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Modern and old flop continuation bet aspects

Modern is the future, but old, or some of its aspects, can become the new modern.

Like everything, the theory of poker evolves, but not always in a linear way.

Poker is a game of uncertainty in combination with randomness (luck?) and logic. The nature of the game gives rise to many misconceptions, myths and, as a result, often a lot of confusion.

But enough with philosophy, to the topic…

A continuation bet is when the aggressor (the one who made the last bet/raise on the previous street) continues by betting on the following street (self-explained definition).

In this article, we will focus on flop c-betting in position (ip) and single raised pots (srp). In other words: the hero is the pre-flop aggressor, i.e. open raises pre-flop, and the villain calls, being the first to act post-flop out of position (oop). **And we don’t allow him to donk bet in this analysis, so he checks to us.

According to the old school theory of poker, a bet can be classified as value, bluff (or semi-bluff).

  • A value-bet is a bet which on average tends to make profit because the villain calls with a worse hand.
  • A bluff is a bet which makes money because the villain  folds on average a better hand.
  • Semi-bluff is something in between a value-bet and a bluff.

For a particular holding/flop hand strength/equity, each of these three flavors of bets can change to another during the progress of a hand, i.e a flop value bet can turn into a  turn bluff (assuming that we also bet on the turn) or vice-versa.

In the early days of online poker,

a good c-bet strategy would often be enough to make a player a winner. The level of difficulty was a lot lower than the one we face nowadays at micro stakes.

Just ten years ago, a c-bet bluff, one of the simplest and most basic bluffs, would have been considered a pretty advanced strategy,

I bet without a made hand and the villain folds (with some frequency)…and I take the pot!!… How exciting!!!

In today’s game,

a solid c-bet strategy is mandatory if one wishes to survive in medium and high-stakes games.

The theory has been expanded (in good and bad ways), simulators are dominating the analysis and implementation of the plays, especially at high-stakes;however,  a deep understanding of the spot is still necessary if one wants to have an edge over his opponents.

But let’s review the old and new approaches to flop c-bets through an example:.

Hero opens from the BTN x2.5bb and BB calls. The flop comes As5d2d.

Assuming that the villain is an unknown player with 100bb stack, what is the frequency that we should be c-betting this board? What is the optimal bet size? What should we do vs a flop check-raise? What is the potential of our holding? Do we have a plan for future streets?

As you can see the answer is not that straightforward. Here, we will examine the betting part of the problem (rather than how to continue vs further aggression or on future streets).

The first step is to define the ranges of the pre-flop aggressor and the defender.

For different ranges, the betting strategy changes dramatically. Knowing our Villain’s range is therefore crucial.

A strong player should be able to play for the same scenario a variety of ranges.

For this example, we will assume an approximately 50% opening range for the BTN and a 38% defending range by cold calling for the BB. Notice, that the BB’s range is smaller, however without the top part of the deck.

The reason is that we have assumed that they have also a pre-flop 3bet, mostly linear, range, which consists of strong hands (TT+,AJo+, TJs+, ATs+), some hands of medium strength (A2s-A5s), and some random weaker hands at a small frequency (i.e Q3s-Q6s etc).  This leaves a capped cold calling range for the BB.

*In this scenario we will not use a mixed pre-flop strategy, to keep things simpler and to make the concepts under discussion clearer.   

The next step is to decide on the betting size (one or more?). This is going to produce a specific optimal c-bet strategy vs a given opponent (and its optimal defend strategy counterpart).

We have run the above spot in GTO+ for two different betting strategies.

In figure 1, we considered a fixed betting size for the flop (turn and river) of 55%. Although we are interested in the flop c-betting here, it should be mentioned that the solution is affected from the betting strategies of future streets (i.e. the expected value (EV) on the flop at the equilibrium).

*Equilibrium is the point where, for a given set of restrictions and bet sizing, both players make the maximum profit that is possible (when the other plays a perfect game). Any deviation from the strategy will open the opportunity to exploitation (i.e. the other player can increase his EV).

