Continuation Betting and Folding to it. The percentage of times when the preflop raiser bets again later in the hand is measured by the CB stat in Holdem Manager and CBet stat in Poker Tracker. This HUD statistic is very important for the simple reason that the particular situation occurs so often. The power of this indicator is greatest at the flop with only two or three players involved in the hand.
Cbet Bonus Code Infos. New players have the opportunity to receive a 100% deposit offer up until €500 without entering a Cbet Bonus Code in February 2021. The offer is available for famous games from Evolution Gaming, Play'n GO and Pragmatic Play to mention a few. The CBet Situational View breaks down the most common Continuation Bet poker situations researched and provides a graphical representation of the data. This makes the data easier to read than a standard report and less filters can be used to view the exact data you are looking for.
In order to understand why, think about this: most flops miss most hands. Two different hole cards hit anything only about 1/3rd of the time. Very often no one has a solid hand or a draw and winning becomes a matter of who will make the first stab at the pot. Most players also tend to check to previously shown aggression, so the preflop raiser is usually set up to try to steal.
Then again some players (especially people with background in limit Holdem poker) overdo it and C-Bet almost every pot. Such blind aggression is unnecessary even against weak opponents – they won't notice its predictability, but many of them will refuse to fold marginal hands and will call you down and beat you at the river. Good players will pick up on these tendencies and capitalize, so in order to be profitable you need to carefully pick the C-Bet opportunities and always consider the nature of the player who C-Bets you.
Examples using CB
/For sake of simplicity we'll assume all opponents have stacks of about 100BB/
Full ring table; a player in MP raises 3xBB and you call with a pair of 8s in late position; the others fold. The flop comes 49Q rainbow and your opponent bets 2/3rd of the pot. Now what? Maybe he missed and is doing a standard continuation bet with nothing but air, or he has a made hand that beats you. How can we know? Well, to find out how he typically plays in similar situations, we look at the Flop CB percentage.
a) VPIP=18 / PFR=11 / Flop CB=87 ; Turn CB=43 ; River CB=42
A tight-aggressive player otherwise, this opponent has a hidden flaw in his game – he has a routine of making continuation bets on the flop and if he's bluffing, gives up on the turn and river. Your hand here is not strong enough to slow-play and you need to know right now where you stand – so a good raise of about 2/3rd the new pot is OK. To help you with this decision Holdem Manager has the extremely useful statistic Fold Flop CB Vs Raise – it will tell you exactly how often the opponent folds when his flop C-Bet meets resistance.
b) VPIP=22 / PFR=9 / Flop CB=41 ; Turn CB=40 ; River CB=37
A tight player, a little passive. But when he C-Bets the flop, beware – more often than not he has it. This situation is totally different than the first one – we have third pair and most probably are way behind in the hand. Fold.
Examples using Fold to CB
Full ring table; we are in MP and hold AQs. It is folded to us and we make a standard raise of 3xBB and get only one caller in LP. Flop comes 48 K. What do we do?
First, it's a relatively good flop to C-bet – only one high card and no open-ended straight draws possible. But we'd like to be sure, so we look at the opponent's Fold to Flop CB.
a) VPIP=17 / PFR=10 / Fold to Flop CB=58
Again we have a TAG player, but he folds too often to c-bets. We have to bet here about 2/3rds of the pot and try to win it. This play has a solid positive expectancy even if we insta-fold if we get called: out of 100 times we'll win the pot 58 times and we'll lose 42×2/3rds pot = 28 pots. 58-28=30 pots won; on average a profit of 3/10ths of the pot per hand (30pot/100hands).
b) VPIP=27 / PFR=8 / Fold to Flop CB=28
This guy is a calling station. Don't try to bluff him – you'll throw your money away. If we had a hand we'd value bet here, but right now it's futile. Check and hope for a free showdown.
Get a poker tracking program like Poker Tracker to put the odds in your favor!
This is the fourth episode in my Maximizing Your HUD series: Percentage Form and Color Coding for the Win. In this episode, I teach you about percentage form and how to color code your HUD stats. This helps for quick and easy reference and to find frequency exploits in a player's game.
Listen to episode #60: Percentage Form and Color Coding for the Win
What do these numbers really mean? (4:00)
So far in this series I've discussed HUD usage for online poker. I gave you the essential elements that every HUD needs, as well as additional stats that you can use to exploit your opponents. I also talked about the popups and why they're so useful, and I gave you some ways you can practice using your HUD.
