This thread is for hand history posting and discussion of DoN strategy
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the more i play the $5 DoN level the more it seems the closest to optimal strategy (if you have the right kind of tight player behind you) is to play almost nothing but kings and aces until it reaches the 150 level then shove ATC when you are in the BU or CO and just stay at the 1500 level waiting out the other players. i havent ben playing these for that long so i could be horribly wrong. with this strategy it sounds like you could almost play a DoN blind if you could read your opponents well. please pick apart my strategy and tell me why its wrong!

weeeee new DON thread. ill try to get the ball rolling here:


Poker Stars $5.00+$0.20 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t125/t250 Blinds + t25 - 7 players - View hand 10761
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

UTG: t1485 M = 2.70
UTG+1: t2165 M = 3.94
MP: t860 M = 1.56
Hero (CO): t1745 M = 3.17
BTN: t1720 M = 3.13
SB: t2460 M = 4.47
BB: t4565 M = 8.30

Pre Flop: (t550) Hero is CO with 2 2
5 folds, Hero....

snap folds

there are 3 shorter stacks than us - two of them go through the blinds before we do. I'd shove KK+ and AK and fold everything else.

I'm not pushing 22, but I'm definitely pushing a bit wider than KK+, AK. It's still 7 handed, so it's likely we'll need more chips at some point and picking up JJ or AQs is a good opportunity to do so.

MP is short enough to wait out, but I dont think UTG is, so at some point we need to pick up some chips. That being said JJ+ and AQ+ is probably as wide as I would push here.

True we need to pickup chips - but in this spot the BB is the big stack and where ever possible I avoid pushing hands into unknown big stacks at these levels who seem to be call happy.

If SB& BB are playing correctly i.e. very tight at this point I will push TT+ AJo+ A9s+ and expect to steal the blinds very very often. Not many villains at $5 levels have the slightest clue it seems about ICM and routinely make horrendous calls, so I try and play a little tighter than otherwise if I think one or more of the villains still to act is the type that sees a "pretty" hand and never folds it pre.

i shove wider then this. the thing is that i dont play 5s and im sure the calling ranges are ridic wide (from shortstack to big stack spite) compared to the 100s (completely different dynamic) that i sit. but AK QQ + seems way to tight even for the 5s.


jalman69

I don't know the 5s that well, but I guess if people tend to self destruct 6 and 7 handed, then extra caution is probably a good thing. The thing is, we're in a fairly precarious situation, and one more blind steal puts us in the clear where we can probably cash 85+% of the time.

We could probably debate pushing JJ or AQs all day, it probably doesn't make much of a difference either way unless you have reads on the blinds. I definitely turbo muck AT and worse and pairs 88 or lower.

It obviously depends on the big stack. What happened to posting reads? Otherwise, you're not going to get great answers. Please post reads, table feel, or something to help us or you should be just plugging in ranges in Wiz yourself.

I'd go like 88,A9s, KJs. We need the chips and no one else is really short besides MP. Picking up this pot is huge. It's not really an optimal spot to be passive.

yeah a double or nothing strategy thread in itself is a little tricky. since ranges can adjust so often and are almost entirely read based. i know my shoving range here can be super super wide (if a couple top regs with well known icm are behind) or rly tight if a bunch of big stack or short stack light callers are behind. I just hope that people make a better attempt in this thread to give us accurate details of the table dynamics cuz a lot of advice and ranges may be inaccurate depending on who's at table


jalman69

hey peolpe,

i have been playing DON's for 12 months now i have just spent a few days going through almost all the DON threads on 2+2 and have got to thank everyone for their worthwhile contributions (banned or not, you know who you are).

pls can we see some discussion on the short handed 6 player game (i can't be all on my own......can i?)

also being an old donk who has only just got around to getting HM anyone got any tips on what stats will benefit me best

thanks in advance

Sorry Florida, I did read the rules at the top of the thread, but I need to ask this question. Because I want to start participating more in this strategy thread, I wanna make sure I'm more than competent to participate. Are the "M" stats ICM stats? I don't use ICM software (which I should ofcourse?)