One can see that the recommended c-bet frequency for the BTN is around 41% and the EV is 3.02.

The number 3.02 means that on average if the BTN follows this strategy vs a perfect opponent, should get 3.02 out of 5 (where 5 is the size of the pot before the c-bet). The blue part of the chart includes the combos which the hero should be betting, and the green part of the chart are the combos which the hero should be checking.

In modern poker the nature (classification) of the bet in terms of value or bluff is outdated.

Humans, due to the use of language, like to give names to objects and actions. On the other hand, the language of simulators is numbers. Maths dominates the game theory.

Therefore, what matters is the EV of an action.

On a deeper level, the actual holding is not that important. At the end of the day, the EV of a hero’s range vs a villain’s range is going to be determined by the distribution of betting and checking frequencies for each particular combo in the range.

In addition, the simulator likes to mix the betting and checking frequencies with a different ratio for each combo.

Is this something new?

Well, in old school poker, Harrington would check his watch and decide if he would bet or check. The old is modern again but now is defined in a more precise way.

Mix strategy is superior in comparison to flat strategy. One shouldn’t always do the same in the same scenario in poker!!!

But let’s examine something relatively modern. The 33% pot size bet. What if one doesn’t have a standard betting size on the flop (and/or turn and river), but uses a variety of sizing? Is the EV going to change, keeping all the other parameters the same?

In Figure 2, one can see the results, as obtained by the use of GTO+, regarding the flop c-betting, assuming that the hero can use 2 bet sizing for the flop, 33% and 66% (and 2 bet sizings for the turn – but here we will discuss only the flop).

Firstly, we observe that the hero in this scenario should be betting more than previously (total recommended c-bet frequency around 64%).

This is expected, since the smaller we bet, the less fold equity we need to make profit with hands with less equity (vs Villain’s range). Therefore combos with smaller equity can  now be bets.

The second important observation, is that although we give both bet sizing options to the simulator (one large and one small) it almost exclusively chooses the smaller one (and as a result a higher betting frequency).

However, there is a third important observation. The total EV of this strategy is 3.06 or just 0.04/5 higher in comparison to the previous strategy (with one fixed bet).

**For different parameters/assumptions this difference might be larger.

Is the modern better in this scenario or not?

Again, the answer is not straightforward.

When the population doesn’t know how to play vs 1/3 PSB, one could definitely argue that this sizing would work better. But today, although this bet sizing is kind of new, it is also kind of common (or at least more common than it used to be 2 years ago).

Moreover, there are still many misconceptions regarding smaller bets. Because the simulator chooses the smaller sizing this doesn’t necessarily mean that  the EV is going to be that different in comparison to a strategy with a larger betting size and a smaller total c-bet frequency (*for this board texture and pre-flop ranges it isn’t).

Would it work better vs a recreational player? No, it wouldn’t. A strategy where one bets large for value vs the average recreational player (even if he selects a smaller size for this bluffs) it produces a dramatically higher EV.  The old school 75% PSB is superior in this case.

At the end of the day, old school was simpler, easier to implement, for this spot, and with similar expected results when in an equilibrium (although the concept of equilibrium was unknown and nobody would play close to it, but this is another discussion).

However, in today’s games one should be equipped with many weapons in his repertoire. If our opponent doesn’t know how to defend vs smaller bets, then we should attack with this strategy. If he doesn’t know how to play vs larger bets, then, even if in some cases a smaller bet sizing strategy could produce a slightly higher EV, we should use larger bets.

On the other hand, we should be able to defend from a variety of betting strategies with good accuracy ourselves if it is to survive vs tough opponents.

But there isn’t a shortcut. The magic bet size which can make one a winner fast, (the dark side of the force),  doesn’t exist.

Things have become a little more complicated in modern poker. One has more tools to work with, and at the end of the day more opportunities to exploit Vvillains, and especially the ones who are unaware of the different shades of grey!!

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