Making a continuation bet in no limit play

In this example I want to demonstrate when it is correct to make a continuation bet in no limit Texas Holdem. I was in the seat one to the left of the under the gun player who folded and I held the Ac-Jd and raised to $150. It was folded to the button who cold called my raise and both blinds folded their hands.

With $375 in the pot and two poker players remaining, the flop came 9d-4s-2c missing me completely. But here I only have one opponent and my ace jack could and probably still is the best hand. So I fire a continuation bet of $280 at my single opponent and they called.

This is not an ideal scenario but I find that many players do this in the bigger limit games and this has become known as floating. This is a tactic where a player calls your bet in an attempt to induce psychological pressure on you on the turn and try to force you to check. Sometimes the floater will call a flop bet and then raise on the turn trying to represent a big hand.

But I am more than aware of this tactic and when certain players do it who I know very well then I am always looking to take the next step and re-raise that player if they raise me or fire again on the turn if they call my flop bet.

I didn’t really have an angle on this player as yet but when the Qc fell on the turn then this is a perfect card for me. The queen is a really scary card to my opponent unless they happen to have one themselves or are possibly sitting there with a big hand or something.

I could have easily raised pre-flop with a hand like A-Q, K-Q, Q-J, Q-10 etc which would be a decent poker strategy. The presence of the queen changes the board entirely and now I have something that I can represent on that board which my opponent can believe. If I had raised pre-flop with a hand like J-8 for instance and an ace, king or queen fell on the turn then this would be the same situation and the arrival of that big card would be perfect for me as it can easily make my opponent believe that he not only has the best hand, but also that I now possibly have a poker hand that they cannot get me away from.

It is the combination of these two factors that help me to take the pot down when I fire another barrel on the turn of $680 and my opponent folds their hand and I take the pot. So the moral here is that if you are the pre-flop aggressor in poker and raise and get called, if your continuation bet also gets called then do not be afraid if a big card arrives on the turn as this card will look just as scary to your opponent as it does to you. You have an opportunity to represent that big card as the pre-flop raiser and you simply cannot afford to let that opportunity pass.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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