Never C-betting with air.
 

How profitable is it if you only ever Cbet when you flop a pair or draw. Do you really need to be c-betting with air some of the time to be profitable?

I suppose the easy answer is yes, but how much is it going to hurt you if you dont?

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

not Cbetting is 0EV. so we are only interested in Cbetting air if it is higher than 0EV.

we can quickly calculate that:

people miss flops 2/3 of the time. so if you make a Potsized bet when you miss, (assuming they fold if they miss and that if called you are drawing dead and shutdown) it will have to work 50% of the time to break even. they will fold 66% of the time because they have also missed.

so you can see that it is +EV.

this really is the simplest way of thinking about it, you can go into alot more detail about it, but this will suffice imo

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

I have found that cbetting is almost always the right thing to do. If you get selective, good players will notice, but If you come out with a strong (and probably slightly uncomfortable bet for you) bet, chances are EVEN IF THEY HAVE NOTHING they will fold if they don't hit a good pair. Do this especially with people that like to call and see alot of flops. If you lose, so what... you'll win the next three.

btw. If you cbet, you find out where you are. If you don't, you have no idea and you're giving power to the opponent. No free cards!

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

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not Cbetting is 0EV.

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No, folding is worth 0. Checking does not mean you lose the pot. Comparing a continuation bet with folding will strongly bias your analysis in favor of making continuation bets, even when they are less profitable than the alternatives.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

You can miss the flop with AQ/AK/KQ and still be ahead in the hand. In order for c-bets to be most effective you should vary your c-bets somewhat. check call, check fold, raise, re raise. Depending on your opponents and if you hit or miss the flop. The individual play of that hand to extract the most amount of money for that hand and the ones that proceed it.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

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people miss flops 2/3 of the time. so if you make a Potsized bet when you miss, (assuming they fold if they miss and that if called you are drawing dead and shutdown) it will have to work 50% of the time to break even. they will fold 66% of the time because they have also missed.


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This assumes that your opponent has a more or less random hand. Given the preflop action, you might be able to put your opponent on a hand range that is much more likely to have hit certain flops.

You also need to not c-bet some of the times that you miss to disguise those times when it might be correct to slow play a hand.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

[ QUOTE ]
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not Cbetting is 0EV.

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No, folding is worth 0. Checking does not mean you lose the pot. Comparing a continuation bet with folding will strongly bias your analysis in favor of making continuation bets, even when they are less profitable than the alternatives.

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Folding is deffinatly worth 0EV, however checking is a different story. Checking could actually be close to -EV. If you will miss the flop 2/3 of the time with AK/AQ/KQ etc and your opponent will also miss the flop with two unpaired cards 2/3 of the time then checking when both have missed may be -EV. If you can expect your opponent to fold 2 out of 3 flops and you only bet when you hit (1/3) and check the rest you will be missing opportunities to pick up the pot. Say it is a 1-2 NL game and you raise to 10 out of the SB and the BB calls so the pot is 20. You will both miss the flop 2/3 times and you will both hit 1/3 of the time, so the pot is really split up like this: $13 is what you will be fighting for when you both miss and $7 is what you fight for when you both hit. If you both miss and it goes check check(assuming you are not going for a check-raise) then the bigger pot($13) will go to whichever one of your hands holds up or improves in the end. Essentially you are giving your opponent a chance to catch up, or perhaps to win with a better A high or something. If you give up the pot by checking it could be a -$13 EV rather than a 0EV. This is of course assuming your opponent folds when he misses and is a pretty simplified version but in this case checking could actually be worth -EV sometimes. And times that is could be worth +EV would be checking to induce a bluff or checking to as a slowplay.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

In a random situation, say you have KQs on the button and it is folded around to you. You make a standard 4x raise. One of the blinds calls with A10. Technically they are ahead. Flop is all rags or say it is JJ or something. If you have varied up your c-bets so that you don't do it automatically and have shown that you will lead out with a big hand that A10 goes into the muck just about every time. You do have to show that you are willing to c-bet without a piece though from time to time with AQ/AK or a small or medium pocket pair with overs. You don't want people climbing over top of each other to get at you but at the same time you don't want people to fold out to you because you only c-bet when you connect with the flop.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

dont ever always do anything. dont c-bet every time you whiff. dont check every time you whiff. dont c-bet every time you flop a pair or draw.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

You can use pokerstove to help you decide when to c-bet. For example if you put an opponent on a range of say 99-AA, AK, AQ, then you probably don't want to c-bet with a whiffed AK if there is a Q on the flop.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
not Cbetting is 0EV.

