The Mistake Poker Players Make When C-Betting

In this article, we’ll discover one of the most common errors that is made when c-betting and how you can avoid doing it. We’ll explain what the advantages are behind range-betting. and when not to do it, too. From knowing how and when to play the perfect c-bet to judging future streets of the turn or river after you’ve c-bet, we’re here to help.

These key mistakes are:

• Not Range Betting
• Not Mixing Up Your Betting Tendencies
• Lacking Confidence at the Turn
• Not Planning for the River

Why Range Betting Leads to Gains

Not bulking up enough at the poker felt? Chip stack looking limp in the late stages? Range betting needs to come into your game and pump up that profit margin. When you’re c-betting small on the flop, range betting can prove highly profitable. This is down to a number of reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, you can exploit weaker players by range-betting and the move is not only going with momentum and aggression but should be based on sound game theory too.

Range-betting – i.e. putting a player on a range of hands and knowing when to c-bet or not following the flop – is easy and can be applied to your game with immediate effect. There are plenty of ways to exploit players and not only that, but it frees up vital time in your head to compute more complicated situations.

Range betting helps the most inexperienced players improve their game, maximize their winnings and reap the benefits immediately. Winning more pots, you’ll also avoid tougher situations where others can exploit you. As they say, money saved is money earned.

You Shouldn’t Always Range Bet

Range betting has a big place in poker, but it shouldn’t always be used. Just like you shouldn’t c-bet everything, disguising yourself by mixing up your play, range betting shouldn’t happen if you’ve missed offsuit pairs of your opponent’s range. Likewise, you might want to mix up the amount that you c-bet. On low-paired board, such as 5-4-4, your pre-flop raiser opponent may well have a big overpair advantage, massively affecting how you should react, and in particular, whether you should range-bet.

If the flop comes 8-7-6 with two hearts, then you might also want to protect your stack by reducing the amount you’re c-betting or simply not doing so altogether. In this sort of position, the pre-flop raiser is actually at a distinct disadvantage, so if this is you, you’ll want to check virtually 100% of the time in order to avoid your own range of cards being exposed.

Becoming a Boss on the Turn

So much of modern poker focuses on the pre-flop action, the post-flop betting or the river, where a dramatic all-in puts poker fans into the heart of the action and both big bluffs and huge hero calls occur. The turn, or 4^th street, is a vastly underestimated part of poker and where a lot of the crucial decisions that dictate the direction of the pot take place.

In general, you want to be extremely knowledgeable about your opponent’s ranges if you’re betting a second barrel on the turn. Understanding the texture of the board – a little like we demonstrated above – is vital and you can really push your edge if you know what to do at this point of the betting.

Ask yourself how you should approach your betting strategy and how you can understand that turn card. Did it improve your hand or actually impact your opponent’s likely range advantageously? Making sure that you know how different turn cards will affect your opponents and how likely they will be to call or fold to a bet of yours is really important.

Planning for the River

When you bet (or not) on the turn, you always want to be considering what you’ll do on the river. How often have you seen players bet or call on the turn then give up on the river and thought ‘so why did you bet/call on the turn?’. Don’t be that player who should have saved themselves some money.

Ask yourself some tough questions when thinking of the river, such as how does the equity shift for each player should a variety of different river cards fall? How much aggro are we likely to get back from each player if we check the turn then bet the river? Which hands do we have that benefit from betting on the turn or checking, and if they don’t benefit from a certain river action, should we check for showdown value or bet for value instead?

Some hands benefit from playing as three-street (triple barrel) bluffs. Others don’t. Ask yourself not only which of your own hands you should c-bet on the flop, turn and river (or combinations of those streets) but also what your opponent has to have to fold or call on those depending on what you want them to do.

In Conclusion

C-betting is a crucial part of poker and as with many things in poker, knowing when to play and when not to is crucial and will impact on your bottom line in time. Understanding your opponent’s true ranges are crucial if you are range-betting and while this is a brilliant tool to add to your skillset, overuse is going to punish you instead of your enemy at the felt.

Learning how to read board textures is pivotal to your understanding of when to c-bet and when to avoid doing so. Always consider what you’re planning to do across all three post-flop streets but then adjust to circumstances as things will change on each street too.

Mastering the c-bet – and when to hold off that trigger – can be extremely lucrative in the game of poker.