But we haven't really discussed how to understand and think about the numbers in your HUD. What does it mean when 'Robbing Robbie' raises from the BTN 75% of the time, what's it mean when 'Fit-or-Fold-Francis' cbets only 20%, and how strong is 'Debbie-Double-barrels' range of hands when she's cbetting the flop and turn 70% of the time?
Percentage Form (4:45)
The first step to understanding the stats we see on the HUD is understanding Percentage Form. This is a shorthand way to describe a range of hands. Instead of saying, 'He 3bets Jacks or better and AK' you can just say, 'He 3bets 3%' and someone versed in percentage form will understand that.
Poker Cbet Strategy
Get Flopzilla Pro to help you learn ranges in percentage form.
Enter in a range of hands and it'll tell you the % of hands that comprises. There's a huge difference between a 10% range and a 50% range of hands, and understanding this is very useful for hand reading.
HUD's give us the % of how often somebody does something, which helps us be more technical players rather than feel players. Knowing how often they perform certain actions, which tells us the likely range of hands they're doing it with, helps us to make plans and develop plays to combat them.
Pre-flop Raise
PFR is the % of the time that a player put in any raise pre-flop. This stat tells us how aggressive a player is.
If a nitty player has a tiny PFR of 5%, it means he only raises 5% of the time, or 1 in 20 chances. That's only 77+, AK and AQs. He's not even raising AQo, AJ, KQ, or 22-66.
Contrast this with an opponent who raises 30%, which is 6x more often than the nitty player opens, so it's 6 out of every 20 chances. In the picture below, we see that 30% is any pp, A2s+, A7o+, every Broadway, K2s+, Q8s+, J8s+, 75s+ and 54s+.
That's percentage form in action: looking at a stat and being able to understand what range of hands it correlates to.
3bet
This stat tells us how often the player decided to 3bet pre-flop. It's another stat that looks at a players aggression and the % we see here is very telling.
You'll often encounter people who only 3bet 2-3% of the time, which is JJ+ and AK. That's it, just value hands.
Contrast this with somebody who 3bets 6% which is 99+ AQ and KQ. Quite a bit looser than the 3% 3bettor. And at 12% we're looking at 55+, AT+ and KJ+. Now that's getting aggressive with lots of hands that aren't really doing so for value.
Cbet
Stat percentages tell you how often a player does something, but doesn't always correlate to a range of hands. Cbet, or continuation bet, tells us how often the player bets at the flop given that he made the last raise pre-flop.
So a cbet of 20% means he bets the flop as the pfr only 2 out of every 10 times. A Cbet of 70% means he bets the flop 7 out of 10 times. That's a huge difference, and one is obviously more aggressive than the other. But what do these two percentages really tell us?
We know that most ranges only 'hit' the flop about 33% of the time. By hitting the flop I mean flopping TP+ or an OESD+. We know this by using a program like Flopzilla Pro that shows us how often a range of hands will hit flops. Here's a screenshot of Flopzilla showing how a 25% raising range hits an average flop 34.2% of the time:
Continuation Betting and Folding to it. The percentage of times when the preflop raiser bets again later in the hand is measured by the CB stat in Holdem Manager and CBet stat in Poker Tracker. This HUD statistic is very important for the simple reason that the particular situation occurs so often. The power of this indicator is greatest at the flop with only two or three players involved in the hand.
Cbet Bonus Code Infos. New players have the opportunity to receive a 100% deposit offer up until €500 without entering a Cbet Bonus Code in February 2021. The offer is available for famous games from Evolution Gaming, Play'n GO and Pragmatic Play to mention a few. The CBet Situational View breaks down the most common Continuation Bet poker situations researched and provides a graphical representation of the data. This makes the data easier to read than a standard report and less filters can be used to view the exact data you are looking for.
In order to understand why, think about this: most flops miss most hands. Two different hole cards hit anything only about 1/3rd of the time. Very often no one has a solid hand or a draw and winning becomes a matter of who will make the first stab at the pot. Most players also tend to check to previously shown aggression, so the preflop raiser is usually set up to try to steal.
Then again some players (especially people with background in limit Holdem poker) overdo it and C-Bet almost every pot. Such blind aggression is unnecessary even against weak opponents – they won't notice its predictability, but many of them will refuse to fold marginal hands and will call you down and beat you at the river. Good players will pick up on these tendencies and capitalize, so in order to be profitable you need to carefully pick the C-Bet opportunities and always consider the nature of the player who C-Bets you.
