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Discontinue C-BETTORS

Punish these players by bluff-raising their bets

By: Marco Carreira / Hold 'Em

Posted: 05/20/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Laura Rauch / The Associated Press archives If a guy like Soi Nguyen tries to bully you by C-betting, don�t be afraid to take it up a notch. (CP)

In hold-em you don't flop hands very often. So what are you to do if you are sitting in a game with players who are constantly continuation betting? Well, if you want to start making money and punish these types of players, you're going to have to start bluff-raising their C-bets.

In hold-em, whenever you see a flop with any two non-paired hole cards the chances of flopping a pair are 1 in 3. Now, of the 33 per cent of the time that you flop a pair you have a 1 in 3 chance of flopping top pair. You can quickly see how even the times that you flop a pair your hand won't be all that strong, so if you can't put pressure on your opponents while holding air you will probably be in for a long night.

Before you take what I am saying to heart and start bluff-raising with air every time you see a flop and miss, there are a few things you should take into consideration.

For example, what type of player are you playing against? Is he tight or does he open many pots? If you know a player to be very tight you can narrow the range down to the top few hands, so unless you have a way to improve to the best hand you should proceed with caution versus a player like this.

When I mean bluff-raising, I am talking about pretty much having nothing other than back-door outs. Sure, back-door draws are not something we should ever be drawing to, but let me give you and example of what I'm talking about.

Let's say you call a raise in position with 10-9 suited and the flop comes down K82 with one of our suits. We have completely missed the flop but our opponent bets and we raise him. We have nothing other than a few back-door draws: any 7 and J will give us an open-ended straight draw and if another card of our suit comes on the turn it will give us a flush draw. So even though we are trying to win the pot right there, if we are called we have 16 outs on the turn that will make our hand go from air to having a nice draw. The other positive is there is a good chance we will be able to see the river for free seeing as how we are in position.

Another example of bluff-raising a C-bet would be if we flop second pair on a rainbow board of, let's say, J73. We could have the best hand but if we simply call the C-bet and any AKQ comes on the turn it can certainly help our opponent -- and even if it doesn't, a good opponent will know that any of those cards are great cards to continue bluffing with. If we get called at least we take control of the betting, which is always a good thing.

To make money in poker you have to find a way to win pots even when you miss the flop, and as I've mentioned you aren't going to flop a hand often enough to just sit back and wait. Bluff raising C-bets is a great way to mix up your play and keep your opponents guessing, and it will also help you win pots that most players would just give up on.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 20, 2012 B13

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