I experienced a different breed of players at my 1/2/3 game yesterday.. the slightly smarter ones who donkbet nutted hands rather than x/r and let me fall for the traps... two quick examples:

1) Tight UTG (200) opens 14, CO whale (450) calls, Hero BTN (1k) calls with AdQs, Tight young V in SB (180) calls, BB calls.

Flop (70): QhJh4c
V donk-bets 50, CO whale calls, Hero raises to 200, V calls, CO whale calls

Turn (~630): 7d
CO whale checks, Hero shoves for 235 effective, CO calls

River (1100): As

V shows QJss, CO whale mucks his FD and Hero scoops like a fish who sucked out.


2) HJ (900) opens to 15, CO (200) calls, BTN (1700) calls, tight V in SB (175) calls, Hero calls in BB with 44.

Flop (75): 654hh
V donks 50, Hero raises to 130, folds back to V who goes all in for 160 total, Hero calls

V shows 55.


Now obviously the second hand is more of a cooler, but what bothers me about both hands is them donk betting with nutted hands (an unusual characteristic for LLSNL players) and me falling prey to them. Especially the first hand.

Against the more nittier/smarter opponents like these, should I just be taking it easy and calling flop/seeing a turn with non-nutted hands?

Yeah I do not have many hours at 1/2 live no limit but I do the same thing with donk leading. every time I am donk leading I am doing it to get stacks in. My worst hand would be a combo draw. I am just a noob but you would be surprised by what I get called by because its only $1/2.

donk bet, bet, bet can't be that bad when our opponents have trouble folding (it's ok if I get flack for this)

Actually, what's more interesting is that this play has circled the wagon as like a 3rd level play. Back in the early 2000s, players would donk bet their made hands and the good players would just fold to the aggression of the normally passive players. If you had it, you bet it.

Then, after the poker boom and even up until now, they adjusted, and everyone and their mother wanted to check-raise. If a passive player did it, you could still easily get away. The donk pretty much disappeared, or when it occurred, you could usually raise just overcards because they were "betting for information" and were generally very weak and would fold to a raise most of the time.

The last few years? The bad players haven't adjusted much yet, but the good players are often working donk bets into their games. Bottom set. Top two. Donking the turn when top pair on the flop pairs on the turn (seeing lots of high level players doing this one). A flop that hits their range better than their opponent's. It's another adjustment coming.

H1: Unless i've seen V donk multiple times in similar spots with like KQ/QT, i just flat here.
Honestly, since a tight villain donks into relatively 2 tight ranges + a whale who presumably doesn't like to fold, i think we can even ditch AQ here. Even more so with almost no safe turn cards for us.

H2: the actual hand is pretty standard/not that interesting, but what would you do with, say 99, with the big stack opener behind you?

Come to think of it, i probably flat vs this donk lead with 55, hoping the bigstack raises/overplays an overpair behind us. We are getting it in vs the SB no matter what anyway, might as well get some dead money in there.

Donk betting multiway is extremely different than donk bets HU. Multiway, it can often be correct for a player in the blinds to lead out with a wide portion of his value range, depending on the relative positions and when the flop is unlikely to have connected with the PFR.

At this level, worrying about strategic donk bets just seems silly.Your opponents wont really have many bluffs or be donking based off certain turn or river cards being good for whoevers range. When most people donk in mw bloated pots its almost always value. When a tight player donks with <100 bbs in the first hand specifically it will always be for value or with significant equity.

In my experience donking when nutted as opposed to looking for a check raise is pretty normal. For people paying attention it should be about table dynamics and board texture.

Nittier/=smarter

You aren't "falling prey to them", you just had the top of your range in bloated pots.

When you consider whether or not you should c/r or donk think about stack sizes, dynamics, and board texture.

I would not group "good" players into doing one thing and "bad" players doing another.

HH1:

The whale in the hand changes the whole hand, both preflop (where I'd typically fold preflop to a tight EP raise but with the whale in the hand we can perhaps see a flop), and postflop (with the whale in the hand, the pot is protected, so no one is bluffing in a multiway pot, and thus we should lean towards making hero folds of TPTK to just one bet).

HH2:

Much like how the whale protected the hand in the first hand, here the smaller SPR kinda protects the hand (because it's less likely on this type of board multiway that anyone is bluffing with this small of SPR because no one is expecting anyone to fold with relatively so little left back, unlike deep stacks). Still, set over set, so at this point you were probably going to go broke anyways.