Examples using CB
/For sake of simplicity we'll assume all opponents have stacks of about 100BB/
Full ring table; a player in MP raises 3xBB and you call with a pair of 8s in late position; the others fold. The flop comes 49Q rainbow and your opponent bets 2/3rd of the pot. Now what? Maybe he missed and is doing a standard continuation bet with nothing but air, or he has a made hand that beats you. How can we know? Well, to find out how he typically plays in similar situations, we look at the Flop CB percentage.
a) VPIP=18 / PFR=11 / Flop CB=87 ; Turn CB=43 ; River CB=42
A tight-aggressive player otherwise, this opponent has a hidden flaw in his game – he has a routine of making continuation bets on the flop and if he's bluffing, gives up on the turn and river. Your hand here is not strong enough to slow-play and you need to know right now where you stand – so a good raise of about 2/3rd the new pot is OK. To help you with this decision Holdem Manager has the extremely useful statistic Fold Flop CB Vs Raise – it will tell you exactly how often the opponent folds when his flop C-Bet meets resistance.
b) VPIP=22 / PFR=9 / Flop CB=41 ; Turn CB=40 ; River CB=37
A tight player, a little passive. But when he C-Bets the flop, beware – more often than not he has it. This situation is totally different than the first one – we have third pair and most probably are way behind in the hand. Fold.
Examples using Fold to CB
Full ring table; we are in MP and hold AQs. It is folded to us and we make a standard raise of 3xBB and get only one caller in LP. Flop comes 48 K. What do we do?
First, it's a relatively good flop to C-bet – only one high card and no open-ended straight draws possible. But we'd like to be sure, so we look at the opponent's Fold to Flop CB.
a) VPIP=17 / PFR=10 / Fold to Flop CB=58
Again we have a TAG player, but he folds too often to c-bets. We have to bet here about 2/3rds of the pot and try to win it. This play has a solid positive expectancy even if we insta-fold if we get called: out of 100 times we'll win the pot 58 times and we'll lose 42×2/3rds pot = 28 pots. 58-28=30 pots won; on average a profit of 3/10ths of the pot per hand (30pot/100hands).
b) VPIP=27 / PFR=8 / Fold to Flop CB=28
This guy is a calling station. Don't try to bluff him – you'll throw your money away. If we had a hand we'd value bet here, but right now it's futile. Check and hope for a free showdown.
Get a poker tracking program like Poker Tracker to put the odds in your favor!
This is the fourth episode in my Maximizing Your HUD series: Percentage Form and Color Coding for the Win. In this episode, I teach you about percentage form and how to color code your HUD stats. This helps for quick and easy reference and to find frequency exploits in a player's game.
Listen to episode #60: Percentage Form and Color Coding for the Win
What do these numbers really mean? (4:00)
So far in this series I've discussed HUD usage for online poker. I gave you the essential elements that every HUD needs, as well as additional stats that you can use to exploit your opponents. I also talked about the popups and why they're so useful, and I gave you some ways you can practice using your HUD.
But we haven't really discussed how to understand and think about the numbers in your HUD. What does it mean when 'Robbing Robbie' raises from the BTN 75% of the time, what's it mean when 'Fit-or-Fold-Francis' cbets only 20%, and how strong is 'Debbie-Double-barrels' range of hands when she's cbetting the flop and turn 70% of the time?
Percentage Form (4:45)
The first step to understanding the stats we see on the HUD is understanding Percentage Form. This is a shorthand way to describe a range of hands. Instead of saying, 'He 3bets Jacks or better and AK' you can just say, 'He 3bets 3%' and someone versed in percentage form will understand that.
Poker Cbet Strategy
Get Flopzilla Pro to help you learn ranges in percentage form.
Enter in a range of hands and it'll tell you the % of hands that comprises. There's a huge difference between a 10% range and a 50% range of hands, and understanding this is very useful for hand reading.
HUD's give us the % of how often somebody does something, which helps us be more technical players rather than feel players. Knowing how often they perform certain actions, which tells us the likely range of hands they're doing it with, helps us to make plans and develop plays to combat them.
Pre-flop Raise
PFR is the % of the time that a player put in any raise pre-flop. This stat tells us how aggressive a player is.
If a nitty player has a tiny PFR of 5%, it means he only raises 5% of the time, or 1 in 20 chances. That's only 77+, AK and AQs. He's not even raising AQo, AJ, KQ, or 22-66.
Contrast this with an opponent who raises 30%, which is 6x more often than the nitty player opens, so it's 6 out of every 20 chances. In the picture below, we see that 30% is any pp, A2s+, A7o+, every Broadway, K2s+, Q8s+, J8s+, 75s+ and 54s+.
That's percentage form in action: looking at a stat and being able to understand what range of hands it correlates to.
