By Tony Guerrera

When you raise preflop and miss, you can follow your preflop raise with a bet on the flop. As long as the pot is shorthanded postflop and your opponents aren’t too tricky and aggressive, this bet should take the pot down a good chunk of the time. This bet, in which you bet when you miss the flop after having raised preflop, is called a continuation bet. The continuation bet is an important weapon in your poker-playing arsenal, but that doesn’t mean that you should always use it.

An alternative to the continuation bet is the delayed continuation bet. The idea is that you check on the flop and then bet on the turn. When you are out of position, the betting pattern goes check/check on the flop, and then you come out firing a bullet on the turn. When you are in position, the betting goes check/check on the flop, and if your opponent checks to you on the turn, then you fire a bullet. Against tight, predictable opponents, the delayed continuation bet can be more profitable than a regular continuation bet. To see this process in action, let’s dissect a hand.

Suppose you’re in a $200NL game at Commerce casino. The blinds are $3-$5, and your table is eight-handed. You are in the cutoff with A9. Action folds to you, and you raise to $20. The button and the small blind fold, but the big blind calls. After the $4 house rake and the $1 jackpot rake are dropped, there’s $38 in the pot.

After calling, your opponent has about $150 behind. You have $300 behind, meaning that you’re effectively playing with a $150 stack. The big blind has been really conservative, meaning that you put him on the following distribution: {88-QQ, AT+}. You don’t include AA or KK in his distribution, because you assume he would reraise with them.

The flop is 762. Your opponent checks to you, and you know that you’ll check to you 100% of the time after you’ve raised with the intention of calling or check-raising you if he flops at least top pair. If you were to bet on the flop, your opponent will call or raise with 27 combinations, and he would fold 48 combinations. The EV of a $20 continuation bet is therefore the following (not accounting for future action if your opponent flat-calls):

This is a +EV bet; however, we’ll soon see that the delayed continuation bet is an even more +EV line of play. Suppose you elect to check behind. If your opponent has at least top pair on the turn, he’ll let you know by betting…he won’t give you a free look at the river. Meanwhile, if he does not have at least top pair on the turn, he will fold to you if you bet (you’ll bet $25, which is a price he won’t be willing to pay if he turns a flush draw). To figure out the EV of checking behind on the flop with the intention of betting when checked to on the turn, we need to figure out the probability of your opponent having top pair or better on the turn.

If you don’t want to go through this calculation, feel free to skip it; I’ve included it here for those who want to learn how to do such calculations and for those who wish to verify my work:

We know you’re up against 75 card combinations. The 6 out of 78 times you’re against 88, the probability that your opponent will have top pair or better is . This is because, assuming your opponent has 88, there are 45 cards left in the deck, and out of those, there are 23 that result in your opponent having top pair or better (3 2s, 4 3s, 4 4s, 4 5s, 3 6s, 3 7s, and 2 8s). The 3 out of 75 times you’re against 99, the probability that you’re opponent ends up with top pair or better is (3 2s, 4 3s, 4 4s, 4 5s, 3 6s, 3 7s, 4 8s, and 1 9). The 6 out of 75 times you’re against TT, the probability that your opponent ends up with top pair or better is (3 2s, 4 3s, 4 4s, 4 5s, 3 6s, 3 7s, 4 8s, 3 9s, and 2 Ts). The 6 out of 75 times you’re against JJ, the probability that your opponent ends up with top pair or better is (3 2s, 4 3s, 4 4s, 4 5s, 3 6s, 3 7s, 4 8s, 3 9s, 4 Ts, and 2 Js). The 6 out of 75 times you’re against QQ, the probability that your opponent ends up with top pair or better is (3 2s, 4 3s, 4 4s, 4 5s, 3 6s, 3 7s, 4 8s, 3 9s, 4 Ts, and 4 Js and 2 Qs). The 48 out of 75 times you’re against AT+, the probability that your opponent ends up with top pair or better is (2 As and 3 cards with which to pair the non-ace).

Putting all of these probabilities together, the probability that your opponent ends up with top pair or better on the turn is given by the following:

Therefore, the probability that your opponent will check to you is .6604. And 100% of the time your opponent checks to you, you’ll be able to make a $25 bet that will win the pot immediately. Meanwhile, if your opponent bets, you can safely fold…even if you hit an ace or a nine because from our description of your opponent, we know that your pair of aces or nines is beaten. The EV of a delayed continuation bet against the precise opponent defined is (.6604)($38) = $25.10, which is $7.98 more than the EV from a direct continuation bet on the flop.

This is just one specific example; however, this example motivates the idea that employing a delayed continuation bet will yield a higher EV against tight opponents who may slowplay the flop, but who won’t slowplay beyond the flop. If we think about the delayed continuation bet in the context of tournament play, we see that, against tight-passive opponents, it’s a lower risk line of play that actually results in optimizing your expected chip count…you don’t get much better than that in tournament play! Of course, you can’t abuse the delayed continuation bet, just as you usually can’t abuse any other +EV line of play, because as soon as your opponents become aware of your abuse, they may change their game play. However, you should incorporate the delayed continuation bet as a part of a well balanced approach in which you have as many lines of play available to you as possible.

Tony Guerrera is the author of Killer Poker by the Numbers

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