calling your cbet.

Its not that one hand confused me about c betting its just i know i am doing it far too often. I dont really feel like posting 20 hands where everyone sais "standard" when i think this would really benefit a ton of people here.

Again i know this is alot to ask.

i am no master of poker, but i like the thread, and i see the potential for good discussion and education. So without further adu...

$0.1/$0.25 No Limit Holdem
5 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com

Stacks:
UTG ($16.22)
CO ($24.30)
Hero ($31.44)
SB ($48.70)
BB ($36.41)

Pre-Flop: ($0.35, 5 players) Hero is BTN
UTG calls $0.25, 1 fold, Hero raises to $1, 2 folds, UTG calls $0.75

Flop: ($2.35, 2 players)
UTG checks, Hero ($30.44)?

preflop could probably be larger, who cares this is about cbetting.

villain is a 54/18 over 50, he has no understanding of relative head strength and enjoys betting marginal hands.

if i cbet, why do i and how much should it be? If i dont, why not?

well I cbet about 1.50. Such a wide range he could have completely missed this flop hands like JT/J9/67/Q9...... etc so many hands that fold. Plus some backdoor equity with the clubs and an Ace can help us if he does c/c this flop with a K.
He also has flush draws and 8x pckt pairs that call. So depending on the turn and if opponent checks I may double barrel.

I like the way this is changing, i say we just have everyone post c betting hands like this one and talk about them in the thread, basically a portion of the BC for just a bunch of C betting hands.

As far as the above goes my guess would be check behind because villian may be betting his pps he limp/called and is probably calling 1 street if he hit any of this flop. We have some showdown value, but can't stand any action. Against most villians we can rep the K, but this player is likely not thinking on the level that alot of our range has a K in it. If this is completely wrong maby you can start to see why i made the thread.

hes a preflop calling station, could have anything thus i cbet 1.50 or so..?

In the above, I am c-betting almost 100%. Reason, we have a limp tard who is going to call our pfr almost 100% of the time after he limps, so the only reason I would be raising A9s would be for a little value pre, to someone I know I can force out of the pot post flop. His range doesn't matter, and we can't even guess here, our range to him doesn't matter, he is weak and will give up when he doesn't hit, and what I really like about most of those guys, they will donk into you with their hands, so you know when you are beat.

http://poker-strategy.flopturnriver....tc-theorem.php

A9s - Well if we are cbetting it's for value/protection, as we think he will continue with enough worse hands to make the bet profitable. Hands like Ax, flush draws, 56, 67, etc. We wouldn't be cbetting because "he has alot of missed hands that would fold". Because we beat all of those missed hands, and want those hands to put money in the pot against our superior hand.

I think in this spot, I usually mix it up, between cbetting and checking behind. I'll bet if I think he calls with worse often enough, and I'll check behind if I suspect he will fire the turn with near 100% of his range (as lots of players do), which I can then call and profits ensue.

Spoonitnow:

A good example of when to Cbet

A good example of when NOT to Cbet.

Asking when to cbet and when not to is like asking to explain the universe in one paragraph and give 2 examples.

The board in every way has to be weighed against the opponent in every way and then we figure out how to get the maximum value.

Playing a million hands in the micros is a good start.

Originally Posted by JKDS

villain is a 54/18 over 50, he has no understanding of relative head strength and enjoys betting marginal hands.

ok, i think this ones finished and theres some things to be discussed. again, i am no master of poker.

1st off, the actual decission

I have an amazing "omfg, howd you get that read" read on villain. its only a sample of 50 hands, but from what ive seen i determine the read to be fairly accurate. So lets use it.

Villain checks...

awesome, can pretty much say that villain's range is now draws, air, and the shittiest of shitty pairs (maybe like 22 or bp or something). What we do now was brought up by xxstacksxx....

By the FTP, we make money when villain makes mistakes. So what do we want him to do?

if we bet

pairs: we want all of these to fold since

draws (15ish outters): these have 50ish+ % equity, even though they only seem like 9 outters so having these hands fold is great.

air (6outters): we're ahead! we want calls

if we check

pairs: have fairly stable equity against us, we're drawing to 6ish outs. infinite odds, villain made a mistake when we decided to check instead

draws: if villain is stationy, all we do is put money in when we're behind, so checking and maybe bluffing the turn is better where we have better equity provided villain misses

air: they get a free card/chance to bluff us

so now, since villain has shown little interest, we have two cases. bet if we up against more weak pairs that fold/air and check if theres more draws/pair that call in his range.

i opted for bet, and made it 1.75, villain folds. This is large enough to make weaker pairs not want to hand around and to give 6 out hands poor odds. other draws call regardless probably.

2nd thing to talk about, the discussion

@clvacva: see stack's reply, we want these to come along but we want to charge them to do so. villain is NEVER c/c this flop with top pair, that is to say the read implies he'd be much more inclined to donk bet it. also as stated, flush draws have more equity than us so we'd prefer they fold as well as all pairs.

@donkafelts: You're right, villain isnt likely thinking "hrm, your range has many kings in it" however he is thinking along the lines of "did i hit" in which case we can judge his range and actions and see how likely it is and then go from there on how we fair against that range.

@trilerian: im almost always raising A9s on the btn against a fishy limper, but you're right, hes a fairly easy to read type and i expect to wtf pwn him postflop alot and im in position so i can do so more often.

@extremophile: easily the best essay, i feel its a valid other way to go about analyzing these. perhaps next hand thats posted ill see how it works out as im too lazy now

@xxstacksxx: thx for the input. something i didnt talk about in my answer was the value in "getting" villain to bluff and that can certainly be more EV than just betting and getting 1 street from his air.

