Continuation betting on dry boards

A dry board misses most calling ranges, which is exactly why a small continuation bet does so much work on it.

A dry board is one with few draws available: disconnected ranks, no more than two of a suit, and usually one high card. K-s 7-d 2-c is the standard example. Almost nothing on that board is drawing to anything, which means a hand that is behind now will still be behind on the river, and a hand that is ahead has very little to protect against.

The size can be small

Because there are no draws to charge, there is no reason to bet large. A bet of roughly a quarter to a third of the pot asks the opponent to fold every hand that missed, which on this board is most of their range, while risking very little when it does not work. Betting three-quarters of the pot on K-s 7-d 2-c folds out the same hands and loses three times as much when it runs into the king.

Worked exampleThe break-even arithmetic on a bluff is straightforward. A bet of a third of the pot needs to work one time in four to break even, since it risks one unit to win three. A bet of the full pot needs to work one time in two. On a board where the opponent's range misses well over half the time, the smaller bet clears its threshold comfortably and the larger one is close.

Whose range does the board favour

A high dry card is usually good for the preflop raiser, because a raising range contains far more aces and kings than a calling range does. That is why the continuation bet on K-s 7-d 2-c is close to automatic in position. The mirror case is a board like 8-h 7-h 6-c, which connects heavily with hands that call and barely at all with the top of a raising range. Firing the same bet there is a reflex, not a plan.

What happens when the bet is called

A call on a dry board narrows the opponent's holdings sharply, usually to a pair or a stubborn ace. The turn then decides whether to continue. With a genuine hand, a second bet is straightforward. With nothing, the case for a second bet is weak, because the hands that called the flop on a board with no draws are exactly the hands that will call again.

The single most common leak on dry boards is the second barrel fired out of momentum. The flop bet was cheap and it had a clear job. The turn bet is more expensive and, against a range that has already declined to fold once, it usually has none.