M is how many times the preflop pot you have

lol, don't take it like you can't ask poker related questions. I'm just trying to keep out the WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO THE DON THREAD(better asked through PM) so that it keeps the thread readable for beginners. No one likes having to wade through discussion about the thread design.

Anyways, someone answered your question about M. For your question about ICM, read the FAQ & useful links for a full explanation.

Post 6 handed hands, no other way around trying to find out if people play them. People will still give advice even if they don't.

Your best stats are VPIP, PFR, total aggression, and hand # if you are trying to keep it simple. You can add things like 3bet% and some others, but just add those to the option where you can click on their name & stats pop up. Keeping the HUD simplistic & avoiding taking room all over your table is best.

I've just started using a HUD for these.

I have VPIP/PFR/CallsPFR/# Hands

I find it's most useful when I am trying to determine whether or not to shove, If I have a reasonable bunch of hands on people and they are very tight I assume that I can steal from them more often than loose players. With HEM you can colour code people as well so I use a system like Green = loose blue=crazy bad red = tight purple = good.

I am constantly trying to increase the number of tables I play - and whereas I used to take copius notes while playing before, I don't hav enough time to do that at the table now. I can tell very quickly from the colours to my left what kind of ranges I can get away with shoving when it gets to bubble time. If I shove into a tight person and they make a dumb call I can quickly colour code them appropriately and markup their hand for later review and make a more appropriate note after I'm done playing for that session.

You can also auto export notes from the client directly into the HUD - this means that they popup when you mouse over the colour bit of the HUD which saves a click or two and means I can play a little faster.

I use 3bet and fold to 3bet, helps me multitabling to push wider.

Something I was pondering today.

"Perfect" game theory strat says to fold every hand until you reach a point where your chances of winning the whole tournament if you shove/call and win the hand are great enough. This usually works out to be fold every hand even AA until you ar the shortest stack and then shove a wide range of hands (assuming that other players are using the same "perfect" gt strat) until you are no longer in danger of being blinded out.

Sadly given that as soon as the shortest stack at the table goes all-in it then becomes correct for everybody else to call and check down the hand post flop it's not exactly a "perfect" strategy by any means.

Lucky for us - noone really does that.

Have a looksee at this table - posted in an earlier DON thread



A 10% ROI is pretty dam good over a large sample at $10 - as you get higher and higher in stakes the good players ROI drops so that a solid player at $52's or $104's can only really expect a 5% ROI.

Think about what this means in terms of how tight you should play.

At the $1 level you can sit out every hand (close to the "perfect" strat) and you'll win a bunch of tournaments. At the $100 level if you sit out every hand you'll win very close to zero tournaments.

The higher the stake the looser you should play.

If we assume that we are as good at bubble play as the rest of the table, so that once it gets 6/7 handed we will win the same % of games in the long term as the others at the table, then this means that we will generally only need to win one all-in confrontation to get to that point. Av stack at the point of the 6th player getting eliminated is t3000, and also each game will cost us ~t3000 in chips to pay the blinds antes.

So at $5/$10 levels we ought to play very tight and play a waiting game to ge to the bubble. The other players are generally so lol bad that they will make all kinds of dumb plays and knock each other out. Once the game gets to the bubble we then use our mad bubble skillz to more often than not ship the tournament - 10% ROI = 57% ITM or thereabouts. We should actively avoid taking coinflips and 60/40 flips unless we are in great need of chips especially early on.

As the levels get higher we should not shy away from 60/40 situations most of the time as the table shows a 5% ROI = ~55% ITM playing Stars turbos.

Once we get to the bubble assuming we are as good as the other players and stacks are even is our equity is ~83% - if we win a 60/40 to get to the bubble in the first place we will likely have a bigger stack to work with so that % will rise.

