Continuation Betting | Probe Betting

Poker Tips: Betting Strategy

The first thing to remember when betting is you want to do the best that you can to conceal the strength of your hand while using your bets to discover information about the hands held by your opponents. When you pick up monster hands you want to find the fine line between getting enough action to profit from the situation and protecting the hand enough to keep it away from a multiway pot. For example, if you pick up pocket aces you want to narrow the field as much as possible because the value and winning percentage of aces and other big pocket pair depreciates the more poker players involve themselves in that particular pot.

When raising preflop, you do not want to raise based on the strength of your hand but raise based on your position, the amount of poker players that already called and the style you are currently playing. Raises should be independent from your individual hand, you should have in your head a list of hands that you consider raising hands and play them accordingly using perhaps the standard betting strategy below. Keep in mind that pre-flop raising is typically described in multiples of the big blind for example, you pick up pocket 8s under the gun and the blinds are 10/20 and you raise 3x the big blind making it 60 to play.

In early position, your raise should be somewhere between 3-5 times the big blind and this number should be mixed up at random to keep other poker players from being able to easily put you on a short range of hands. You don't want your opponents to be able to say "He raises 3.5x the big blind every time he gets aces or kings." Your raises need to vary and ocassionally, perhaps 15-20% of the time you should simply just call with raising hands in early position just to mix up your play and keep your opponents guessing. If the poker player under the gun limps in they are indicating a strong hand and typically if poker players enter the pot with a call you should increase your raise to a little bit higher, something like 4-6x because a 3x raise is easily callable by a poker player that already invested 1/3 of that amount in the pot.

In middle position, your raising should be a little bit bigger you could perhaps stay in the 3-5x range as those are the standard raising ranges but I'd probably start at 3.5-4x. Again if a poker player or two enters the pot before you and you still want to raise the pot your raise needs to be a large enough amount to price them out of the pot, 3-4x may not be enough to drive them out since they already invested chips in the pot. You also should call with raising hands a percentage of the time just to keep opponents guessing.

In late position, the raising range is just about the same I would probably adjust the range to 4-5x the big blind, but if its folded around to you in late position you could still implement a 3 or 3.5x raise. Limping in with big hands in late position is advised at random for play mix-up.

When the pot is raised before you act and you hold what you consider a raising hand, you need to assess what kind of hand you have if its a low-ranking or high-ranking raising hand. For example, in most cases pocket aces will be your best raising hand and for this example lets say Q-Js is your worst raising hand. You are in late position and the poker player 2nd to act raises 3x the big blind and it folds around to you. You have Q-Js but calling a raise is completely different than raising yourself.

Since the first poker player is in early position and he/she raised they are representing a very strong hand so you should consider folding however, if you do decide to call you will have position the rest of the hand against this poker player but they will likely bet after the flop regardless if the flop hits their hand. In all honesty, if you make the call to continue you need to hit the flop very hard perhaps an open-ended straight draw and/or flush draw maybe add in a pair because it may be good. The only other kind of flop that you may feel safe against would be a flop like J-4-2 because an unpaired hand is probably no good right now, a common hand like A-K is no good at this point and its unlikely your opponent raised with fours or deuces.

The times that you re-raise over the top of a raise pre-flop would be when you have a big hand such as: A-A, K-K, Q-Q, A-Ks, J-J. If you are already a super-aggressive poker player re-raising with any of your raising hands may be an option however that is not advised unless you want to risk your entire stack because in some cases the original raiser will push all-in over the top if they were serious about their original raise.

Another common strategy is adding middle pocket pairs like 7-7 up to 10-10 in an attempt to push out two unpaired high cards that were raised before your turn to act. With pocket pairs, another smart strategy is to call a raise and a perform a strategy I refer to "set or die" which means if you don't flop a set you let the hand go, but if you hit your set you hit huge and will likely get paid off big time.

