Master poker strategy with PeakGTO. Try this poker solver for free.
The in-position c-betting strategy on wet and dynamic boards is rather comprehensive and changes based on the specific board texture.
In most situations, you will need to check back a big part of your hands to protect your range, even when you are in a position.
In this article, we’ll be looking at one of the most usual scenarios, where you open from a button and get called by a big blind with 100 big blind stacks.
Facing a standard open of 3x, the big blind player should be calling with about 25% of the entire range, and what that 25% looks like is very important for crafting a proper c-betting strategy on wet boards.
Before diving into specific examples and explanations, here’s a quick breakdown of things you’ll learn in this article:
- You should only be c-betting around 37% of the time on ace-high dynamic boards
- You should be betting more aggressively on wet boards containing one high card and c-bet around 60% of the time
- You should c-bet only a bit over 30% of the time on wet low card boards and mostly use small bet sizing
Some of these tips may seem confusing or counterintuitive, so we’ll now examine specific examples to understand why these numbers are the way they are.
Tip #1 – Check Back Often on Ace-High Dynamic Boards
When it is folded to us on the button and with 100 big blinds effective, we raise 40% of the entire range. This means that we have many hands that aren’t too comfortable on ace-high wet boards.
If we look at the example of a flop A♥9♦8♦, once the big blind checks, our GTO strategy is to c-bet about 37% of the time and check back the rest.
Looking at the solver output, it is clear that we are using a rather mixed c-betting strategy in these spots, with a few important considerations:
- For middle and bottom sets, we’ll c-bet pretty much 100% using large sizing (71% of the pot) over 75% of the time
- A9 specifically (top two pair) is a hand we want to c-bet pretty much always, betting big 75%+ of the time
- Our strong aces (AT+) c-bet about 55%, while weaker aces are checked back over 75%
- Pairs below ace and above 9 (KK – TT) check back most of the time
With bottom and middle sets, we want to bet often and big because these holdings do not block hands that the opponent can continue with. They can have a variety of aces in their range, plus many different draws, which means that these are the types of hands that we can freely bet for value.
That said, weaker aces are good check-back candidates. These hands have a good showdown value but will struggle to face check-raises and are not strong enough to go for three streets of value.
Similar logic applies to under-pairs above nine (TT, JJ, QQ, KK), but these hands can take even less heat, which is why PeakGTO prefers to keep them in our check-back range for the most part.
Our stronger aces are checked back some of the time as well, and this is partially for balance. Because we’ll have some of these hands in our range when we check back, we can also continue to bet some pure bluffs, i.e., hands like K5s and Q4s, at a lower frequency.
Tip #2 – Bet More Often on High-Card Wet Boards
While ace-high boards favor a more cautious c-betting strategy, wet boards containing one high card are much better c-betting candidates. On these types of boards, you should be betting about 60% of the time, especially when the high card isn’t a part of the flush draw combination.
Let’s look at the board of K♥7♣6♣.
The first thing that stands out on the above chart is that value hands containing a strong king are c-bet very frequently, with a fairly even mix of small and large sizes.
Strong ace-high hands (AQ – A9) mix between checking back and betting, with a preference for checking back (about 65% overall) and using smaller sizing when c-betting.
However, what’s particularly interesting is that our continuation betting range in these spots contains many hands that could be classified as pure bluffs, such as J9s, Q5s, JTo, etc.
While frequencies vary for specific hands, the trend is clear – you should be betting with these hands and mix big and small sizes fairly equally.
The reason we can get away with it is that big blind defense range we mentioned in the introduction. If we look at what that 25% calling range looks like, we’ll notice that it doesn’t contain many hands that do particularly well on this flop.
Almost all strong kings either 3-bet all the time or at least a fair percentage of the time. The same goes for suited connectors like 67s, 89s, and T9s.
So, on this board texture, the big blind will not have that many strong hands, so betting frequently and using bigger sizes with our strongest hands and our bluffs makes sense. It makes it very hard for the big blind to continue with marginal hands and forces them to play pretty straightforwardly.
Tip #3 – Use Small Bet Sizing on Low Coordinated Flops
The third type of board we’ll examine is one containing small and coordinated cards, such as a flop of 8♠7♠5♦. Even intuitively, this board seems to favor the big blind player, and in this instance, that intuition is correct.
Looking at the solver output, these are flops that we’ll be checking more frequently than any other textures, c-betting under 35% of the time.
The structure of our c-betting range in these spots is quite interesting, consisting primarily of:
- Pair + open-ended straight draw combos
- Open-ended straight draws
- Overpairs, where we check back more often with higher pairs (AA, KK, QQ) and bet more frequently with TT, JJ, and 99
- Sets
- The balanced bluffing range between big ace-high hands and pure bluffs (Q4, K3)
The preferred sizing in these spots is 31% of the pot. Big sizing is only used in rare instances with sets and a few bluffs for balance.
If we look back at the big blind’s defense range (shown in the previous section), this type of texture clearly smashes it, so keeping our c-betting frequency low makes sense. The calling player has a significant range advantage here, which is why controlling the size of the pot is very important.
Hands like pocket aces and pocket kings have a lot of showdown value but can be easily put in difficult spots on these textures. This is why the solver prefers the check-back line, even with such strong holdings, with an occasional continuation bet to keep things balanced.
To wrap it up, navigating wet boards is difficult even when you are in position and have the initiative. You shouldn’t be blindly c-betting in these spots, hoping for the best. While certain boards are more favorable for c-bets, the overall approach should be a balanced one, with an almost equal percentage of betting and checking across different types of flops that fall into this category.
