An exhaustive list of all the factors influencing cbet size & frequency

Hey everyone. Currently doing a deep dive on cbetting and something that bugs me is that a lot of the resources I've found recommend just studying certain spots and learning how often and how big you should cbet in those cases. I hate learning by memorising, significantly preferring to understand the whys and then using that to figure out what I should do in a given spot.

I've been looking around for an exhaustive list of all the factors that you should take into account when deciding whether to cbet, and how big to cbet, but can't find anything. So I thought I'd post the different factors I've come across so far as I'd imagine it's a topic many could find useful and/or interesting, especially if people with much better understanding of GTO than me also chime in.

I'm a GTO beginner so I'm sure I'll have misunderstood some things, missed some things entirely, and made a lot of mistakes, so any corrections or expansions would be massively appreciated.

--------------------

So first off, cbet frequency. Starting with the most important factors. I.e. for a given spot, if something higher up the list is telling you to bet often but something lower down the list tells you to bet less often, you should still lean towards betting more often.

1) Position

In position we want to be cbetting way more often. IP it's easier for us to control the pot size on later streets, and harder for our opponent to float as if they call, they have to make another decision before seeing what we do on the turn. It allows us to check back a lot of turns which helps us realise our equity, but it also sets us up to continue barrelling if we want.

2) Range advantage

In spots where we have a range advantage, we want to cbet more often. We're going to be ahead a lot of the time, so we obviously want to build the pot when we are. But we need to also cbet our worse hands to ensure we get value when we're ahead. It also often prevents the opponent from realising their equity, e.g. when the board misses us both they will have decent equity (either they have the higher card and are ahead, or they don't but have 6 outs to make a pair) and cbetting forces them to give up that equity because with NPND they're so far behind our range they cannot continue.

3) How strong our hand is.

With our strongest hands, we want to cbet for value. Similarly, with our weakest hands the only equity we might have is fold equity. So we sometimes want to bet those too. With medium strength hands, checking might be the best play as we can't get any value from worse, but we can induce bluffs which might be the only way to get more value considering our hand strength. Obviously you can't just always bet your strong/weak hands and always check your medium strength hands as it would be too easy to exploit, but it's a factor we can consider.

4) How big we want to bet

In spots where we're betting smaller, we can bet more often. In spots where we want to bet bigger, we should bet less often. I'm not sure I understand why this is, so if anyone can expand that would be great.

5) Do we want to get raised or not?

Seems obvious, but if we are happy to get raised then we should be cbetting more. E.g. our nutty hands that will always want to continue regardless, or our big draws which are happy to re-raise/jam over the raise. In spots where we don't want to see a raise, we should be cbetting less. E.g. TPWK or weaker draws.

---------------------------------------

Next up bet sizing. Again, starting with most important.

1) Nut advantage

In spots where we have the nut advantage, we want to bet bigger. When we have the nuts, we want to get as much value as possible, and when we don't, we can easily put villain in a tricky situation with their medium strength hands where it's hard for them to continue considering our nut advantage.

2) Range advantage

In spots where we have the range advantage, we can bet smaller because we'll still have decent FE with our bluffs, and smaller bets allow us to also extract value out of their medium strength hands which aren't doing great against our range. In spots where we don't have range advantage, we might want to bet bigger to polarize our range and both get more value when we are ahead, and get more FE when we're behind.

3) Position

I think that OOP we should generally be betting bigger, and IP we can bet smaller. I'm not sure why though. Perhaps to discourage floating and compensate for the fact that OOP it's much harder for us to realise our equity at showdown compared to our opponent?

4) SPR

The lower the SPR, the smaller we should be betting. I.e. in 3bet and 4bet pots, we can bet smaller than in SRPs. We can cbet small with our value hands, knowing that we'll still be able to get stacks in by the river, but we'll simultaneously have more FE with our bluffs, as our opponent's know that by calling a small flop cbet they'd have to be prepared to often face a turn or river jam.

5) How wet the board is

On boards where a lot of turn cards can cause a massive swing in equity, we should be betting smaller. Again, I'm not really sure what the reasoning for this is so if anyone could elaborate that would be great.

6) How polarized our opponent's range is.

If villain has a polarized range, we should be betting smaller as we don't want to be bloating the pot when they do have the nuts, and we have good FE even with a smaller bet when they have complete air.

-------------------

Once again, I have almost certainly got a bunch of things wrong as my understanding of GTO is pretty limited. This post was more intended as a discussion-starter (and a sneaky implementation of Cunningham's law), rather than a guide for anyone else to follow. Any/all input would be massively appreciated!