Now that you have a nice boost to your poker game try it out at one of the top poker rooms!
Top U.S. Online Poker Room (Full Tilt Poker) | Top Non-U.S. Online Poker Room (Titan Poker)

Continuation Betting

Now that you have a firm grasp of pre-flop betting strategy its time to move on to betting strategy after the flop. We will begin with the most common post-flop betting strategy called the continuation bet. This strategy is utilized when you were the original raiser pre-flop and you follow up with a raise post-flop regardless of what comes out, which often times will win you an uncontested pot. Let's take a look at two examples: the first the poker player does not use a continuation bet, the second the poker player uses the continuation bet.

Example 1: You are second to act at a full table and you pick up A-Ks. It's folded to you and you raise 3x the big blind and get called by the button and the rest of the poker players fold. The flop comes 9-J-3 which misses your hand so you check. The button bets and you fold.

Before we get into the example of using the continuation bet, when you make this bet the bet size should in the ballpark of 1/2 of the pot which should be sometimes lower, higher or exactly to avoid opponents reading your betting patterns. So if blinds are 10/20 and you raised to 60 making the pot 90 and got called for another 60 then entering the flop the pot will be 150. This means your continuation bet should be around 75. Sometimes your bet should be 60 other times 90 or any amount in between. You do not need a method for deciding when to mix up the bet, just do it at random as much as possible do not have any determining factor for when you change the standard size.

Example 2: You are second to act at a full table and you pick up A-Ks. It's folded to you and you raise 3.5x the big blind and get called by one behind the button with the dealer and blinds folding after. The flop comes J-J-3, which like example 1 misses your hand. Since in this example blinds are at 10/20 and you raised to 70 and got called by one poker player making the pot 170 you decide to make a continuation bet of 85. Your opponents thinks for a moment and throws away his hand and you take the pot.

If you decide to make a continuation bet, the amount of the bet outside of varying your range should be the same whether or not you hit the flop. If you get called and you miss on the turn, this is the point where you could either fire another bullet or check then fold if your opponent bets. The only time you should increase your bet size is if you want to price out drawing hands if you hit an ace or king and there are two suited or two straighted cards on the board. Let's say you made your normal raise with A-Ks and got called by one poker player and the flop comes out: As-9s-Jc. There are two straighted and two suited cards on the board right now. Let's analyze this situation further and think about what kind of hands your opponents one behind the button might call with. The following hands have straight draws: Q-K, Q-10, K-10, 7-8, 8-10, 7-10. Any of those hands suited or any other hand including two spades also has a flush draw. The first three hands listed are hands that your opponent could have possibly called with, especially if they were suited so it is quite likely that they have a draw.

For the example, lets say their actual holding is Q-10s giving them an open-ended straight draw and the 2nd nut flush draw (can only lose to the king-high flush since the ace is on the board) which actually is a monster board. They are 1-to-4 to hit their flush twice so they have 2-1 odds of hitting their flush meaning that even a pot sized bet gives them the proper odds to call. In this case, I would bet about 1.5x the pot which in a pot of 170 would be 255. You still don't know what your opponent has so it is also possible that you believe they hold a hand like A-Q or A-J, which the latter at this point has you beat with two pair. If you get called, you need to assess the turn card and bet accordingly. If a spade or a scare card like a ten or queen comes on the turn, I would consider firing another bullet; this time around the size of the pot (this is an aggressive move and it could be played many ways, since your opponent is chasing his call of your continuation bet was a theoretic mistake and you hope to continue inducing mistakes as he hopelessly chases his monster draw while being priced out).

What actually happened in this example is your continuation bet is called and the turn comes 2h, a beautiful turn card for you as its very unlikely to have helped your opponent. You bet the pot and get called again, at this point you're putting your opponent on A-J or just a very aggressive chaser. The river comes Qd giving him middle pair, quite a scare card for you now that three to a straight are out there. K-10, Q-J, A-J, A-Q, A-9, A-2 plus any pocket pair that setted now have you beat. You bet the pot again and get called and win the pot, you induced three mathematical mistakes from your opponent and were rewarded for it. Moral of the story - Don't give free cards to chasers because they'll miss more often than they hit even though realistically with 15 outs twice they may hit a little more than just a traditional straight or flush draw.