3bet
This stat tells us how often the player decided to 3bet pre-flop. It's another stat that looks at a players aggression and the % we see here is very telling.
You'll often encounter people who only 3bet 2-3% of the time, which is JJ+ and AK. That's it, just value hands.
Contrast this with somebody who 3bets 6% which is 99+ AQ and KQ. Quite a bit looser than the 3% 3bettor. And at 12% we're looking at 55+, AT+ and KJ+. Now that's getting aggressive with lots of hands that aren't really doing so for value.
Cbet
Stat percentages tell you how often a player does something, but doesn't always correlate to a range of hands. Cbet, or continuation bet, tells us how often the player bets at the flop given that he made the last raise pre-flop.
So a cbet of 20% means he bets the flop as the pfr only 2 out of every 10 times. A Cbet of 70% means he bets the flop 7 out of 10 times. That's a huge difference, and one is obviously more aggressive than the other. But what do these two percentages really tell us?
We know that most ranges only 'hit' the flop about 33% of the time. By hitting the flop I mean flopping TP+ or an OESD+. We know this by using a program like Flopzilla Pro that shows us how often a range of hands will hit flops. Here's a screenshot of Flopzilla showing how a 25% raising range hits an average flop 34.2% of the time:
If an opponent has a cbet higher than 33%, you know he bets when he doesn't hit the flop well, and the higher the % the more often he's bluffing. If the cbet is below 33%, then you know he's fit-or-fold and only fires when he hits the flop really well.
Color Coding for the Win (12:05)
Statistical Ranges
Color coding stat percentages helps to quickly spot frequency issues in your opponent's game.
For PFR, I use a red/yellow/green/orange color scheme for my stat ranges. Red designates nitty stats, yellow is for reg stats, green for fishy and orange is for beyond fishy like LAG's and donks.
So my own color coding ranges for PFR are:
- 0-8% and color coded red, which denotes a nitty player who raises infrequently
- 8-18% and color coded yellow, to denote a reg player who is raising somewhere in the range that's considered to be optimal
- 18-24% and color coded green, which denotes a player getting too loose and aggressive with the hands they choose to raise
- 24-100% and color coded orange to denote a LAG or very donkish player
Another way that color-coding helps to spot frequency issues is when two different stats have opposite colors. For example, if their flop cbet is green (which is high and fishy or aggressive) and their turn cbet is low and red (which is nitty), then you know the opponent is turn honest and only bets here with the goods. This is like an opponent with a cbet of 70% on the flop then only 30% on the turn. Target these guys and take it away from them when they check the turn.
There isn't a right or wrong way to color code your ranges, and even the ranges you select aren't right or wrong. It's just your opinion and whatever helps you exploit your opponents.
Ultimately, what I recommend you doing is writing down each stat in your HUD, and on a scale of 1-100, give thought into the ranges that comprise a nit's, a reg's, a fish's and a LAG's ranges.
My color coding ranges for:
3bet
- 0-6% red
- 6-9% yellow
- 9-16% green
- 16-100% orange
Cbet
- 0-50% red
- 50-66% yellow
- 66-100% green
Backgrounds and Font Sizes
Another part of color coding to make stats more user-friendly and quick to identify is background colors and font sizes. I increase the font sizing of the most important stats in my HUD, namely stack size in BB's, VPIP and PFR.
The other thing I do is color code the backgrounds of stats that work well together. If you look at the screen shot of the 6max SNG & MTT SMART HUD below, you'll see the following:
Cbet In Poker
- Steal related stats all have a black background
- RFI, Fold to 3bet and 4bet are all teal
- Calling 2bet and 3bet stats are dark grey
- Cbet flop and turn stats are green
- And Fold to cbet flop and turn stats are on an olive background
Ultimately, it's up to you to make your HUD as user-friendly as possible, and the goal should always be to make it so your HUD helps you exploit your opponents. That's why you're using the HUD after all.
Podcast Challenge (16:10)
Here's my challenge to you for this episode: Create some of your own color coding ranges for the most important stats in your HUD. I recommend doing this for the stats mentioned today, as well as Attempt to Steal, Fold to Cbet, # of Hands Played and VPIP. Take the time to create these on your own, giving careful thought to what the percentages mean. Use Flopzilla Pro to aid you in this process. This practice of thinking about each individual stat and what the possible percentages mean will be great for your ongoing poker development.
Other Episodes in the Maximizing Your HUD Series
Purchase the SMART HUD
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- Counting Outs and Making Profitable Calls - February 4, 2021
- Don't Respect the Player, But Always Respect the Math! - January 28, 2021
- Curiosity Kills Your Winnings - January 21, 2021