@robb's stuff: everyone should read those. EVERYONE

@outlaw: regarding the point of the thread, id like to have just a topic where everyone is like "heres what our gameplan is" just so someone who's never heard of cbetting can get a feel for it. obv theres more situations than there are wii's in the U.S., so imo getting ppl to understand how to approach these situations should be the ultimate go

ya i know, JKDS uses "wall of text" and crits for massive damage. Im'a go ahead and post another. The last one had full stacks, reads, and no hand at all. THis one is like the opposite.

$0.1/$0.25 No Limit Holdem
6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com

Stacks:
UTG ($52.66)
UTG+1 ($11.86)
CO ($72.79)
Hero ($21.39)
SB ($9.99)
BB ($10)

Pre-Flop: ($0.35, 6 players) Hero is BTN
3 folds, Hero raises to $0.75 ($20.64), 1 fold, BB calls $0.50 ($9.25)

Flop: ($1.60, 2 players)
BB checks ($9.25), Hero ($20.64)?

villain is completely unknown, sb is a nit.

different questions this time. How does our analysis change when we gain a lil showdown value, villain is unknown, and bb is short.

answer the question of cbetting and how much or not at all as well.

go go go

I am not liking this spot, I believe there are just too many draws and weak A's in BB range to profit from this board. Since BB is unknown we won't know if he calls a 3/4 to full psb on a weak A or a draw so when the turn comes an 8, T, Q, K or any spade we don't know where we stand. I think I check behind here, and fire on the turn when he checks a blank.

Edit: to expand, if we c-bet here we are bloating a pot we should be trying to control with middle pair and showdown value.

Originally Posted by TheBowlBoy

1) You should be cbetting more often in position and less often out of position.

3) Against villains that call a lot, cbet less often when you miss especially on drawy or co-ordinated flops but widen your range for value betting at the same time. So don't cbet a 9TQ 2tone board with 22 because you can expect to get called a lot but do go ahead and bet for value with middle pair.

number 1 actually isn't near as straight forward as that. in fact i should say you should very often be cbetting MORE OOP with your B range. say you have KK UTG and PFR and someone flats behind you and flop comes Ac9h2s. well if you were IP, you could prolly just check behind and bluff catch/get one or two streets of value out of your hand against most opponents. if you're OOP, though, it's much tougher to play your hand as a bluff catcher because people are going to be betting into with much more polarized ranges. c/c with two streets left to play just seems like a disaster even on such a dry board. so your best bet is often to just b/f knowing that we don't wanna mess with his raising range.

it is A LOT easier to play our D range IP when we cbet than it is OOP, especially against calling stations and tricky regs and there are some really thin value B range hands (like A-high in JKDS's example) that are easier to play IP than OOP, but just thought i'd like to point out that there are a lot of spots where your advice isn't quite so straight forward.

number 3 also isn't as straight forward for two reasons. one is that although folding out less hands SEEMS like it means that we should cbet less, that also means that we can bet much much more of our B range hands (especially when we're IP and have a good chance of making it to showdown if we shut down after one street). again JKDS's hand is a good example as we can bet for value with our A-high assuming that he calls with lesser A-highs and all of his GSSD+ hands. we can also bet like middle pair type hands much more often (often for two streets of value) on wet boards against these kinds of opponents because they'll call with a huge range (A-high, bottom pair, middle pair no kickers, GSSD, FD, etc). so thin your cbetting with your D range and value bet like anything and everything a lot of times.

the other reason that this isn't necessarily correct is a little trickier. i actually just watched a video last night where WiltOnTilt was like all about double barrelling stations, which sounds like OMG you're bluffing a station!!!, but he's really a pretty big fan of it. i wouldn't worry about this one too much until you get a lot of practice playing against stations and really hone your skills on hand reading and putting villains on ranges and deciding how they're going to play those ranges. but there are a lot of players who will call one street with A-high or any draw or any pair but then give up to another barrel with anything but middle pair+. so you can cbet some boards with the intention of firing another barrel on turns that we have a lot of outs on. the emphasis is that we should have a lot of outs. QcJc on a Tc7d2d type board is a good example as we are gonna have a draw+overs when like half the deck lands on the turn.

i really can't stress enough, though, that i wouldn't get too hooked to this concept. maybe try it out a bit and see how you like it but don't make this another play in your auto-piloting repetoire. some other points are that stations think that EVERYONE who ever bets on boards like JJ2 or 863 with a 6 turn are always FOS and will never fold KJ even to 3 barrels, so it's actually kind of a rare spot where you get a believeable board, a gullible opponent and a hand with potential for you to profitable go for this sorta thing.

that was a lot longer than i meant for it to be, but those are some things to think about/rip me for for being completely wrong about

as for the second hand JKDS posted, i'd say just bet for value/protection. it sucks when he c/overshoves like shorties like to do but i don't think we have any other options.

if the board weren't so wet (we hate like half of the deck if we check to see a turn), then i like checking to induce/underrep. i feel like there are 4 types of boards against fish (and i'm assuming that any shorty that we don't have reads on is a station fish): wet boards, dry believable boards (like J83r), dry FOS boards (like 863r) and A-high boards.

i don't have a whole lot of time to go into detail on that, so i'll let you guys think for yourselves how station fish play their ranges completely differently on each of these boards.

As you guys know my knowledge in this subject is lacking at best, but i'm betting this flop 100%. Villian called pre so most weak aces should be out of his range. Board is so drawy that any of the aces villian called with should defenately be betting here. Thing is i don't like crafting our play in hand to max ev from ace small when small ace would likely fold pre and bet flop. IMO biggest things we have to worry about are QJ/KJ/TJ type hands, so i say fire the flop, and fire 2nd barrel on most turns to get ev from draws and fold out some jacks and possibly weak aces.