Strategy

C-betting in Position on Dry Boards – How to Build Optimal Strategy?

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January 12, 2025 · 5 minutes

c betting in position on dry boards

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For the most part, dry boards favor the preflop aggressor’s range. If you raise before the flop and find yourself in a position against another player, you should be taking advantage of this by betting quite often.

Also, it is a great situation to leverage your range advantage by using a small bet sizing to put pressure on your opponent since he is unlikely to defend well without a reasonably strong hand.

That said, different types of dry boards significantly change our GTO approach to continuation betting. The best example of this is that ace-high boards gravitate towards smaller bet sizing, while dry boards with small and disconnected cards prefer bigger bets.

Key takeaways:

  • Bet small on boards with one high card 
  • Bet bigger on disconnected flops with lower cards
  • Increase bet frequency based on your range advantage
  • Check hands that have showdown value and are not vulnerable 

To keep things simple, we’ll use the scenario of the button raising and the big blind defending with 100 big blinds so we can see wide ranges in practice. 

Tip #1 – Bet Small On High Card Boards 

The first example we’ll look at is an ace-high board with no straight or flush draws. Generally speaking, ace-high boards favor the preflop raiser. On top of that, when they’re also disconnected, the big blind player will have a much narrower range of hands with which it can defend against a continuation bet.

Let’s take an example of a A93 flop when BTN raises before the flop, BB calls and then checks to the preflop raiser:

c-betting dry boards A-high

In this scenario, the solver suggests:

  • C-betting 55% of the time
  • Checking 43% of the time

Like always, it mixes the strategy with different hands, meaning that some of the time you check and some of the time you bet with the same holdings. That said, having the range distribution simplifies things a lot since there is not much difference if you bet one hand more frequently and another one less often as long as you stick to the overall strategy.

The only noticeable exceptions from this rule are hands like:

  • KK and QQ – mostly checking back on the flop as these hands have a good showdown value, and there are no real scare cards to worry about on the turn
  • Middling pairs (88 through 66) – these hands also check back most of the time since they are not strong enough to bet. That said, they still have some showdown value, so no reason to turn those into a bluff.

It is important to note that the small sizing of 31% of the pot is used almost uniformly, with only a few slivers of large bets.

Small c-bets are very effective since dry boards are less likely to connect with your opponent’s range, and they will have a hard time sticking to minimum defense frequency. This lets you bluff more efficiently and get the most value from your weak hands.

Hands with very little or no showdown value are good candidates to continue betting on ace-high dry boards, as you can expect to pick up the pot often and with very little resistance. If your flop bet is called, you can make a turn decision to continue or give up based on the turn card and how it interacts with your hand.

A similar strategy can be applied to other dry boards with high cards, for example, Q62:

c-betting dry boards with high card

The biggest difference here compared to the first example is that you increase your c-betting frequency to 74% and only check 26% of the time.

The solver also suggests increasing bet size here since your opponent might have more backdoor doors and overcards. By betting bigger, you deny the equity for these holdings.

To sum up, the lower the highest card on the flop, the more often you should bet and the more often you should lean on the bigger size.

Tip #2 – Bet Big On Low Boards 

Finally, let’s look at a disconnected board containing small cards. For this example, we look at the flop of 952, so a flop contains no possible draws of any kind.

Although one might think that this board texture would be better for the big blind range, that’s not the case. You actually have more overpairs, which leads to a significant range advantage. 

continuation betting on dry disconnected boards

As you can see from the PeakGTO output above, our overall c-bet percentage is over 65%.

One thing that really stands out is the preference for larger sizing. 

All value hands use the big sizing over 80% of the time, and many bluffs also gravitate towards larger, 70% pot bets well over half the time.

The only hands that are almost pure checks in this scenario are A8s and A7s, and ATo is similar, but this hand has a few more bets than the other two.

In general, big and medium-suited and offsuite aces that do not connect with the board have a fairly balanced ratio between bets and checks on this type of flop.

Tip #3 – Simplify Your Strategy and Adjust To Different Players

As you see, a solver always mixes strategies with almost all of the holdings, making it impossible to follow in real games. That said, all you need to do is understand how GTO works, and then you should not aim to hit the exact action distribution for each of the hands. 

The goal is to know how often to bet with a particular hand group, and the distribution between exact hands will not matter much in regular games.

As we covered bet sizing differences in previous steps, just remember that the bigger range advantage you have, the more often you should be betting.

Also, be sure to adjust your c-betting strategy if you already have solid reads on your opponents:

  • Against tight players – c-bet more frequently and use smaller bet sizing because they are unlikely to continue without a strong hand.
  • Against loose players – c-bet less frequently but use bigger bet sizing to get value from their drawing hands and random floats.

As you can see from the examples in this article, not all dry boards are created equal, and the specific texture will dictate the best approach to your continuation betting strategy.

That said, if you remember to bet on a smaller side and more often on a board with a high card while keeping bigger sizing on low disconnected boards, you will avoid a big part of the problems.

Article by
Tadas played poker professionally for over a decade and founded mypokercoaching.com to offer training resources to players. During the years, he became one of the leading experts in the poker niche and wrote countless guides for mypokercoaching and other leading online publications. Now he concentrates on building an iBetMedia agency and helping other gambling brands reach their targeted customers. You can connect with Tadas via his LinkedIn profile.

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