Continuation Bet (c-Bet)
A “continuation bet” or “c-bet” is a bet on the flop when you were the pre-flop raiser. In the context of a bluff, you need to know how often your opponent will fold and how big you should size your bets to get those folds.
Table 1 shows the percentage of time that you need to get folds in relation to your bet size. In general, you should bluff as small as you can to obtain folds from your opponent.
For example, if your opponent will fold to a ½ pot bet but call a smaller bet, you should bet ½ of the pot. However, if you are playing against a NIT or a weak-tight player, you can bet smaller. These players will fold to a small bet if they miss the flop or hit it too weakly to call a bet.
Table 1 How often you need villain to fold to a c-Bet for a bluff break even
Often, you will hear players say that a ½ pot bet only needs to work ⅓ of the time to break even. However, some loose players won’t fold to a ½ pot bet even when they miss the flop. There are also loose players who won’t fold to a ¾ pot bet when they hold second pair. In contrast, there are tight players who will fold to a ½ pot bet if they have second pair.
Therefore, the percentage of folds has to be considered together with:
1. The type of player you are playing against
2. The type of hands that you want your opponent to fold
Conclusion
The obvious HUD statistic that you need to examine is your opponent’s fold versus c-bet%. If this statistic is high, you should consider a c-bet bluff. However, you have to be aware that the average c-bet is more than ½ of the pot.
Therefore, even though a ½ pot bet only has to work 33% of the time to break even, villain’s fold versus c-bet% on the HUD might not reflect the fold to smaller sized c-bets.
One advantage of 3-bet pots is that a ½ pot c-bet will get a lot more respect than a ½ pot c-bet in a single-raised pot.