Disclaimer: I like experimenting with unorthodox lines. This is a line I have been experimenting with, hereby dubbed The Phunkphish (sometimes shortened as The Phunk).

Conditions required for The Phunkphish:
1. Villain has raised somewhere in position.
2. Folds around to Hero in the big blind who defends.
3. Flop comes rainbow, unconnected, paired. For example, 992r or 55Jr
4. Villain cbets.

This is when The Phunkphish begins! The rules for The Phunkphish are as follows:
a) Hero NEVER x/rs in this spot.
b) instead, all of these hands (potentially) go into Hero's turn donk range!

That, my friends, is The Phunk.

Comments about the Phunkphish compared to the ordinary strategy of never donking:

1. When we x/r flop, villain practically never folds. so why bother?
2. The main downside is that when we like our hand enough to raise, we would prefer villain put in an extra SB. But there are many upsides.
3. Sometimes we float and hit on the turn, only to have the villain check behind. The Phunkphish releases those shackles and says Go Ahead and Bet the turn when you improve!
4. The Phunkphish creates the balance that lets us bet. On these dry flops, instead of having a x/r range and a float range, we now float everything. Not only does it unleash a weapon most do not use, but it makes playing hands in these spots simpler.
5. If the turn is an ace or king, we are not too happy that we x/red. With the Phunkphish, you see the turn, then put in aggressive action!
6. We don't have to blindly bluff on the flop. For example, on a 339r flop, common hands to turn into bluffs would be cards which make a 3 card straight flush. if we x/r bluff with 45s, and the turn comes an 8, that is a pretty miserable feeling. By waiting until the turn to decide which hands to bluff, our bluffs have more equity.
7. Confuse your opponents! If you are familiar with this line and your adversaries think you're a nut job, you can gain a psychological edge and force them into uncomfortable situations.
8. For those daring enough, The Phunkphish can also be extended to paired flops that are two tone or slightly connected!


I realize most people resist change and eschew unorthodox lines. I welcome all constructive criticism and discussion regarding The Phunk.

i didn't read the OP, but i just wanted to be the fist to say, "oh geez, here we go."

Sounds like if you are lamenting their ck/rs calls often, you were bluffing with too high a frequency.

Or bluffing the wrong opponents...

This is like coming up with your own nickname and asking people to call you it.

That's not really how that works.

Didn't read the OP out of instant ego/lameness

Pretty sure OP just wanted to discuss the merits of an unconventional play, and was being silly by giving it his name, as another poster did with a common play not too long ago. The joke seems to have gone over the heads of some others, or else they are all trying to just outlevel each other.

Have enough hands in your flop c/c range that you don't mind if they check back the turn.

What's your range when you check call flop and check the turn?

****ed.

Do you have a three betting range out of the bb when it's hu? I would assume not

Feels like you're going to be losing a lot of value this way. Your line is also how tagfish/80 year olds play the hand. If the villain is good is going to be able to play near perfectly against and will only get worse for you after you've done this a few times and he adjusts. And this will the kind of "phishy" play that's going to stick out in most capable players minds

look, there's nothing wrong with having a x/c donk range in this spot, but if you're doing anything 100% of the time post flop it's going make your ranges all wonky on subsequent streets.

Why would he lose value ? Imo i think its more about being tough as hell to have a balance range with a check/donk line.

If i remember correctly in MOP book, they show that removing some choice of action to X ( by removing all the action except the check/call line) , wich simply mean passing from 1 full street game to half a street game, X could not lose EV.

You might loose value in the sense that you have less tools to exploit your opponent ( with c/r or being able to donk ) to gain value but you could not lose value by simply going from a full street game to half street game.


I might have to reread that section .

I think maybe you should.

I sure will but let just say i have a hand on the river that is worth 35% EV, how can my hand be worth less than 35% if i decide to deny myself every action beside c/c ?

