In one of our previous articles, we covered the GTO strategy for continuation betting out of position on different types of wet flops when playing 100 big blinds deep.
Some of the main takeaways from that lesson were that navigating coordinated boards OOP was tricky and required a fairly high degree of caution.
In today’s article, we’ll address the optimal strategy for continuation betting on wet flops out of position in tournaments (CO vs. BTN), focusing on 40 big blinds effective stacks, but also addressing a couple of other scenarios.
As always, before we dive into specific examples, here are a few main highlights to guide you through the lesson:
- C-bet only around 25% on ace-high wet boards, using a small, quarter-pot sizing
- On wet high-card boards, you should be checking almost 80% of the time
- Facing a bet after checking high-card flops, we are continuing between 55% and 70%, mostly calling
- C-bet only around 20% on middling connected boards, primarily with strong hands that need protection
- Utilize larger (67% pot) sizing when c-betting on these middling wet flops
Tip #1: C-Bet Around Quarter of the Time on Coordinated A-High Flops
Wet flops featuring an ace, such as A♥9♠8♠, aren’t the type of flops we’ll be c-betting a lot when playing 40 big blinds deep. Our in-position opponent will have a lot of hands they can continue with, so our c-betting frequency should be around 24%:
What’s interesting is that our hand selection is distributed fairly equally across the entire range. Hands that we are c-betting with more often are two pair combos, strong top pairs, and a variety of middle pair holdings.
Adding to these are different types of gutshot straight draws with and without backdoors.
Hands such as sets, weaker top pairs, and low-equity holdings c-bet at a lower frequency, but there are no hands that we’ll always be checking in these spots.
Because of this approach, our preferred sizing is small (25% of the pot).
For the rest of the time, we are checking to the button player, and we can expect to face a bet from them around 35% of the time. When that happens, we are continuing over half of the time, mostly calling, and raising about 10%:
Hands making up our check-raising range are:
- Strongest of our top pair combos
- Two pair holdings
- Middle and bottom sets (about 30%)
- A couple of middle and bottom pair combos with no backdoors
As for the rest of our range, we are continuing with hands that have a decent showdown value or can improve on turns and rivers.
Playing 25 big blinds deep, our c-betting strategy changes slightly, as the overall c-bet percentage moves up to around 30%, utilizing 25% and 60% of the pot sizing at a similar frequency.
Playing 60 big blinds deep, we are c-betting at around 38%. The overall strategy is similar to that at 40 big blinds. The biggest adjustment is that the frequency at which we c-bet instead of checking increases across the board.
Tip #2: You Should Check Almost 80% on Wet High-Card Boards
Wet flops with broadway cards are particularly tricky to play out of position as the preflop raiser. When playing 40 big blinds deep, you should be checking a lot in these spots, c-betting only around 20%.
For example, let’s look at the board of K♠Q♠9♦:
In these spots, we are primarily continuing with our strongest holdings: decent top pair and better, combining it with a few gutshot combos for balance.
When it comes to sizing, the solver suggests mixing between small (25%) and larger (67% of the pot) bets. A few hands that prefer small sizing exclusively are weak top pairs, like K7 and K6.
After checking and facing a bet from the button player, our decision will depend on the sizing they pick. Against a smaller sizing, we can continue with almost 70% of the entire range, giving up only on the weakest hands. Facing a larger bet, we are continuing with arouwnd 55%.
The default option in both scenarios is calling, with a small check-raise frequency with some of our strongest made hands and draws.
At the stack depth of 25 big blinds effective, our c-bet strategy doesn’t change that much. The overall frequency increases to around 23%, but we are now using the larger sizing (60% of the pot) as the default – almost three times as often as the 25% option.
Playing with 60 big blinds, the c-bet percentage stands at 20%, so the hand selection remains fairly similar to that at 40 bigs. However, our only sizing in these scenarios is 25% of the pot. In these spots, the solver doesn’t have any big bet options.
Tip #3: Keep the C-Bet Frequency at Around 20% on Wet Boards With Middling Cards
Finally, on flops featuring middling connected cards, such as 10♥9♥7♣, you’ll want to keep your c-betting frequency fairly low. We are supposed to bet only around 20% of the time playing out of position, using primarily the larger, 67% of the pot sizing:
Our c-betting range consists primarily of strong hands that need protections (such as overpairs), value combos like two pair and bottom sets (but not top and middle sets – these are almost 100% checks on the flop), and a fair number of gutshot + pair combinations.
As you can see, a lot of hands with decent showdown value without direct draws prefer checking in this spot.
After checking and facing a bet from the button, we can continue with almost 75% of our entire range, folding only the worst poker hands with no showdown and very little potential to improve. We are also check-raising almost 15% of the time with hands like:
- Overpairs
- Middle and bottom sets
- Straights
- Various straight draws at low frequencies
When it comes to strategy at 25 big blinds effective, there is a very interesting adjustment used by the solver. While we are c-betting around 23% of the time in these spots, two thirds of the time we should be utilizing a massive 350% of the pot sizing:
This is an all-in bet, so, basically, at this stack depth, we are supposed to be shoving almost 15% of the time on these board textures.
As for the 60 big blind strategy, it is very similar to the one we use at 40 big blinds, with the only noticeable difference being that we are supposed to balance a bit more between 25% and 67% sizing, with the 25% bet being a slightly preferred option.
