When not to make a continuation bet

Excellent OP and thread.

You have learned a valuable lesson and shared it with us, namely that you can't ALWAYS fire out a continuation bet or you will be quickly losing more than the amount necessary to make them profitable if you are playing with anything other than mindless donks. This would be the perfect spot to check behind. To make a non-readable continuation bet here you have to pot-bet because of the draw heavy board. It has to appear you are pushing out draws or you might as well just put your cards face up and hand over your money.

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You have learned a valuable lesson and shared it with us, namely that you can't ALWAYS fire out a continuation bet or you will be quickly losing more than the amount necessary to make them profitable if you are playing with anything other than mindless donks. This would be the perfect spot to check behind. To make a non-readable continuation bet here you have to pot-bet because of the draw heavy board. It has to appear you are pushing out draws or you might as well just put your cards face up and hand over your money.

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I don't entirely agree with this statement either. How often is the villain actually going to have a hand and check-raise all-in versus perhaps calling or even reraising a normal amount? If the villain had chosen a different line then the CB is definitely right here. You want to inflate the pot a little bit so you're taking down something significant when you win it. I would still fire out a continuation bet on this flop almost every time and I'm very rarely using full pot-sized continuation bets. Why risk a full pot sized bet when a 2/3 size bet accomplishes the same thing in most cases? If I fire out with a 2/3 pot bet and win 1/3 times I'm breaking even. If I win it 2/3 times I'm ahead. This simple concept means I should almost always be firing out with a continuation bet as the preflop raiser. There are definitely exceptions to this, but I don't think that this post indicates that hero shouldn't have bet out on that flop. He absolutely should have! It's just bad luck that he ran into a c/r all in from AA here. Do you really think that you're running into this hand often enough to stop firing out a bet in this spot? What about the possibility that villain is holdin TT-QQ and the K on board scares him into folding? Those are all plausible holdings for someone calling a raise preflop.

Unless you have a good read that your opponent has AK, KK or AA I feel that not betting here is wrong. You may just get him to lay down a better hand and win it anyway.

As long as you are also continuation betting when you flop big hands, it is quite profitable for you to do so against a guy who will make such a large check-raise all in. Even if you don't take it down without a fight often enough to make it +EV as a bluff, the times that you actually have a hand and take Villain's stack more than cover the difference.

I am not saying a continuation bet is wrong here, or -EV, I'm just saying that you can't do it every time with thinking players. Harrington agrees, see HOH2. This seems to be as good a spot as any to mix it up and not continue.

The point is that if you do it every time, and I pick up on it, I will just reraise you and you will almost NEVER win with a continuation bet, meaning they are -EV. Of course you can mix up a continuation bet (in appearance) when you actually have a hand and that may cover some of the difference, but I think the proper way to go is to mix it all up. Sometimes continue w/ nothing. Sometimes check w/ nothin. Sometimes continue w/ hand. Sometimes check w/ hand. Reads matter.

By the way, if you fire out anything less than a full pot bet on this board, I'm calling and leading out the turn with almost any two assuming I have a decent stack.

By "you," I mean the average PP player, not YOU. It would depend on the player, having a decent read, my stack, etc. And probably not "almost any two" but I am very often calling and leading out depending on the board.

[elmitchbo]

i disagree. i think by firing into 'thinking players' is exactly how you come up with a big score. i make 3 continuation bets and take down the pot. now i'm ahead, and if the next 2 times i get raised and i have to fold that's ok. at that point i've still picked up more chips than i've lost and i've set the up the move, so the third time someone rasies my continuation bet is when i flopped 3 aces and i get it all in as a huge favorite.

if you play pretty tight, and make the same type of play with your monster that you make with nothing you will be better off making the play 99.5% of the time. bet, bet , bet, and then bet again.

The counter argument to this is that opponents have a hard time distinguisihing what your bets mean if you are almost always betting. I'd love someone to think they've picked up on my CB patterns only to reraise me when I'm holding the nuts. That's the whole idea here and my favorite way to take someone's whole stack. That's why continuing to take the line of the aggressor when you have taken control of a hand is so important. Yes, reads definitely matter but I still feel that betting this flop is almost mandatory, especially considering the preflop action and villains check to me on the flop. The most important skill in regards to continuation bets, however, is knowing when your CB has been picked off by a better hand and yielding. This would be one of those cases where I would yield to the better hand after the all-in check raise. Had villain taken a different line here I might go broke on this hand - but he'd have to let me hang myself by taking the right line and the c/r all in is not it.

Here's what I would look for in this particular hand: Has the villain called a lot of preflop raises without being the aggressor? When he did, what hands has he called with? Has he reraised preflop with a strong hand that he's shown down and I know about? If he's holding a monster such as a big pair or big slick here is he the type of player that would have reraised or simply called? Would he lead the flop if he thought he had me beat with a hand like AK hoping to charge the draws or would he check-raise hoping to get a little more into the pot?

His flat call preflop would somewhat discredit the monsters in my head. It was a good slowplay on villains part and he probably should have tried to get some more money in the pot by either calling or raising a smaller amount than all-in on the flop hoping that 1) hero would make a mistake and call his raise and 2) the turn would be a safe card. With this line I think the villain could have taken hero's whole stack assuming another diamond didn't turn up. As it stands here, the c/r all in is either the nuts or nothing and I'm not getting close to the right odds to pay my whole stack to find out.

Well, if I am wrong, I am happy to be wrong along with Dan Harringon. LOL

Good points.

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By the way, if you fire out anything less than a full pot bet on this board, I'm calling and leading out the turn with almost any two assuming I have a decent stack.

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Many of the top posters here advocate using less than a pot sized continuation bet. Harrington does the same in HOH. Don't think that just because a bet is less than pot sized it doesn't indicate strength.