Gjustsomethingtoconsider,imoG

+1 This makes so much sense. My donk ratio with nutted hands was much higher before lurking here for a while. When I think back on who those donk bets worked best on, they were the more serious grinders who probably read my donk as weaker than it was, where more rec and less studied players would read the donk for strength and fold much higher in their range. Now that I have both tools in the toolbox I feel I'm getting more value by adjusting to my read on the V and defaulting to x/c vs unknowns to keep ranges / bluffs in.

Hand 1 is not a good play imo. Tight V will potentially bet it himself, you block a lot of the hands you want to call. In a multi-way situation your play of blowing up the pot is poor as well imo.

Hand 2 a donk is actually good because the original raiser will often not cbet this type of board, lots of hands can call your bet, you can get raised by worse hands .

Usually when I'm donked into I slam the door on them. Most often it is a weak-top pair type of hand on a dry board. Something like A9 on a 954 rainbow type of flop. In position you can usually just blow V's off of their hand if you have 2 overs. If you raise them on the flop and they come over the top, just fold it. It's called a donk bet for a reason, there are times to do it, but usually it is a poor play.

This is a very good post

I would actually flat here if it was heads up, but once the whale calls, he has a draw so often that I just didn’t want him to see a cheap turn.

Besides, if we flat the flop, and the turn is a brick and V moves all in for his last $110, are we really folding? I don’t think so, because he can have AQ himself, or even KQ.

So why not raise now and charge the whale who’s obviously on a draw? Or at best, a worse Q.

H1 preflop i would 3b. 3b >>>> call > fold. Otf cant really do much but go broke in SPR 2.5 vs SB. CO whale should almost never have you beat. Just a cooler, but 3b overall is just superior pre

H2 this open is basically BE at best, wouldnt mind folding it as an exploit. I’d start at 55+. Postflop is just a cooler.

Leading into the raiser can very well be the best play in lots of situations. Its only called a "donk bet" because closed minded players think leading into the raiser is stupid. Im guessing the name "donk bet" came from 2+2 since I had never heard it before reading this site. There are lots of closed minded and bad players here.

Since leading into the raiser is still mostly done with medium strength hands, all you can do is make a note of who does it with a big hand so you dont get caught off guard next time. Hopefully you make your note when watching them do it to someone else so getting the read didnt cost you money. The expert level play is to outdraw them and bust them while getting the read. Congrats!

It's called a donk bet from Dolly's quote, "why do the pushing when the donkey will do the pulling".

The mistake in both hands is to raise on the flop. As soon as the villain makes a value sized bet, your instinct should be that you want to see as cheap a showdown as possible. Raising just eliminates all of his weaker hands without earning you anything. For me, it is great that donk betting has come back. Thanks for telling me what you have.

Venice,


Look at stack sizes.

Hand 1 is not a donk bet. The lead on the flop is from the preflop raiser. If the player is at all competent (that is, not a mouth breather) this generally indicates some strength. Hand 2 fits the definition of a donk bet.

Hand 1: 3bet or fold pre. I lean towards folding if UTG is a positionally aware and I lean towards 3betting if he's not. As played, postflop is fairly standard. The SPR is low enough to justify raise/gii with TPTK on a wet board.

Hand 2: Completely standard.

Villains here in both cases are playing pretty close to optimally. They should be donking some nutted hands in multiway pots. The old "I'll check to the preflop raiser" strategy mainly only applies in HU and 3way pots. People should be donking nutted hands in 4way+ pots, since the PFR is less likely to Cbet bluff and they run the risk of it getting checked around.

There's nothing fancy about what these guys are doing. They're just playing standard, as opposed to playing like idiot fish.

The adjustment you make is just to be aware that they're leading out a range that is going to contain some nutted hands, and treat their bet just like you'd treat it if the PFR fired out a Cbet into 4 players. Generally, this means calling down with TPTK, as opposed to raising and stacking off, but when the SPR is sufficiently low, it doesn't really matter.

This is one major reason I don't think LAG play can really be best at 1/2 or 1/3 anymore. Folding to strong donks and raising people off information bets was once an essential component of laggy play.

It doesn't happen nearly as much now and you will sometimes walk into a trap.

You can still do it against some players but you just kind of have to take it when it comes, rather than manufacturing it most of the time.

If we were deeper, I completely agree with you, but given the donk-bettors’ remaining stack sizes in both cases, aren’t you calling their shove on most turns anyway?? If you are, then why let other players see a cheap turn with their drawing hands?

Read the HH again.