Strategy

Continuation Betting on Wet Boards Out of Position – Learn the Best Strategy

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January 29, 2025 · 6 minutes

continuation betting wet boards out of position

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Figuring out the best c-betting strategy on wet boards when you’re out of position is tricky. These boards are hard enough to navigate even when you are in position, and when your opponent is the one in position, there are many things to consider.

In short, you should be doing a lot of checking when you reach the flop out of position, even though you’re a preflop raiser. On many boards, the caller will be able to put you in tough spots, so it works in your favor to control the size of the pot.

Once again, we’ll look at some examples of hands in which effective stacks are 100 big blinds. This is a cutoff vs. button situation since it is one of the most frequent scenarios in which you raise pre-flop and are OOP when called.

Before we dive in, here are a few main takeaways from this lesson:

  • You should be checking almost all of the time on middling and ace-high wet boards
  • You should be c-betting around 45% of the time on high card boards with a flush draw
  • You should c-bet over 80% on high card boards that do not have a flush draw
  • You should be mostly calling when you check and face a bet from your opponent, only raising the strongest hands and some semi-bluffs

Tip #1: Check A Lot on Middling Coordinate Boards

Boards that you need to be especially cautious of are middling wet boards like 1097. According to the solver, you should be checking close to 85% of your range on these boards:

wet boards oop middling flops

To try and simplify your strategy for c-betting out of position on these types of boards, you can use the following guidelines:

  • C-bet more (around 30%) with strong hands (overpairs, sets, and straights)
  • You should c-bet about 25% with hands containing an 8 and an overcard
  • Bet about 20% of your strong A-high hands (AK, AQ, AJ)
  • While you can bet your bluffs at a small frequency, even if you check them 100%, you won’t be losing too much EV

Once you check, your in-position opponent should mostly be using a large sizing of 70% of the pot. Faced with that bet, your strategy will be mostly to:

  • Call with your top pairs
  • Mix between calling and raising with sets, two pairs, and overpairs
  • Mix between calling and raising with open-enders & pair + straight draw combos
  • Mostly call with your flush draws unless you also have a straight draw, in which case you can go for a check raise
middling flops oop after checking

Overall, you’ll be continuing with about 60% of your entire range in one way or another, folding all the hands that failed to connect with the flop, including all under-pairs and even middle pairs some of the time, especially if they’re not coupled with a draw of some sort.

Tip #2: Check Almost Your Entire Range on Ace High Wet Boards

When you’re a preflop raiser, your instinct may be to bet on ace-high boards. However, the solver suggests a completely different strategy that consists of over 90% checks.

On connected boards where there is a flush draw with an ace, we can check about 90%, but if the ace is not a part of the flush draw, we should be checking as much as 95%. Let’s look at an example of a A98 board.

wet a-high boards out of position

On this texture, we are pretty much checking anything that’s not a top pair or a set, and even those have a super-small c-bet frequency. So, you can simplify things by always checking on these boards, or maybe have a few hands that you’ll bet with – like AA, AK, 67s, and 89s, and just check the rest.

When you check, if your opponent is playing GTO strategy, they’ll be betting about 35%, and for the most part, they’ll be using a large sizing. Your strategy is pretty straightforward:

  • Raise only with A9, 99 & balance that with sometimes raising with AA and open-ended draws. All in all, you’ll be raising less than 5% of the time
  • Call with your top pairs and flush draws
  • Mix fairly evenly between calling and folding with bottom & middle pairs and pocket pairs above 9s
wet a-high boards oop after checking

You should continue about 55% in these spots, mostly by flat calling. Our options are very limited in situations where the button player has a range advantage. The best approach is not to get fancy but to play according to our hand strength.

Tip #3: Bet Much More Often on High Card Wet Boards

Unlike the previous two examples, coordinated boards containing high cards favor the original raiser, and you can get away with continuation betting around 45%, as we can see from this example of the KQ9 board.

c-betting web boards oop high cards

While this is once again a mixed strategy, we can sum it up as follows:

  • You should be betting all your strong hands (top pairs and better) over two-thirds of the time, mostly using the small sizing of 30% of the pot.
  • Since your range corresponds very well with this board, you can also bet with a variety of other hands that don’t have much or any showdown value – like 66, 55, A5s, and T7s. You should be betting with these weak hands about half the time.
  • Your checking range gravitates toward middling ace-highs without a flush draw and weak top pairs like K4 and K5.

These are the types of boards that you should be looking to continue on the most, as your opponent will have a hard time defending. You have a solid range advantage here, and you need to take advantage of that fact, even if the flop doesn’t connect with your particular hand.

That said, you still end up checking over half of the time, and when your opponent decides to bet, you should play almost your entire range as a call.

high card boards oop c-betting strategy

In this situation, you are only check-raising some of your made hands like straights and sets and mixing in a few semi-bluffs like a pair with a gutshot.

What is really interesting is how the strategy changes if we take the same board but without a flush draw, such as KQ9. In this case, you suddenly need to bet over 80% of your range since your opponent will have significantly fewer draws and hands they can continue with.

c-betting high card boards without flush draw

Overall, your approach on wet boards OOP is to check most of the time so you can protect your range and defend enough hands when facing aggression from your opponent. 

The notable exception is high-card boards, especially those without flush draws. According to the poker solver, betting yourself a large part of the range is the most profitable strategy in those situations.

While having no flush draw on another type of board also slightly increases your theoretical betting percentage, that does not make a big difference, and you should still check most of your hands.

When your opponent decides to bet, you should mix in some raise with the strongest of your hands along with some good bluffs, but mostly stick to calling him down so you could stand aggression on multiple streets. 

Follow these simple tips, and you will avoid very costly mistakes most players are making by over c-betting out of position.

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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