Dissecting Poker: Art of C-betting

A note about balanced ranges

You should always balance your range in order to yield the highest rate of return for any given situation.
Therefore you should not be taking any line 100% of the time and should constantly be adjusting when players make adjustments to you.

Heads Up in Position

Board texture - how coordinated a flop is.
Board texture is your primary consideration when deciding whether or not to c-bet. The more coordinated a board is the less likely you should c-bet without a good hand or one that has outs to improve.
Coordination is really a misnomer. You should not just look at the board itself, but rather how the board connects with your opponents' range and the likelihood of him playing back at you.
For example, you raise in the CO with QJo, the button calls and the blinds fold. The flop comes down 863 two clubs. If the button is very loose pre-flop but is relatively passive post-flop then a c-bet is correct. If the villain plays well and is likely to float or raise the flop then check/folding is correct.
As a general guide line though, the less combination of hands that hit the flop the more often you should c-bet and vice versa.
Think K22r as oppose to 987tt.

Checking Behind

Hand strength is relative in poker.
Sometimes it is better to give a free card that might cost you the hand in order to control the size of the pot.

Checking Behind Example

You are playing 200nl with $200 stacks. You open AJcc to $7 in the CO and a good aggressive thinking player calls you in the BB. The flop is JdTh9h with $17 in the pot.
You very likely have the best hand and there are a lot of potential draws that could come on the turn.
You should obviously bet to protect your hand right? WRONG!
Often you will win the pot right there, but when raised, you are going to be in a very tough situation.
On this board and in a large pot your hand is relatively weak.
Either you are slightly ahead of his big draw or are way behind to an already made hand.
Since his draws have good equity against your holding and his made hands have you crushed, your overall equity is very poor.
With so much money left to bet, playing a big pot here is a bad idea.
By far the best play on this flop is to simply check behind. Yes, occasionally the free card is going to cost you the SMALL pot.
This is not a big mistake.
Getting 100bb in the middle with poor equity is.

Stack Sizes

Stack sizes are the key criteria.
The shorter the stacks, the weaker the hands you can bet, vice versa for deeper stacks.
With 20bb stacks, not betting the flop would indeed be a huge mistake.

Delayed C-betting

Delayed c-betting is waiting till a later street to fire a continuation bet.
This should be done when there is a strong likelihood of a check/raise, your opponent will interpret this for a marginal made hand and give up on the pot, you want to be deceptive with a draw, and or balance your checking behind range so that it is not one dimensional.

Dealing with Leads into the PFR

We should call when the likelihood that our opponent is bluffing is high and our hand is strong enough to induce bluffs.
We should also be calling to control the pot size.
We should raise with hands that we want to build a big pot with, semi-bluffs, and with junk when we think that our opponents are weak.
We should be folding on very coordinated boards when the likelihood of a bet/three bet is high or our fold equity is small.
Again, board texture is paramount.
We should also be folding against good players in spots where we do not have enough information to make accurate assumptions about their range.

Dealing with a Check/Raise

We should be folding with most hands that do not have any value, unless we think the opponent is raising lightly and we are looking to re-bluff him later in the hand.
We should be calling with a very wide range. It should include marginal hands, monsters, and sometimes even air.
In my opinion, calling with a wide range of hands is the most effective way to adequately balance your flop range.
We should be raising hands that we want to build a big pot with. This is mostly done against players who call too much and are weaker players in general. Do not get tricky against a calling station. Play your hands for value and let them make their favorite mistake: calling too much.
We should also be raising against players who are check/raising very lightly and will fold their hand if raised.

Heads Up and Out of Position

Since we are going to be giving up often on coordinated flops, we should sometimes be check/raising our strong draws, our made hands, and occasionally a bluff or two.
Also, we can check/call our marginal made hands, which should induce bluffs from aggressive opponents.
Lastly we have the weak lead
This has two primary purposes

Dealing with a raise when you hold nothing.
Folding is usually the best play however, re-buffing is a nice option.
Board texture is paramount. When players raise innocuous board, they are representing a very narrow range and re-bluffing is sometimes best.

Multi-way and In and Out of Position

Board texture, board texture, board texture.
There are more hands involved so more boards are going to connect.
As a general rule, you should be c-betting less with hands that have no value.
Out of position you should be balancing your range with check/raises and check/calls as exemplified in other slides.

Dissecting Poker