MicroGrinder

Continuation Betting or C-Betting as it's usually called is one of the most important things to master when it comes to beating the Microstakes with a good win rate. C-betting correctly will definitely increase your win rate and is a very important part of your play. I will discuss how c-betting in the Micros work (mainly 25NL) and hope to receive some feedback on my thoughts here.

Different Player Types
As you all now we have four different player types, some more known than other:

• Loose Aggressive
  
• Loose Passive
• Tight Aggressive
• Tight Passive

As most of you probably know by now is that the Loose Passive player type is the easiest to get value from, and easiest to fold against. I do not really give in to much thought at first what type of player I am facing when I'm deciding to c-bet or not. But there are a few factors that are very important in looking into when deciding to c-bet and what you actually are c-betting with. These stats include:

• Fold 2 Flop C-Bet
• Went 2 Showdown

Why are these stats important than? A person with a high fold 2 c-bet (70% & up) I will bet every single time, even with air, even on draw heavy wet flops and spots where you should never c-bet. Why? Because he will ONLY call when he actually have something. That's about 30% of his hands post flop he will call your c-bet with. Then you can easily reevaluate the turn and decide if you want to continue with the hand or not. That means that if you c-bet this kind of player he will fold 70% of the times which will make this a profitable action in the long run.

Now we come to a high Went 2 Showdown percentage. Why is this important to consider? Well, this is the easiest way of spotting a so called Calling Station. Calling Stations are a bit harder to c-bet as they will call you down with gutshots, overcards etc. I usually tend to value bet thinner against Calling Stations but ONLY against people who are calling me down lighter as well. Let's say your in the CO with  

JT.

you open and the BTN (a typical calling station) calls your raise and the blinds fold. The flop comes down KT4. C-Betting here is a called a bet for thin value. But I will still do it. Bad players and calling stations usually are blind to your bet sizes so I will try to go for pot control and keep the pot small. However if the turn is a A for example I will stop my journey for thin value as Ax is showing up in our opponents more often than it would actually make it profitable to continue our thin value journey. However if the ace was A then you are betting both for thin value but you still have 9 outs to make a monster hand so a bet here is more justified.

Flop Texture
How important is flop texture? Very! Especially when you are deciding if you wan't to c-bet a reg or not. Fish has other tendencies than a reg. Let's take a simple example:

You're holding A8 in the BTN and you open. The BB who is a tight aggressive reg calls you down and the flop comes down. JT5 and he checks to you. What do you do? Well in this case it is a obvious c-bet. Why? Let me explain.

Every time someone (mostly regs) checks to you when you are the preflop raiser he is doing it out of 2 reasons depending on flop texture:

• He is checking to you to fold if the flop is wet
• He is checking to you to call if the flop is dry

So if the flop had come down 555 or A37 he would have checked to you to call. There is of course the occasional check-raise but that is a different subject and we can look into that as well if anyone has a request we can surely discuss that as well. 

Let's now go back to the flop  JT5. Let's say the BB decided to donk here. What would we do? Well fold of course given our holding. He is donking here with 55, JJ, TT, JT, AJ, KJ and sometimes even QJ and he wants us to fold or charge us for our drawing hands. That is usually what a donk from a reg will mean. 

I will conclude this post here for now, if you have any comments or thoughts about this please feel free to reply and I will try to fill out the gaps as we go.