My hand might be able to gain value by donking so i bluff better hands to fold ( or loose value by donk/folding to a raise/bluff to my opponent) but i could never go below 35% equity if i decide to deny myself to only check the river has my first action .

Anyway that is how i understood it.

shoot i promised myself i wouldn't post anymore at work, but now i guess i owe you answer.....

first of at it's unclear what you mean by 35% of EV. I assume you mean that the EV of the hand at equilibrium is 35% of the pot.

>how can my hand be worth less than 35% if i decide to deny myself every action >?>beside c/c ?

I'm not sure why you seem to believe this? If the equilibrium strategy involved some check-raising (e.g. a well-hidden straight completes for us on a board where IP villain had a range vs range advantage), then if we deny ourselves the ability to x/r, it seems quite likely we will have less EV.

I think you're getting confused with the point they make that adding the ability to x/r or donk cannot make your EV less than it is in the half street game or as they say "strategic options have non-negative value".

Yeah you nailed it. I remember now .
Like i said i thought i needed to reread it tho
I thought we could apply it here, maybe i am wrong, i shall have to think about it.
Thx

What if you make the nuts on the river. You lose value by not being to c/r

yeah, i should worded my thoughts differently.

If i had a hand with 35% equity on the river, i would not go for a c/r anyhow so this is why i was only saying about c/c the river.

Except we're not really talking about the river, we're talking about the flop where it's obv you can lose value

It would be the same as a typical player's float range that then checks turn, combined with their x/r flop range that donk checks the turn. What are you getting at? There can still be strength in there.

Please expand on this. I seriously question your statement a good villain can play perfectly against this line when you don't back it up. Appearing like a phish to good players is a good thing in my mind. Yes, we lose value when we prefer Villain put in an extra SB. That is the main drawback. But there are ways we recoup value using this line.

I'll tackle (b) first. C'mon. Postflop, often people check 100% to the PFR, Especially if the PFR is from an early position. People often cbet 100% as the PFR, especially if from an early position. These are not horrible strategies, assuming the hand is 2 or 3way. Doing these does not mess up all of your ranges. Doing something 100% postflop is not always entirely bad.

(a) I completely agree with. It fits with the discussion that when we reduce our decision branches, we lose EV. A typical player strategy is to never donk bet the turn on a paired/uncoordinated board (or ever). I believe this to be imperfect. This is one of the things my strategy is trying to correct.

In a perfect GTO world, on the flop, we should probably have a nonzero (donk) bet, x/c, and x/r range. Then on the turn, after each of those options, a nonzero bet, x/c, and x/r range.

Most people don't do this, because it's really hard to do, and chopping off some branches doesn't hurt us too much. So when defending the BB, we only ever x/c or x/r the flop. On the turn, we only ever bet if we previously x/r'ed, and always x if we previously x/c'ed.

My hypothesis is that there is something special about paired unconnected flops. On these flops, we should be donk betting the turn a lot more than we are. Certainly not 0%. In particular, against a BTN steal, we should be floating a decent amount. 15% of the time, we will hit. That is the portion of hands I'm trying to work on and figure out. Checking these 100% is unacceptable in my view.

However, having a proper turndonk range is difficult to do. My next theory is that chopping off the x/r flop branch will make it easier to construct a turndonk range. The question is whether the value we lose by chopping off the x/r flop branch worth the value we gain by adding a powerful turn-donk range.

Of course, we could just have a turndonk range and not chop off the x/r flop branch. That will be a lot harder to do -- maybe it can be The Phunk v.2. If v2 is not that big of an upgrade over v1 but a lot more work, then I would settle for v1.

I think you are actually thinking about a spot reasonably well that is really tough to play. Instead of doing what you are talking about, wouldn't it be easier to not c/r flop and just c/r turn a lot wider with the hands you were going to donk? What's the downside to doing that and it seems like a much easier strategy to implement?

