If you want to increase your edge at the tables even further, make sure to check the Pokercoaching training site.
…
In today’s lesson, we’ll talk about continuation betting in multiway pots as the preflop raiser. One common mistake that many players make is that they don’t c-bet enough in these spots with a weaker part of their range.
In heads-up scenarios, the EV of checking back can be quite high, but this changes in multiway pots. The overall equity is shared among three players, so there is more need for protection.
We’ll look at a few examples where we have a weaker hand as the original raiser (as there is no need to look at hands where we have a top pair or better – these are fairly straightforward).
The population tendency in these situations is to check too often with weak hands, whereas a correct play is to bet. For example, on a board of K73, we want to be betting a pair of sevens, not only for protection purposes, but also for value and for bluffing opportunities on future streets.
Skipped C-Bet Examples
First, let’s look at one of the hands where I decided not to c-bet in a multiway pot, raising from the button and getting called by both blinds.
I open with A♠4♦, and the flop comes Q♣10♣6♦. What should our c-bet frequency be on this board, and do we have any big bet sizes?
It’s important to understand that on this board, we still want to continuation bet about 60% of the time, and it’s really hard to find any spots where the frequency would be under 50%.
So, when deciding what air to include in the c-betting range in multiway pots, we look at suits and straight opportunities. So, on this particular board, we want to bet with hands containing clubs and diamonds; hands that contain three to a straight also offer decent opportunities.
Going back to our hand, I decide to check here, because we only have a small diamond, which isn’t particularly relevant in this situation. However, if we had any club or a higher diamond, we should be firing a continuation bet.
Of the hands we want to c-bet with, we’ll use big sizing with those hands that need more protection. On this flop, if we have a hand like 10♥8♥, we’ll go with bigger sizing, as that hand is quite vulnerable.
We balance these by betting big with hands like pocket aces, kings, and AQ as well. These are hands that we have in our range, but opponents don’t really have them, as they’d be squeezing these holdings pretty much 100% of the time.
Examples of C-Betting With Weak Hands
Now we’ll move on to a few hand examples where I did go for a continuation bet with weak high card / bottom pair type of hands to see how they fit into the overall multiway pots strategy.
The first one is K♦9♥ on the 7♦7♠6♦ flop. This is a good c-bet candidate because we have a high diamond in our hand.
Interestingly enough, some of the check-backs suggested by the solver are hands containing backdoor spade flush draws.
In this particular hand, I decided to continue barreling after the 4♠ came on the turn, and this is a reasonable line when holding a diamond or a spade.
Here’s a somewhat different example. We have Q♠J♦ on the 10♣6♥3♦ flop. This is the type of situation where you’ll be betting some of the combos and checking back with some of them.
Our specific hand is a good one to check back with because it contains a high spade. So, we want to check with this particular combo and continuation bet with the other three, where the queen matches one of the suits on the board.
If we look at the solver, it breaks things down in more detail, and memorizing all of it can be a bit tricky. The simplest way to go about it is to organize your hands by suits and stick to that approach.
Keep Up Aggression in Multiway Pots
As you can see from examples and analysis in this article, there is a lot of continuation betting going on with weak, trashy hands, even in multiway pots.
If you want to reach the correct c-betting frequency, which is around 55%-60% in these spots, you need to have quite a few weak hands in your continuing range, allowing you to protect your equity but also win many pots by forcing opponents to fold.
C-betting in multiway pots may seem like a bit of a scary prospect, which is probably why the general tendency is on the lower side. But the math is clear here, and as long as you know how to properly select the right candidates, you’ll do very well in the long run.