Now that you have a nice boost to your poker game try it out at one of the top poker rooms!
Top U.S. Online Poker Room (Full Tilt Poker) | Top Non-U.S. Online Poker Room (Titan Poker)

(Top)

Probe (aka Feeler) Betting

Probe betting is a form of post-flop betting that is used to obtain information about your opponents. It is useful if you entered the pot as either a raiser or called a raise and hit the flop in some form but think your opponent may have gotten a better chunk of the flop and you want to see how strongly they hit. Probe bets should be in the range of 1/3 of the pot and can go all the way up to slightly under half the pot but should not go any higher because you don't want to invest too much in the pot when these are the kind of bets you typically get away from. Below is an example to demonstrate this technique.

Example 1: Blinds are 10/20 and you are in middle position with Q-Js. The poker player under the gun raises it up to 60 and it folds around to you and you call. The big blind also calls making the pot at this point 190. The flop comes A-Q-7, the big blind checks as does the original raiser. This is a great opportunity to see if your middle pair is any good by using a probe bet. You bet around 70 here which is a bit higher than 1/3 of the pot. The big blind reraises to 240 and the original raiser folds. At this point, you are being told by the big blind's reraise that you are beat and you should fold.

Now to stress this concept a little more lets follow an example where your probe bet is simply called and you play out the rest of the hand until showdown to see how to continue your play after your post-flop feeler is called instead of raised.

Example 2: Blinds are 20/40 and you are on the button with K-Q. The table folds to a poker player in middle position who raises to 120 and you elect to call; the rest of the table folds. The flop comes Q-8-A and the original raiser checks. The pot at this point is 300 so your bet should be around 100. Since you have been making a lot of probe bets lately, poker players may be able to read your smaller bets as indicating weaker holdings so at times you should randomly increase this bet to a bet more closely resembling a continuation bet. With that said, you take my advice and raise to 150 which is exactly half the pot. You get called by the original raiser, which should indicates to you that they hit something on the board or hold a pocket pair and aren't convinced you have them beat yet. The turn reveals a 9 and again the original raiser checks the action to you. Regardless of your post-flop bet amount, you should follow up with another half-pot sized bet (this theory is very clearly and professionally explained in Harrington on Hold'em Volume 1). You bet half the pot again and get called again. The river reveals a deuce which didn't help either poker player. The original raiser checks for the third time and you have a lot of options here. There are quite a lot of options here: you could bet half the pot yet again, you could amp it up to put the pressure on your opponent by betting the entire pot or you could check and hope your pair of queens is good. At this point, your opponents play seems to resemble a weak ace or an ace that your opponent is unsure of for whatever reason or perhaps a similar holding to your own. You decide to see your opponent out and check, he shows Q-J and you take the pot with your superior kicker.

Feeler/Probe bets are a great way to get information on your opponent's hand without risking too many of your own chips to find out. Once the turn comes out, the best way to play your hand from there may vary as well as how you should continue to bet. Remember, if you think you're ahead and have the best hand you need to bet to prevent your opponent from catching a free card that beats you. Both examples above showed you probe betting with mid-pair and you want to avoid using probe bets in the same situation every time like "I probe bet every time I hit mid-pair and its checked to me." You should mix up the feeler amount often to keep opponents from figuring out the reasoning for the smaller bet, at times your probe bet should be the size of a continuation bet or somewhere in between.

Now that you have a decent grasp of post-flop betting strategy its time for you to move on to the miscellaneous strategy section of the site where we will discuss other beginner-to-intermediate strategy such as playing "trap" hands like K-Q, Q-J, K-J and A-10. Plus many other great strategies.

If you feel this short tutorial on betting was not sufficient enough for your learning needs check out the great resources below. Harrington on Hold'Em is the best poker book I've ever read and it explains the concepts of continuation betting, probe betting and a load more of expert poker strategy. Pick up your very own copy below from Mega-Poker through Amazon.

Now that you have a nice boost to your poker game try it out at one of the top poker rooms!
Top U.S. Online Poker Room (Full Tilt Poker) | Top Non-U.S. Online Poker Room (Titan Poker)

(Top)