I think the downside is he's going to have a lot of pretty weak hands/draws he's donking the turn with, and for most of these hands getting in 1 bet on the turn is preferable to two.

Everything is also very villain dependent.

If Villain 2 barrels too much, then its an easy adjustment to delay everything to the turn.
If Villain checks back too many turns, flat wider for free cards on the turn; delay less value.
If Villain folds too much, x/r flop wider and cbet turns.

But many villains won't be this cut and dry. What I proposed is an adjustment that I think can work against tougher opponents.

Early results from using The Phunkphish:

Lots of people are insta-mucking the turn when I donk out. That's the biggest takeaway. Some Ahi calldowns, Khi calldowns; some overpairs that I manage to get 3bets against when I held trips; but all of those are to be expected.

So, I'm obviously losing a lot of value in the form of small bets OTF. But, the process has been useful. Definitely going to transition into the method where I use all three options on the flop, AND all three options on the turn. This experience has helped me get over the stigma of donking turns. The early results also suggest I should incorporate more floats and turn donk bluffs.

Taking it one step further, I'm conjecture that turn donk bluffs can work well in other wide range spots, too. It seems that they are over-respected. It could also be a psychological thing -- even though the line looks weak, if villain holds Khi or Qhi, it can be very tough for them to call down or turn their hand into a rebluff.

I like this idea much better. I get the whole "he's gonna check back the turn too much." thing that makes you wanna donk your strong hands and some bluffs that will suffer if the turn checks through as these hands will lose value and will lose the ability to win the hand unimproved respectively when the turn checks through. However, I think this argues for more flop check raising which will benefit our value hands, which gain ev from the flop check raise, and our bluffs, which gain ev from the added chance of winning unimproved.

It's similar to the reasons for abandoning the call everything strategy in the big blind against a frequent flop checker. We can't exploit a flop overaggressive tendency that isn't there, so we gotta go for the value on the previous street.

Against those particular opponents that will bet the flop and turn near 100%, I'd much rather delay my value hands and bluffs to the turn, which I'll check raise a lot more than I would against a frequent turn checker with both value hands and bluffs.

I know it's kind of a mind**** that both our value hands and bluffs can benefit at the same time, but I believe that it's entirely possible, provided that we bluff with hands that will retain most of their drawing value when called.

All that said, as a default I'm check calling the flop with three groups of hands:

1) bluffcatchers
2) weak draws
3) draws that can win a showdown*

For example:

HJ is a solid tag with excellent flop, turn, and river cbet frequencies and ranges.

HJ raises, folds to me in the big blind, I call.

flop 557r

I check call this range:

bluffcatchers: 97 no bdfd, 87 no bdfd, 76 no bdfd, 74s, 66, 44-22, AJo-A8o, A9s, A8s, A6, A4-A2, KQo, KJ-K8, K6s, K4s-K2s with bdfd, QJo, QT-Q8, Q6s, Q4s-Q2s with bdfd,

weak draws: JTo, J9, J8, T9, T8, 63s, 43s.

draws that can win a showdown: empty on this board.

With this range, I can and will have a turn donking range on any card 6 or higher. On cards lower than a 6, I prefer to play check call or check raise on the turn because I hardly ever have hands strong enough to bet 3 bet. On cards 6 or higher, I don't have many, if any, hands that can bet 3 bet, however, these overcards on the turn will result in many check backs by the HJ. I think the value gained when called here on the turn outweighs the threat of a raise, which I cannot combat with 3 bets because of my capped turn range.

On the 6 turn, I can donk straights, sixes full, backdoor straight and or flushdraws that are coming in, as well as hands like 97 and 87.

On the 7 turn, I can donk sevens full, and straight and or flushdraws.

On the turns that are 8 or higher, I can donk turned top pairs, A6, K6s, Q6s, and or turned flushdraws.

Flame away.

*hands such as nut or near nut flushdraws, and or Ace high wheel draws.