What is a Good Fold to C-Bet Percentage?
A good fold-to-flop-c-bet figure at 6-max online cash is 35-60%, the band our leak report applies to your hands. Compare it with what the price allows: against a half-pot c-bet, minimum defence frequency says continue with 66.67% and fold at most 33.33%; against two-thirds, fold at most 40%. So the lower half of the band is roughly what the arithmetic permits, and the upper half is a concession to reality: micro-stakes opponents do not bluff often enough to punish extra folding.
| Your figure | What it usually means |
|---|---|
| Under 35% | You are calling flops with hands that cannot call a turn. A float needs a plan for the next street or it is a donation with extra steps. |
| 35–60% guideline band | The range of a player who defends preflop widely, misses most flops and continues with the part of the range that can keep going. |
| Over 60% | Every opponent with a c-bet button is printing against you. The fix is not calling more flops at random — it is defending the hands with backdoor equity and position. |
What the stat counts
Fold versus flop c-bet is how often you called preflop, then folded to the aggressor's flop c-bet. The denominator is the hands where you called preflop and then faced a bet from the raiser, so it is a stat about defending, not about your own aggression. Two cautions. It lumps every bet size together — a third-pot probe and a pot-sized jam are the same event to the counter, though they demand completely different responses. And it lumps every position together, so a figure that looks fine can be a disciplined in-position number and a disastrous out-of-position one averaged into each other.
What the price allows
Minimum defence frequency is the share of your range that has to continue so that a bettor cannot profit by bluffing any two cards. It comes from the pot and the bet, nothing else:
- •Against a third-pot bet: continue with 75%, so fold at most 25%.
- •Against a half-pot bet: continue with 66.67%, fold at most 33.33%.
- •Against two-thirds: continue with 60%, fold at most 40%.
- •Against a pot-sized bet: continue with 50%, fold at most 50%.
Why the band sits above what MDF permits
Line the two up and the band's top edge of 60% is well above the 33.33% that a half-pot bet would allow. That is not an error in either figure — it is the difference between an unexploitable ceiling and a population. MDF assumes the bettor bluffs at the correct frequency. Micro-stakes players under-bluff on flops and badly under-bluff on later streets, so folding more than MDF against them simply wins money; the punishment for over-folding only arrives against someone willing to bet air. MDF also ignores equity realisation. Out of position with no plan for the turn, a hand that has the raw equity to call often cannot use it, and calling a flop to fold the turn is the most expensive way to defend a range. Use the band as the diagnostic and MDF as the ceiling: if you are far above both against small flop bets, the bluffs are getting through.
Outside the band
Under 35% you are calling flops with hands that cannot call a turn. A float needs a reason — position, backdoor equity, a read that the barrel is coming — and without one it is a donation on an instalment plan. This is also the figure that drags WTSD above its own band, so the two usually move together. Over 60% you are the reason c-bet strategies exist. The fix is not to start calling at random: it is to defend the hands that can continue on turns, keep the ones with backdoor equity, and fold the offsuit rubbish preflop instead, where folding is free. Notice that a defence problem on the flop is very often a range problem from before the flop.
How long before your own figure means anything
The band is 25 points wide, so about 60 occasions of facing a c-bet are enough for a 95% interval to fit inside it. Getting them takes longer than it sounds: if you cold-call or defend roughly 9.5% of hands — the gap between the VPIP band's midpoint and the modelled opening frequency — that is about 650 hands, and tightening it to five points takes roughly 380 occasions. Splitting the figure by bet size and by position, which is the only version that tells you what to change, multiplies all of it.
Check your own figure
The free leak report computes your fold-versus-c-bet frequency from a hand history and marks it against this band, with WTSD beside it so you can see whether flop folds or river calls are driving your showdown habits. The MDF calculator gives the ceiling for any pot and bet you care to type in.
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Frequently asked
What is a good fold to c-bet percentage?
35-60% at 6-max online cash. For context, the pot odds on a half-pot c-bet allow folding at most 33.33% of your range before bluffs become free, so the band's lower half is roughly what the arithmetic supports and its upper half reflects how little the population actually bluffs.
Is folding 70% to c-bets too much?
It is above the band and above the 40% that even a two-thirds-pot bet permits, so against anyone who bluffs at all it is a leak. The cause is usually the range you arrive with rather than the folding itself: hands cold-called preflop without position or playability have nothing to continue with on most flops.
Should I always defend the full MDF?
No, and pretending otherwise would be bad advice. MDF is the ceiling against an opponent who bluffs correctly. Micro-stakes pools under-bluff, especially on turns and rivers, so folding more than MDF against them wins money. Treat a figure far above MDF against small flop bets as a warning, and a figure far below it against a passive player's river bet as paying off value hands.
Does position change how much I should fold?
Substantially. In position you see the turn card before acting and can float with a plan, so more of your range can continue. Out of position, marginal calls realise much less of their equity, and the hands that only continue by check-calling twice more are usually better folded on the flop.
Where do these benchmark numbers come from?
Guideline bands from commonly published winning-player ranges for 6-max online micro-stakes cash (tracker population norms, NL2–NL25). Not solver output; short samples are noisy.
How many hands before this stat is meaningful?
About 60 times of facing a flop c-bet, which at a cold-calling frequency of roughly 9.5% of hands is around 650 hands. Splitting it by bet size or position needs that sample again for each slice.
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