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I always feel that there is a huge misconception with regards to continuation betting in no-limit Texas Holdem cash games. I think that it is clear to me that there is a lot of confusion between tournament play and cash game play. I think that continuation betting in tournaments is more important than what it is in cash games for the simple reason being that there is always a need to amass chips because of the nature of the game.

However cash games are more of a sit and wait type of environment and especially no limit games. Let us look at a situation from a poker tournament to show what I mean. The blinds are 200-400 and you have 5200 in chips which is 13 big blinds. You open for 1200 with AK and the big blind calls you which puts 2600 in the pot and you only have 4000 left. The flop comes 9d-4s-2c and your opponent checks. Here the desire to accumulate chips is paramount and you may still have the best hand or draw to it. You could even make your opponent fold the best hand if you make a sizeable bet.

A bet or an all in that doesn’t get called increases your stack to 6600 which is a huge increase from the 5200 that you originally had. With the blinds at 200-400 and the next level being 300-600 then you could become short very quickly and so you need to do something. However deep stacked cash games are more of a waiting game and there simply isn’t the same need to continuation bet.

I think there needs to be a little more intelligence applied to continuation betting than merely blindly betting, especially in cash games. At least consider your opponents range and how it hits the flop and have a plan for how to play future streets it he calls you. At the end of the day, as a skilful player then one of your goals is to outplay your opponents after the flop. You want to play post flop poker as much as possible but merely betting your opponents out of the pot is not only taking short odds but it is also not overly sophisticated and easier to combat. So remember that c-betting is more important in tournaments than ring games where the deep stacks dictate that skilled players can maybe get a bigger advantage going deeper into the hand.

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