How important is it to have a leading range at $1/$2 live? This is an area in which I could use some serious work. In general, I don't think I'm leading enough at all and I feel like my leads are unfortunately unbalanced, favoring value hands. I also feel like I could be potentially losing out on value because of my leads.

Watching Jonathan Little's most recent "podcast," or whatever you wanna call it, he covers this concept fairly in depth. He states that we want to be leading a lot of our value hands and draws on boards that favor our range. He states that we should very often be leading flops, heads up, when connected boards featuring all middle/low cards flop AND we have a draw or value hand. He says we should be doing this more often than not, but not every time. When do we decide, not to lead?

When I was first getting into deeper NLHE strategy I saw a lot of people on 2+2 talking about how awful "donk leading" is, and unfortunately I put it in my brain that we should NEVER be leading flops, turns, and rivers. Do you agreet with Little?

Side note, he mainly covered leading flops in heads up pots, but did briefly say that we should be leading multiway pots a lot more often and only with value hands (makes perfect sense,) and that we should lead turns and rivers at much lower frequency, but should do so with draws/value hands when the turn/river favors our range. Do you agree? Would you add anything more?

In live low stakes (1/2 and 1/3) lead only value hands, that means greater then 1 pair type hands.

Why? You do not want to lead anything you can't stack off with because villains don't understand ranges. If you lead into a villain that is holding a overpair on a 678 flop from the BB he's not going to understand that that flop hits your defending range super hard. He doesn't understand that he can never have the nuts here from UTG.

He's just going to jam it all in on you and try to get you off any draws or marginal hands. Then he's going to tilt hard when he says his aces always get cracked as you snap him off with two pair.

Never lead with a draw or a combo draw into amateur villains, you want to realize your equity. They will pay you off if you hit anyway.




Vs pros/regs at the 2/5 level or greater I balance my donk leading with top pairs/middle pairs/rarely bottom pairs, value hands and draws on boards that heavily favor my blind defending range. Into a maximum of 2 opponents. I'll never lead anything but value into 3 or more opponents.


Never lead from anything but the blinds, if you limp call, don't lead. Your range is abstract at this point and people will isolate you wider having a wider range themselves. You are going to overall generate more value from just check calling or check raising value hands here.

Little warned heavily about leading flops with marginal made teams because of the fact that villains can play perfectly - fold everything worse, call with everything better.

It does make sense to not be bluffing as a lead vs bad villains at 1/2.

Thats why at 2/5 we balance our value hands like two pair/sets and straights with middle pairs, draws and top pairs(usually with bad kickers because we're in the blinds). Usually when I lead a middle pair I have a gutshot or backdoor flush to go with it. Also turning middle pair into a bluff OTR on 4 card straight runnouts where you don't actually improve but most of your range does is how we make this work when we are flatted on both flop and turn from capped ranges (Strong 1 pair type hands from ep).


On flops where it's hard for anyone but the blind to have nutted hands it's really hard to play perfectly against it. If they raise us with overpairs we will fold our marginal hands and flat call with our nutted hands, leading into them again on the turn putting them in very tough spots. 4 betting anything after donk leading is terrible, it basically lets them get away from everything but nut flush draws, if we get 3bet holding a nutted hand we are always flatting and leading turn again for max value vs overpairs.

When leading non nutted hands like middle pair we are only barreling turns when we pick up equity or improve our range. Of course with hands like two pair or better we are going for three streets on good runnouts.


Donk leading is advanced strategy and should be incorpated by someone with great board reading skills and with villain thought level in mind.


Basically if you see a traditional check raise spot, try leading instead if you're defending your bb. It will generally get you more value, can cause villains to make mistakes where as facing check raises they will play perfectly.

I also listened to Johnathan Little's as he discussed leading.
Usually I check dark every single flop from the blinds if I am 1st to act. Occasionally I will check raise if a player c-bets and I have a draw or a set. Now I'm thinking its probably better to lead some hands that I would normally c/r.
At a live 1/2 table it is generally easy to identify the nitty players who will fold when lead into. It is also easy to find the guys who c-bet nearly 100% of the time.
Something to think about the next time I'm playing 1/2 live.

Would you lead with bottom pair and a gut shot? What about bottom pair and a flush draw? Just curious because I would normally check raise these types of situations against a villain who always c-bets over cards.

In 1/2, 1/3 I would only lead value hands. There is no exceptions. It's best to just assume that everyone at 1/3 lacks board awareness and range awareness.


At 2/5 and above I would lead bottom pair and a gutshot on board like 478 against a thinking player who raised from EP who is a minimum of 200bb deep with no more then 1 other player in the hand.

I'm raising all my value here as well because it's likely that a good player will with an overpair check this board back knowing they are at a huge liklihood of getting check raised and facing a tough decision.


I forgot to mention earlier how important it is to be deep stacked when doing this. Don't take donk lines at 2/5 on a 100bb stack or vs a 100bb stack unless you got it and want to give villains a chance to make mistakes.(raising you instead of calling)


As you can see the situation really doesn't come up all that often. I take donk lines much much more online playing then live because the chances of being heads up with an UTG or UTG +1 raiser while in your blind is much higher.

This is definitely not a thing in my 1/1 game LOL.

Unless it's 3 handed I'm never going to be able to make the first call while in the blinds vs an EP open!