In practical terms this means that our calling ranges for shoves from good players in higher stakes DON's will be a little wider - and in lower stakes games very tight.

er I think so anyway. Cue some good players chiming in now with why I'm horribly wrong or something

fanntastic post matrix. however i disagree about the 1 dollar level. whenever i play it it is insanely tight lol. your strategy fits my line of thinking. nice to see some numbers to back it up

Agreed, great post Matrix. You don't by chance have a table that states what ROI's you should be achieving per level do you? I just started grinding these and am going to try playing 50-60 per day to boost my roll so I can jump up in stakes of traditional SNGs.

I don't really have any math or anything to back up my thoughts, but in your $1 SNG example, I think you assume that all players have similar post-flop skills, which would mean playing super tight is probably optimal. However, if you are a solid postflop player, then you will want to be seeing cheap flops with good multi-way hands b/c you won't get into much trouble with them, but the opportunity exists to get all your chips in as a huge favorite. When you have a massive edge postflop, then I think perfect strategy would then be to use your edge and play a decent number of hands early.

Put another way, I consider myself a pretty good bubble player and an outstanding postflop player early on (compared to SNG players, but my actual edge is negated somewhat by playing tons of tables), and if I were to play a million $1 SNGs playing loose early and then a million $1 SNGs playing no hands until your so called "perfect" strategy dictated, I find it very hard to believe my ROI wouldn't be 5-6 % points higher in the million where I'm actually playing early.

In crude mathematical terms, let's say your usual ITM would be 57% playing only AA early and then using standard bubble strategy. By playing looser preflop, let's say you get in a scenario where you're 70% to double up vs. an opponent's range, so you take it. If you double up, then your ITM with a ~3k stack is 96%. Well 70% of the time you will have a 96% chance of winning, which comes out to 67.2%, thus it is correct to play hands early if your edge is large. This doesn't even account for all the small and medium sized pots you will be more likely to win than lose b/c of your postflop edge.

I pulled those %s out of my arse, but whatever they are I believe for a player with a considerable postflop edge early that

(% chance of double * new ITM with 3k stack) > usual ITM playing no hands early

open question: how many DoN's do you play on one screen simultaneously?

I was wondering what you guys think about the following scenarios, assume $52 or $104 DoN level, and assume the opponents pushing are competent opponents who will push wide when they are short-stack:

1) 6 handed, blinds 150/300, you are SB w/1400 chips and BB has 1400 chips, every1 else has 3200+. Is it standard to push pretty much any 2 here?

2) 6 handed, blinds 150/300, you are on button with 1400, cutoff has 1300 and pushes, a MP player has 1700 chips. What range of hands are you calling this push with to try and eliminate the cutoff? I think I may be calling too light, I know the guy is a little desperate so I tend to call with like AJ+ and 99+, is that way too loose?

3) 7 or 8 handed, blinds 100/200 you are in SB with AKs and a stack of 2600, button has 1100 and pushes, all other stacks are at least 1900. Do you call here and try to eliminate this player or are you preserving your stack unless you have an absolute monster?

1) yes

2) AJs+ AQo+ 99+ - I think it's about 50% that the next shorty will double through and leave us in it - if the blinds are good players who will both call the CO all-in w/ ATC then I will call Axs A5+ Kxs K8+ JT+ any pp wide range expecting a co-operation type play - if the blinds are nits and will fold and leave us and the CO to get on with it much tighter.

As a general rule if 6 handed if the ss shoves and a n other player calls his shove I will call as well w/ any 2 unless I am far enough ahead of the next shortest stack to make it better for me to try and wait him out if the shorty from this all-in wins.

3) AKs is an absolute monster I iso shove to keep the BB out of my pot and get it HU. We are ~55% vs a tightish shove range - if you expand that to include steals as well and assume that folded to OTB a solid player is pushing widish in this spot AKs is a snap call with fist pump imo.