Please read up on continuation betting in our Post Flop Strategy section if you haven’t already.  Firing that second barrell usually means betting the turn after betting the flop, or making a continuation bet on the turn.  This can get a little bit more complicated than cbetting the flop because things have changed.  Before we go and bet the turn, we need a good reason and a good plan. 

A lot of players have a pretty good understanding of when to cbet on the flop but often freeze up on the turn and shutdown too often, or they bet the turn too often for the wrong reasons resulting in bloated pots with weak hands.  There are many variables to factor in and questions which need answering before firing a second barrell so I’ll go ahead and list some of them here:

• Our opponent’s range:  Hopefully you’ve been narrowing your opponents’s range all the way up to this point.  Your opponent started out with a range of hands that he will play preflop.  Then he had a continuance range for calling your cbet on the flop.  We now need to evaluate what hands in that range our opponent will fold, call and raise with based on the turn card. 
• Change in board texture: Have any draws been completed?  Is the turn card an overcard to the flop that we can represent to fold out smaller pairs?  If we were betting for value on the flop, can we still bet for value on the turn? Sometimes it will be best to check back the turn if we have a decent hand such as an overpair on the flop like QQ and a King or Ace falls on the turn.  It will be difficult to get additional value from smaller pairs now, but we may still be able to get some value out of draws. 
• Plan for the river: This one is especially important.  Always have a plan for the next street.  Think about what rivers you will value bet on, which ones you check back for a cheaper showdown, which you will bluff and how you will react to a bet or raise on different possible river cards etc.  Putting things into perspective and looking how the entire hand will play out now will prepare you for the next street, while making the decision on the current street easier. 
• Position: Whether or not we have position on our opponent will make the hand much easier to play on the river.  When we have position we can check back a lot with marginal holdings.  This protects us from getting check raised on the river, and will often force our opponents to lead out on the river with their strong hands because they will fear we will check back for a cheap showdown.  With marginal hands, we often cannot get 3 streets of value from worse hands anyway so having that option is a plus.  When we are out of position, we should be firing the turn in situations where our opponent will either fold a high percentage of the time or we are prepared to bet the river often, either for value or as a bluff(remember to plan out ahead of time what sorts of river cards you will be value betting or bluffing on). 

Many of the regulars or grinders you will face at the table will also be using tracking software such as Pokertracker 3 or Hold’em Manager, and will have the percentages for how often you cbet the flop and the turn displayed on their HUD.  If you are cbetting the flop 90% of the time but only following up on the turn 30% of the time, you may be getting exploited by astute players.  The answer isn’t necessarily to bet the turn more often, but betting the flop less often.  If you start betting the flop 65% of the time while keeping your range for betting the turn the same, it will result in you betting the turn 41% of the time. 

Maths:  We bet the flop 90/100 times.  30% of 90 = 27, so we bet the turn 27/90 times. 

If we bet the flop 65/100 times, but still bet the same range on the turn, we’ll be betting 27/65 times or  41% of the time. 

In each example, we’re bettng the turn with the same range of hands but we’re betting the flop less often in the second example.  In the first example there is a large gap between how often we bet the flop and the turn.  Good players can pick up on this and exploit us by floating our flop bet since we’ll be shutting down on the turn the vast majority of the time.  In the second example, the gap is much smaller and we’re therefore going to be less exploitable.