One of the key reasons why we fire a continuation bet (c-bet) on the flop is to grow the pot.
While this is true in a GTO poker sense, it’s even more crucial when it comes to exploitative play.
In fact, exploitatively speaking, pot growth is one of the most critical principles for players looking to heavily boost their winrate.
Here we'll discuss why pot growth is so essential, followed by pointers on applying pot growth/building principles to boost winrate.
The Fundamental Objective of Pot Growth
Wouldn’t it be great if we could play a massive pot every time we were strong and a small pot every time we were weak?
We’d be guaranteed to have a massive winrate.
The question is – what is stopping us from playing this way?
In practice, the answer is often nothing. If we can grow the pot when we are strong and limit the size of the pot when we are weak, we are already printing money against many opponents.
In theory, our opponent should prevent us from playing like this:
- If we only ever grow the pot when we are strong, our opponent should get out of the way.
- If passive play means we’re always weak, our opponent should aggressively try to execute a poker bluff to get us off the pot.
This factor is the key reason why GTO requires us to play some massive pots when weak and sometimes trap and slowplay when strong.
The Reality of Most Opponents
The reality is that most opponents are not capable of exploiting a very basic poker strategy based purely on pot growth. They will continue to pay off our big bets while allowing us to routinely play small pots with our weaker holdings.
This principle of pot growth is directly related to c-betting since c-betting is a way to grow the pot.
- Larger flop c-bets grow the pot more quickly.
- We can often size our bets purely based on the strength of our holdings.
While this strategy turns the value of our hand face up, our opponents often don't actively exploit it.
Many players end up failing to maximise winrate because they employ overly complex c-betting strategies against the wrong types of opponents, in the wrong kinds of poker games.
C-betting for Pot Growth
At the risk of oversimplifying, we could create a list of poker hand types and map them to specific actions (including a c-bet sizing).
| Hand Strength | Action |
| Nutted holdings (Sets, Straights, etc.) | Overbet |
| Good made hands (Top Pair, etc.) | C-bet 75% pot |
| Nutted draws (OESDs, Flush Draws) | C-bet 75% pot |
| Nut Gutshots, some good made hands | C-bet 50% pot |
| Mid-strength made hands | C-bet 33% pot or check |
| Dominated draws | C-bet 33% pot or check |
| Decent backdoor equity | C-bet 33% pot or check |
| Trash | Always check |
It’s crucial to understand that this strategy is heavily exploitative. However, it will perform well against weak opposition.
It completely ignores essential theoretical variables such as how formation or board texture impacts correct c-bet frequencies and sizing.
It will usually not be the right approach if our opponent is a competent reg(ular).
For best results, we should consider the following -
- Have a solid understanding of how theoretical play works based on formation and texture.
- Understand why the above pot-growth-oriented strategy could be significantly better than GTO against some opponents, but not the right approach against everyone.
Ironically, many players start with a pot-growth-oriented strategy but get progressively confused when incorporating GTO principles.
It’s easiest if we already understand a little about how theory works and can appreciate that the above c-bet strategy is deliberately heavily exploitative.
