Continuation Betting for Dummies

I haven't been posting here much due to crazy work travel, work problems, and, well, work, work, and more work. That said, in the limited spare time I have every day I have been making slow and steady progress on the ABC lessons with Le Monsieur. The latest one that I just uploaded to our shared Evernote lesson notebook was a big 3000-word treatise on when to continuation bet on the flop. (There are six additional lessons that accompany this one, btw...)

I thought this when-to-cbet lesson would be a snap to write, but in the end it took me nearly 3 weeks of research, errant thought, false-starts, and general noodling around to come up with a step-by-step instructional that a newbie can follow to determine whether they should c-bet on the flop or not. It also gives guidance on how much they should bet in each case.

Writing this lesson was a really fun--and sometimes aggravating--experience, but I think the end result is really useful. I also think it's kind of ground-breaking in a way; in fact, I've never seen this type of approach to c-betting addressed before anywhere in poker books, blogs, or in training videos. This is basically cutting edge stuff, folks.

Anyway, you'll have to wait for the app to come out for the full step-by-step version, but here's the TL;DR Cliffs Notes version of cbetting:

1. First determine your fold equity (FE) in the hand. You have to estimate what the likelihood is that the villains who saw the flop with you are going to fold if you bet. I've touched on this before in this blog, like in Bug's Poker Tip #7 and Tip #17 before, but not nearly to the extent I did this time around, nor did I quantify each effect, nor have I put in a sequential, step-by-step process. Long story short, the significant level-1 factors that influence your FE include: number of villains, board texture, type of villains, stack sizes, preflop action, position of the players, and the hero's image. I've spent hours wading through poker tracker data to actually determine the approximate weightings and importance of each of these, and I now have a solid and easy means to accurate estimate FE in a poker hand. In a nutshell, my method uses points that you assign for, say, the number of calling stations left in the hand, or who has position on whom preflop, etc.  You total the points and end up with a FE estimate. It's pretty cool stuff if I do say so myself-- oh, and dead simple to do.
2. Second, determine if you want the villain to fold or not, which of course hinges around your own hand strength, or pot equity (PE). This seems simple on the surface, but again, when you're teaching level-1 poker to a newbie, and you're trying not to inundate them with hand reading, poker stoves, leveling, etc., it's surprisingly challenging to actually determine whether your hand is strong enough or not to want a call. Again, I spent a lot of time sorting and analyzing real poker hand data, and now have come up with another simple point count system that does a reasonably accurate (and conservative) job of determining your pot equity in a hand independent of villain's range.  Related to this is a method of determining if your hand is vulnerable or not to getting out drawn on the turn and river. And yes, once again, this is not as easy as it sounds to do, but I think we have a very innovative and simple method figured out.

Okay, so after you have the FE and PE's of a situation estimated, the third and final step is to plot them against each other on a 2-d chart. Here's a simplified version of the graph, and if you've done a reasonably good job estimating your fold and pot equities, this type of chart actually can go a long way toward helping you a) decide to if you should c-bet; and b) determine how much you should bet:

Researching and writing these lessons continues to be extremely fun and educational. I also think it's going to result in a really powerful training aid for beginning and intermediate poker players. And, oh yeah, it also helps offset all the work, work, and work that my day job insists on dumping on me lately. 

All-in for now...

-Bug

Thinking In Terms of Equity

Waaaaaay back on January 1st of this year, I posted my Poker Resolutions for the upcoming year (re-read it: here). Number #17 on the list was "Think of poker decisions in terms of Equity and EV."

Recently I received an email from a reader that said, in part:

You've explained equity to me at least 10 x if not 100. I see it on stove. I see it in ICM. I read it in Miller. P 110. 

But I am unable to explain it. Please help.

Okay, so what is Equity? And why does it matter?

In simple terms, Equity is your share of the current pot at that moment in time. In more complex terms, it's, well, a little more complex to explain. Let me try.

There are essentially two types of Equity we're concerned with in poker: Pot Equity (sometimes called Hand Equity), and Fold Equity. Your Total Equity in a hand, therefore, is simply your Pot Equity plus your Fold Equity. Let's look briefly at each:

1. Pot Equity. Let's say you're dealt AKo and your opponent holds JTo. Using PokerStove, we can see that before a flop is dealt, your (Pot) Equity is 65% vs. your opponent's 35%. People frequently assume this means your chance of winning the hand at that moment in time, and while this is a reasonable way to think of the situation, it's not technically accurate. What the 65% number actually represents is your theoretical "share" of the current pot at that instantaneous moment in time. If the pot was $100, then $65 of it "belongs" to you in the long run (i.e., if you were to run this scenario out a few thousand times). If the flop came out J-T-4, however, your Pot Equity on the flop would plummet to just 21%, because your opponent flopped top two pair; your share of a $100 pot at this point in the hand is now just $21. If the turn brings a Queen, your Pot Equity is now back up over 90%. And when the river drops another Jack on the board, your Pot Equity, or rightful share of the pot, is now a big fat goose egg, i.e., Zero.
2. Fold Equity. The layman's explanation for Fold Equity is simply the probability that your opponent will fold if you bet a certain amount. The more technically accurate definition is that it represents your share of the pot given the propensity of your opponent to fold to a bet of a given size. In the aforementioned example, your Pot Equity was zero on the river. But let's pretend that the Queen, Jack, and Ten on the board were all of the same suit. Let's also assume that the Ace in your hand is also of that same suit. Alas, your King is not, so you're still beat in the hand. Your opponent doesn't know that, however, and suspects that there is a possibility that you have a straight flush. If you bet big here, there is a chance a paranoid opponent may fold. How big of a chance? Well, unlike Pot Equity, there is no handy program like 'Stove we can employ to spit out the answer. Instead, how much Fold Equity you have depends on less tangible factors, like the emotional state of your opponent, what he perceives your range to be, and so on. It also (obviously) depends on your bet size. In this example, we might say that your Fold Equity on the river is nearly zero percent if you bet small, but might be as much as 10-20% if you bet a very large amount and made your opponent believe you could have the nuts.

So why does knowing what your Total Equity is matters? Because, as you will recall, there are two ways to win in poker: 1) show down the best hand (i.e., have big Pot Equity); or 2) get your opponent to fold (i.e., have Fold Equity).

Note that in the vast majority of poker hands we play (i.e., if we don't have total air or the nuts), we're somewhere in between, trying to win, with a combination of both Pot and Fold Equity. This is where things like Show Down Value hands and Semi-Bluffs come into play. Here's a simple graphic I ginned up to hopefully explain better:

Your Total Equity in a poker hand is the sum of your Pot Equity and your Fold Equity.

Finally, I'll leave you with an Equity rule of thumb that is often repeated by professional players: If you think you have more than 50% Total Equity in a hand at any given time, you should bet. I'll leave it to the reader to figure out why this is true....

All-in for now...
-Bug