Crush Opponents Who Delay Their C-Bet

20 May 2025

Intermediate

This material is for medium-skilled players

Hey guys, what’s up! In this article, we’re breaking down a single, very specific situation: in-position caller facing a delayed c-bet. This node is one of the most consistently overfolded spots in the pool — even some of the highest-stakes players I’ve coached over the years tend to misplay it.

It’s surprisingly rare to see it defended well. Honestly, you could play your entire poker career overfolding here and still feel like you're doing okay… but we’re going to do better than that. We’ll cover next things: a look at the GTO equilibrium; data + some key strategy insights; and the most common mistakes players make in this spot. Let’s dive in!

Here, we’re looking at the fold, call, and raise frequencies when facing a delayed c-bet in poker — and as you can see, they’re distributed pretty equaly across most board textures.

You’ll notice a bit more raising on paired boards, a bit less folding, but overall the response distribution is fairly consistent. Now here’s the key insight:

• When the pool is out of position, they tend to bet too frequently;
• When they’re in position — like in this node — they fold too much.

So what ends up happening is… they’re betting too often into an overfolding range. And that’s where the opportunity lies.

To exploit this leak, we need to:

• Overprotect our range;
• Over-defend when facing a delayed c-bet.

Here’s something interesting: No matter the bet size — whether it’s a quarter pot, half pot, or three-quarters — the pool tends to overfold to a raise from the in-position player. So if you play aggressively and fight for pots in this node, you’re printing. That’s one part of the equation.

If you’re checking back with hands that are too weak, the pool will punish you. Be deliberate — don’t check back junk unless you’re absolutely sure it’s the right play. Now, when it comes to deliberate training, we’re going to try something a little different. I’m going to walk you through a variation of the usual exercise:

• We’ll export hands from our own database;
• Plug them into GTO Wizard Analyzer;
• And finally review all the spots in this node where we folded.

From there, the solver will tell us:

• Which hands we should have defended;
• How big our mistakes were.

It’s a super useful way to pinpoint leaks. The regular deliberate drilling exercises are great too — but this variation adds another layer of depth.

Let’s be clear — overfolding in this node is a major leak. And the impact of those folds is far from negligible. So as you build your poker strategy, keep this top of mind:

• Lean towards over-protecting your flop check range;
• Drill the turn extensively to gain a better understanding of the defending thresholds versus different sizes.

This makes it much easier to defend effectively on the turn. And it helps avoid getting blown off hands you should be continuing with. To fix overfolding, you have to understand why it happens. There are two main reasons for this:

• Your flop check-back range is too weak to begin with;
• You fold hands on the turn that should be called, often due to misunderstanding threshold hands.

The second one is especially tricky because it's subtle. If you're overfolding flop c-bets, that’s fixable by learning the proper thresholds. But in this delayed c-bet node, the problem often starts earlier — with a flawed check-back range on the previous street.

So here's what I’m doing:

• Exporting all hands where I checked back the flop, faced a delayed c-bet, and then folded;
• Loading them into GTO Wizard Analyzer.

Going through them one by one to see where the mistakes are, and why.

So here we are in GTO Wizard. I’ve got around 150 hands pulled from my database — all folds after facing a delayed c-bet. Now can already spot some mistakes. 

For example:   on     — pretty clear this was just a misclick, nothing strategic. These hands span all the way back to 2020, so I’m expecting a few input errors — but overall, this is going to be useful data.

Let’s go through one:

• I see a hand — first read is that this is just a clear call;
• I think it was played at 2/5 in 2022;
• Unless you’re up against the nittiest of nits, folding here isn’t justified;
• Most likely, this was a threshold misunderstanding.

Let’s take a closer look at how pocket deuces behave in these spots:

• If they’re consistently folding here, maybe it’s forgivable;
• But if they’re meant to be defended, and I folded… that’s a leak worth fixing;
• Turns out, these are supposed to be calls across the board.

So I’m going to cut myself less slack — these aren’t close, they’re just errors.

To lock this in, I’m going to open Anki and create some flashcards based on these mistakes:

That way, I can drill:

• Which hands should be calling in delayed c-bet spots;
• What the correct thresholds look like;
• And reinforce those key decisions through repetition.

I’ll create a new flashcard set focusing on bet sizing — specifically bet length versus call length when facing a one-third pot bet. We’ll include delayed c-bets in this set as well. Next, I add some flush draw examples. Usually, I go through a variety of board textures and tweak things a bit to see if a situation is just an anomaly or consistent.

For example, on boards with cards like ace, king, jacks, and ten, what do we do with pocket deuces? If there’s no diamond in the hand, it’s sometimes even correct to defend. But flush draws should almost always be calling.

So without digging too deep, you can confidently say that any hand with a flush draw should generally call here. That’s a clear upgrade.

Now, looking at odd pairs like  : one thing to consider is that players with weaker hands tend to telegraph their strength by bet sizing — going bigger with strong hands and smaller with weaker ones.

This behavior also increases the likelihood of a follow-through bet on the turn. If anything, in some spots, I might want to raise rather than fold. But I already know that I wouldn’t fold this texture. Min-raises don’t really exist in equilibrium here, but that’s fine — we have to adjust for practical play. 

Somewhere in this process, we face a min-raise and a one-third pot bet. Today, I wouldn’t mass fold against those. We skipped over some non-existing spots, which is a bit annoying but expected in this kind of analysis.

GTO Wizard highlights EV mistakes, and occasionally it’ll show a check where a bet is clearly preferred. If the solver ever shows a check on the flop, it’s usually at least a mix — not a pure check. So this kind of mistake shouldn’t come up often, but when it does, it just means we missed a clear value bet.

It looks like we’ve now gone through most of the worst errors. And this one — yeah, this is fine. Nothing much to comment on here. Overall, the examples aren’t too bad:

Of course, the sample size is still relatively small. I only included a fraction of the hands I played, and I’ve also played across other sites. I also excluded some lower-stakes hands, so if I expanded the sample, we’d definitely find more mistakes. But for now, I’m pretty satisfied with the results. We found a few leaks, a clear upgrade, and that wraps up today's topic. Good luck at the tables!