• Your opponent’s reaction to the bet gives you valuable information that you can use to play the rest of the hand.
• If you have the best hand, you protect it. In the above example, you’d hate to check, and allow an opponent holding J-10 to make a gutshot straight with a nine on the turn.
• If you have the best hand, it may be so difficult to extract value from a worse hand that you’d prefer your opponent to give up the pot immediately, and save you difficult decisions on later streets.
• If you have the worst hand, you may get your opponent to fold a hand that beats you. For example, your opponent might fold a small pocket pair that would have won at the showdown.

Importantly, you would also make a continuation bet when holding good hands, as part of a balanced overall strategy. If you only made continuation bets with weak hands, your opponents would quickly pick up on that, and you wouldn’t extract any value from your strong hands.

Let’s look at three scenarios, and decide whether a continuation bet is appropriate or not.

Scenario 1 – Multiway Pot in an Online SNG

You’re playing an online Sit & Go tournament with a $5.50 buy-in. It’s the second hand, and already it’s seven handed (two players went broke on the first hand with middle pair, as usual). Everyone has about the starting stack of 1500, apart from the chip leader who has 4500. The blinds are still 15/30. You’re in the cutoff holding As-Js. Two players limp in, and you raise to 90. The chip leader calls from the button, both blinds call, and both limpers call, making a pot of 360.

The flop is Qh-9h-5d, and the blinds and both limpers check to you. Should you:

• Bet all-in, for 1410?
• Bet the pot, 360?
• Bet about half the pot, 180?
• Check?

Answer

You’ve put yourself in a nasty situation. By raising to only 90 before the flop after two players had limped in, you gave all of your opponents good odds to call. You haven’t gained much information about their hands, and you haven’t narrowed down the field (hands like A-J do best in heads up pots). A more appropriate raise would have been to about 150.

This is not a good flop for your hand – you have no pair and no draw, and you’re up against multiple opponents. The typical $5.50 SNG player is loose and passive – not the sort of player you want to bluff.

Betting all-in is just moronic. Although this move is perhaps the most likely to make your opponents fold, it’s also the most likely to send you to the rail. You risk your tournament life to win a fairly small pot, with almost no chance to win the pot if called.

Betting a smaller amount offers a better risk-reward ratio, but still isn’t appropriate in this case. You have five opponents, and one of those is the chip leader, who has position on you. What’s more, the board is very draw-heavy, having possible straight and flush draws present.

If you bet, you’re extremely likely to be called. The chip leader will likely be playing loosely (as they should be with such a large stack), and hasn’t shown any weakness in the hand so far. What’s more, one of the blinds or limpers could easily be planning a check raise.

Now is not the time for a continuation bet. Check, and see what happens next.

Scenario 2 – Short Stacked in a Tournament

You’re playing a $75 online tournament. You started with 3000 chips, but recently took a big hit and now have only 700 left. You’re the shortest stack at the table, and the blinds are 100/200.

It’s folded to a tight player in middle position, who raises to 500. You call from the big blind holding the Ks-Qs.  The flop comes Js-9c-7d. Should you:

• Bet all-in for 200
• Check

Answer

You could have avoided having to make this decision by simply raising all-in before the flop. Nevertheless, you’ve actually manoeuvred yourself into a situation where you’re contemplating making a special kind of continuation bet known as a ‘stop and go’.

Your hand is stronger than it appears. You have two overcards to the board, which could be as many as six outs. You also have a gutshot straight draw, giving you four cards to the nuts. Your equity against a typical opponent’s range of hands is certainly good enough to continue.

Should you check, and then call your opponent’s bet (or hope to check it down)? No, because to win the pot that way you’d have to show down the best hand.

If you bet, most opponents will call instantly, knowing that their pot odds are too good to make folding an option. However, occasionally you’ll run into a player who doesn’t think on that level, and you give them the chance to make a very big mistake by folding.

That’s a ‘stop and go’. Instead of raising all-in preflop, you just call, and then make a continuation bet for the rest of your stack on the flop. You give your opponent the chance to make a mistake by folding to your bet. And bet is certainly what you should do here.

Scenario 3 – Heads up in a Cash Game

You’re playing $5/$10 No Limit Hold’em on the internet. The table is six-handed, and you’ve recently bought in for the maximum $1000. Under the gun, you pick up Kh-Kd and raise to $40. Only the button, who has a deep stack, calls your raise. The flop comes Ad-10s-7c. Should you:

• Bet $250
• Bet $60
• Bet $10
• Check

Answer

This is a difficult decision, and a horrible situation to find yourself in – but one that simply cannot be avoided.
Let’s consider the alternatives. Betting $250 is risking too much to win a pot of only $80, especially when your hand is this vulnerable. Likewise, betting $10 won’t accomplish anything – you’ll be laying your opponent 9-1, so you won’t have much fold equity, and you won’t gain any information about their hand if they call or raise.

So what about checking? It seems reasonable, as you’re trying to keep the pot small with a marginal hand. Also, you’re in the type of situation where you’re either way ahead and unlikely to be outdrawn (if your opponent has missed the flop) or way behind and unlikely to catch up (if they have an ace or better).

Many good players would check. However, I think that’s wrong. To see why, think about how you will respond to your opponent’s next action. If they bet, you can’t automatically fold – they could be betting with no hand, simply because you’ve shown weakness. At the same time, calling their bet is unappealing, because they could so easily have an ace to beat you and you’ll be passively paying off your opponent. Raising? That’s ugly too, because often you’ll be committing a large portion of your stack with no information about what your opponent holds.

What if you check and your opponent checks behind? Then you’ve set yourself up for the exact same difficult decision on the next street.

If you bet $60, you save yourself from such a quandary. If you have the best hand, you’ll usually win the pot immediately. If you have the worst hand, you’ll usually be called or raised. Your decisions later in the hand become much simpler, because the bet has given you information about where you stand. It might not feel very comfortable, but I believe the $60 bet is the best option here.

Summary

Many players make continuation bets automatically, without considering the texture of the flop or what their opponents might hold. However, I hope this brief quiz has shown that continuation bets are not automatic, and that the decision whether to bet or not is often quite complex.

Don’t be a continuation-betting robot. Take your time, consider all of your options, and the winning will take care of itself.