Unlike most of your strategic poker weapons, your use of continuation bets are determined more by your opponents than they are you. The fact that continuation bets are often a good idea is so subject to the table, opponents, level of the table you are playing at, your chip stack and table image that most players shouldn’t look at it as though it is their choice at all. The fact is that it isn’t, and a player should never consider that it is. Looking at continuation bets in this hands-off view will help a lot of players make better decisions to perhaps just fold or check after the flop than committing with a continuation bet.
Continuation betting is when you raise before the flop and then when the flop is down you bet even though you haven’t hit anything. For example you have K-Q and the flop is J-2-5. So as you can see your opponent probably hasn’t hit a pair and that is generally the case. You need though to still consider the player and number of players still in the hand and that went into the flop, because obviously the more players in the more dangerous. Most of the time it should probably be one or two though and you should take that into account and what hands those two players have been winning and losing with, to determine maybe if one of these two has a jack or even any pair. This is definitely something that will end up being that much more advantageous for a player at a tight table, but for those at a looser table not so much. Looser tables may just follow you regardless of a continuation bet or even try to beat your continuation bet!
The biggest problem that the majority of people will have is that; when playing at a cheaper levels of game play really anything any lower than $1/2 blinds is going to have a lot of players that are new and inexperienced. The funny thing is that with these players as most poker players notice is that worse players can often mess up strategic moves on a board for the simple reason that they don’t know what they should do. They don’t understand the statistical and strategic movements therefore even though they should fold they don’t it. This has more than once messed up a better player’s hands and chip moves in the world of poker. Since the really inexperienced players usually go in blind regardless they will sometimes hit low pairs and stay in regardless. More than anything just be aware of this and prepared to deal with it when the problem arises.
If you notice someone following through on a lot of hands with nothing and using a continuation betting poker style then you should keep that in mind and make a note of it because that means if you get him to put chips in to see the flop you can look to him to bet. It may not work as a great tool at many tables to rake in huge amounts of cash and a lot of people don’t even bother with it as they don’t see it for the solid poker technique it should be seen as, you need to decide for yourself to use it or not. It definitely isn’t the same as a check-raise strategy and won’t get you the kind of gains but it can be used. And if nothing else you can use it to help create your table image and help with the distortion of your own game so you can try to trap and bluff other opponents.
