The point of continuation bets in SNGs

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The point of continuation bets in SNGs

from Yoda

In today's column I am going to deal with continuation bets by making use of a tournament situation.

This is taken from the strategy article that is available for players with silver status at least:

„If you aren't holding a pocket pair, you will only hit the flop a
third of a time[…]. Most of the time you will not have a hand, being
the preflop aggressor, that would justify continuing to play.

On the other hand this applies to our opponents as well. […] In
these situations the one who bluffs first will most likely win the
hand. This is where you, the preflop aggressor, have a great advantage:
You have shown a strong hand before the flop."

This basic principle applies to tournament situations as well, however
we have to consider the ICM. It should be noted that every chip that is
won in a SNG is worth much less in absolute terms than a chip that is
lost. This is exactly the opposite in cash games where every chip that
is lost has the same value as a chip that is won.

When we are thinking about this fact, we notice
that we will win less money with a continuation bet that has the same
chance of success and the same size or respectively that continuation
bets that are just profitable in cash games could be unprofitable in
tournament situations.

Therefore the following results: In contrary to
cash games, where bet sizes are determined by the size of the pot, it
is advisable to choose smaller bet sizes (1/2-2/3) in SNGs.

Furthermore you shouldn't fire several barrels in
SNGs because we can't rebuy and every chip that we loose takes us
closer to being eliminated.

I have accumulated some factors, which should help you decide whether to make a continuation bet, or not.

We generally want to achieve that

• better hands fold and/or
• worse hands call and/or
• our hand is protected from draws.

PRO:

• Good flop. Board texture implies that our opponent has missed often (for example: Q 2 7), less/no draws possible.

• We want to commit ourselves.
  We have an over pair or a strong draw that would loose a lot of equity
  on a blank turn and won't get paid off well if the draw completes (A K on a 9 8 2 flop ), and we want to committ ourselves (the continuation bet would actually be a value bet).

• Villain is a nitty regular.
  Our opponent is a regular who probably called for set value. He would
  only continue playing with a set. You have to be careful not to give
  villain too much credit because other regulars are capable of noticing
  that they can raise a lot of hands if you always put them on a set
  automatically. We should know this and possibly react to it.

• Number of villains. We are heads-up, the probability is therefore much greater that our opponent didn't hit either.

• The buy in
  could be in favour of a continuation bet: Assuming we are holding AK on
  a 233 board in a 109$ SNG against a solid regular. Mostl people would
  call once with set mining-pockets. This implies that we either have to
  second barred or abstain from making a continuation bet. Multiple
  barrels are costly and therfore not a good idea in a tournament because
  we want to keep our chips together. However if our opponent was a 40%
  VPIP fish, we would probably be very far ahead with AK high against his
  range. Abstaining from making a continuation bet would be like throwing
  money away.

• We have position.
  Generally there are many players on the lower buy-ins that haven't
  understood the concept of check raising and donking if they hit. Our
  continuation bet is much more likely to be successful against these
  players because we have already gotten some information about the
  strength of the opponents' hand.

CONTRA:

• Our image.
  If we have already made some unsuccessful continuation bets before, we
  should abstain from making them as a bluff because we appeared weak to
  the other opponents in the past.

• Way ahead, way behind
  We are in a wa/wb situation (see the related articles, the best example is sample hand 2), a check is beneficial to us.

• Value of a free card. Our hand is not especially strong but a free card would be very valuable (A K on a Q T 5 board) - especially in position you should choose to check behind.

• Unfavourable stack sizes.
  Villains or our stack size have a certain size so that a shove after
  our continuation bet would commit us. A check behind is basically
  always the best option.

• Bad flop. The
  texture of the flop leaves us with the assumption that our opponent
  will have hit quite often. A check however could cause his over cards,
  which we would dominate, to hit the board.For example, a bad flop would be: 9 8 7.

• Balancing. Our opponent is a regular. We have A K on a Q T 5
  Board and we check behind. He will often bet the turn due to our check
  behind on the flop. In order to work against this bet, we have to check
  JJ or QQ behind once in a while as well in order to stay unpredictable.
  This of course, shouldn't be the standard move, but the mixture is very
  important.

The first sample hand is taken from the VIP pass tourney - villain has many characteristics, but not those of a shark.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em Tourney, Big Blind is t30000 (9 handed)
BB (t1188999)
Hero (t491226)
UTG+1 (t254400)
MP1 (t418145)
MP2 (t621966)
MP3 (t345354)
CO (t495848)
Button (t160997)
SB (t217550)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with A, K.
Hero raises to t75000, 7 folds, BB calls t45000.

Flop: (t160000) Q, 2, J (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks.

Turn: (t160000) 8 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks.

River: (t160000) T (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t122999, BB calls t122999.

We are holding AKo and raise to 2.5 BB pre flop. The flop is very drawy and any picks up a flush draw, T9 flopes an OESD, many Q and J are within villains range. We therefore check behind on the flop.

We are happy that we got another free card on the turn. Villain would
hardly fold any hands after our check on the flop. Hands he would call
with, if we bet now, would include hands as low as under pair pockets.

On the river we hit one of our three clean outs.
Villain, according to his line, basically never has a flush. We are
making a large bet because villain will basically call any bet if he
has hit anything at all. This is because our bet looks like we want to
buy the pot. Villain calls.

Hero shows [ Ah, Kd ]a straight Ten to Ace.
Villain doesn't show [ Qh, 9c ]a straight Eight to Queen.

Our plan worked.

Second hand from the forum:

No-Limit Hold'em Tournament ($55), Blinds 20/40 (10 handed)
MP3: 1,980
Hero: 2,000
MP1: 2,000
UTG: 2,000
UTG+2: 2,000
UTG+1: 2,000
SB: 2,000
CO: 2,620
BU: 1,840
BB: 1,560

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with K, K
4 folds, Hero raises to 120, 3 folds, SB calls $100,00, BB calls $80,00.

Flop: (360) 8, A, 7 (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero checks.

Turn: (360) 4 (3 players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets 180, SB raises to 360, 2 folds.

Final Pot: 900

There are two draws possible on this board (T9 and 56 have an OESD) but we decide to check behind against two opponents anyway.

I don't like heros bet on the turn due to two
reasons: Firstly our hand looks exactly like the hand we are holding,
namely a hand that is making a thin value bet but can't continue
playing against a raise. Secondly, another check behind will induce
bluffs like a pot size bet on the river from QJ. If we check behind
here, we do this with the intention to call the river.