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No, folding is worth 0. Checking does not mean you lose the pot. Comparing a continuation bet with folding will strongly bias your analysis in favor of making continuation bets, even when they are less profitable than the alternatives.

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Folding is deffinatly worth 0EV, however checking is a different story. Checking could actually be close to -EV.

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Checking can never have a lower EV than folding. The strategy of checking with plans of not putting in any future bets (that is, checking behind on future streets if checked to and folding to any bet) dominates the strategy of folding, so one should obviously never just fold if checked to on the flop. Folding has an EV of O. Checking with plans of not putting in any future bets into the pot must be worth at least 0. In fact, it is worth slightly more because you sometimes win when the pot is checked down all the way.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

I think the answer lies in your opponents strategy/tendencies. For the sake of simplicity lets assume that you have opened from the field for a raise and called only by the BB.

Assume now that on the flop you employ the strategy of betting all your "made hands" (1 pair or better including all PPs), and checking the rest (high card only hands).
Against the ultimate calling station (who's only action is to call), you will show a profit, and you can continue to value bet the turn and river based on the strength of your hand.
Against the rock who only gives further action when he hits hard, you may show a small profit due to your position in later betting rounds, but you lose a HEAP of value by not claiming pots when both of you miss.
Against the good player who is able to adjust to your strategy, you will get crushed. If you divide your range into two distinct groups with your flop action, you give the thinking opponent the chance to play perfectly vs your ranges. This turns what should be a +ev situation into a huge -ev situation.

So i think the bottom line here is: Before you consider employing any grossly unbalanced strategy, first make sure your opponents have no idea how to play poker!

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

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Against the ultimate calling station

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hey, thats me.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

There is no easy answer to this since a lot of your play will depend on how your opponent plays. And even if you are heads up against an opponent who has no observational skills at all, the other 7 players may be intently watching you.

Only c-betting with something against a good opponent is going to be unprofitable very quickly.

And keep this in mind. Even against a calling station that will call every single c-bet you make, there are times, especially if you are raising narrow, that you will both have air but you will have better air.

In holdem, "never" is usually always a bad path to go down.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

The question is, what do you define as air.

As one example, you have AsKd raise it preflop buttom calls, flop comes 2h 2d 3s.

You contbet he folds.

Did you made your contbet with air?
Definitely not, cause you had the best hand relatively sure in this scenario.

We can conclude, that everytime you make a contbet and the other guy folds you just gain the amount of the pot you wouldnt get if you just check and let him in the pot.

The conclusion of it is, that it is definitely better to contbet with air if you are absolute behind his whole range, but have enough equity, that he will fold a lot of hands, against which you are already behind.

Re: Never C-betting with air.
 

Continuation bets on flops that you do not connect on make sense because you showed strength preflop. If you fail to bet post-flop, you have abruptly changed your behavior. I think most good players bet, regardless of whether they hit or miss, 60-90% of the time they bet preflop. If they only hit a pair or better 33% of the time, then the extra 27%-57% comes from pocket pairs, ace high/king high bets, semi-bluffs, and bluffs. The percentage is probably even higher because people don't bet all the time when they connected on a flop. Trying to come up with some rule of when and exactly how much to c-bet in a vaccuum doesn't make sense. Good players take image, their opponent's aggressiveness, board texture, the number of players in the pot, the likelihood of someone slowplaying, opponent's card ranges etc. into consideration before betting out. In general, I think most players bet 60-90% of the total times they bet preflop on average.