C-betting
A continuation bet (c-bet) is the preflop aggressor's first postflop decision: you raised before the flop, the caller checked to you (or you're first to act), and the option to keep betting is yours. That option is earned by your range, not owed by your position — a c-bet is a choice, not a reflex. The player who bets every flop is easy to play against; so is the one who only bets top pair.
When a c-bet works, it typically works for two stacked reasons. First, range advantage: many flops favor the raiser's range over the caller's — Topic 8 shows how this app scores textures — and on those boards even your misses can bet, because the caller's misses are in worse shape. Second, fold equity: the caller's range is full of hands that can't continue against a bet, and their folds are pure profit for a hand that would rarely win at showdown.
The two classic failure modes are mirror images. Auto-c-betting boards that smash the caller's range — low, connected, suited flops that hit the big blind's defends — donates money into the range that just improved. And never betting without a made hand gives up every pot the caller whiffed, which is most of them. The decision lives in between: who does this board favor, and what do their folds buy you?
Sizing follows the same logic — Topic 9 covers it in full: typically small on dry boards where a range-wide bet needs little protection, bigger on wet boards where the hands that continue get better odds to outdraw you.
One bet, three fold-equity worlds
The pinned spot: you open 2.5bb on the button, the big blind calls, and you c-bet half pot (2.75bb into 5.5bb) with unimproved air worth about 10% equity when called. Only the fold equity changes between rows — every EV below is computed live through the same bet-pricing formula the grader uses, with one simplification: the grader's raise-risk branch (the chance your bet gets check-raised, priced in real grades) is set to zero here, so the table can isolate the fold-equity story.
| Folds | EV of the c-bet | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | -0.98 bb | Too few folds: the bet burns money even with backdoors. |
| 25% | +0.10 bb | Near the live breakeven — the backdoors are carrying it. |
| 45% | +1.54 bb | Plenty of folds: the bet prints regardless of improvement. |
A pure bluff with zero equity would need folds 33% of the time to break even (risk divided by risk-plus-pot) — that's the ceiling. Live equity lowers the bar: with even 10% when called, the table's sign flips well below 33%. That gap is why backdoors and overcards matter so much to c-bet selection.
This app grades the bet you actually make — it prices one decision at a time against the estimated ranges, exactly as in the table above. There is no separate award for a "c-bet style"; a good c-bet grades well because its EV is real, and an auto-c-bet on the wrong board grades badly for the same reason.