Continue Betting
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
One of the standard strategies in NL Texas Holdem is to continue bet your prelop raises on the flop. If you are heads up, your opponent will miss the flop about 70% of the time. This means that on a majority of any flop that you see heads up, your opponent missed. The concept of continue betting, is that in this majority of the time, your poker opponent will fold to you.
If you raise preflop and get a call, your opponent may have you beat already. As long as they don’t have a pocket pair, the odd are still in our favor that he will not connect with the flop and a continuation of your preflop aggression will win the pot. In any case, a continuation bet after the flop will at least give you some information, if not the money in the pot.
I see a lot of poker players slowing down after getting called on a continuation bet. They were hoping to win already, and that plan got foiled. If they are in first position and now check the turn card after you’ve called them on the flop, chances are they are ready to go away. You can make a good sized bet and probably win, even if you have nothing. Keep in mind, if you are 70% to miss the flop, so is the other guy.