You say donking is not a thing. It is in1/3. All the time. And donks and especially large donks should be respected. There are so many posts in here about dont respect the donk. It is a middling hand. If its a large donk its the freaking nuts until shown otherwise.

I agree with DC about never raising here. For the reasons he suggested and also…….dont raise anything but the smallest donk bets without a monster hand. Donk betting of big hands is a thing everywhere i play. The omcs love it vs calling stations. The aggressive players love it and cant help themselves. Everyones doing it. In fact anyone who is donk betting near pot vs me with second pair or a draw is prnting money because its 90/10 value/buttonclicking so i overfold it all. Includingthis hand which was obviously a flush below the nut flush that wanted the momey in before the board paired or a 4th flush card came in

I don't know what low stakes games you are playing in where a suited connector is arguably a profitable call on the button to a 3x range. Maybe you have Phil Ivey and Patrick Antonius on your right and Stu Ungar and Johnny Moss on your left. However my experience playing low stakes is that virtually everyone is ****ing terrible. You got me ****ed up if you think I'd fold a hand like 87 sooted on the button to a 3x raise even at 60bbs. When I see 86 sooted in this spot, that's like looking down at pocket aces for me. You only get the button once an orbit and normally you won't have a hand that good/playable (or have the table action cooperate and allow you to play it).

You are playing in bizzaroland. Perhaps our games just play differently, and perhaps players defend wider against my 3bets, but in general I do not expect some rando (regular player or not) to be calling preflop with a reasonable range of hands.

By my count, those are the hands that WE are supposed to have when we raise the flop.

Well, you can start with every AcXc. Then you can add every KcXc. That alone is close to 20 combos of bluff/semibluffs. I'm assuming your range is much tighter than that but you're still going to have some of these hands. Fact of the matter is, even if you have zero bluffs in this particular spot, that's ok. We're playing against a complete unknown. If the general population has bluff raises in this spot, then the villain will perceive that we have bluff raises, even if we don't. That's not even mentioning that we are human, not robots, thus we bleed and we make mistakes. At times we are going to have some stupid bluff raises in this spot (maybe even 86s), even if we shouldn't ever have them in our range (of course perhaps some of you play like robots, in which case I apologize).

BTW, when I posted that the flop raise was terrible (actually before just now) I thought this pot went multiway to the flop, so I apologize for that...probably because I've been playing in a lot of games where 3bet pots generally go multiway to the flop. I will concede that raising the flop with a weak flush draw is not nearly as terrible HU (still not on board vs some rando, whose play we are not familiar with). However, once called you have to recognize that there's a decent chance your draw is no good and 86cc can essentially be a RIO hand. The King being the card that wasn't a club is extremely important.

BTW, our flop raise size sucks. Villain has to call $75 and pot will then be like $375. I wouldn't expect 1 pair to fold with such a weak raise. I feel like the sizing may be a result of our lack of confidence in our holdings. If you have a more nutted draw then it's much easier to shovel money into the pot.

When I say donking isn't a thing, I mean that donking isn't a thing that someone with a reasonable understanding of the game should be doing. When someone donks HU, they are revealing they are bad at the game and any assumptions you make about them playing reasonably go out of the window.

When you play vs an unknown, you can either start by assigning them somewhat reasonable ranges - which is what I did for this exercise -or you can assign him ranges based on your expectation on how the general population plays. If this is the case, you shouldn't be 3betting 86s in this spot, because the general population doesn't fold enough vs 3bets. Having said that, seeing Villain with K2s falls outside my expectations on how the general pop plays. My assumption is that the general population in general tends to be tight with their raises, although random raises with trash hands are known to happen. So, V is highly unlikely to be raising K2s and you would think it's unlikely they call with K2s vs a 3bet if they did raise.

As far as donking ranges are concerned. I don't think that donking ranges are nutted in 2bet pots HU. Multiway are different, 3bet pots are different. In a 3bet pot, I would be more cautious as well.

Exactly. And Im not sure why anyone at 1/3 would 3b this vs an unknown or not treat an unknown donk bet by its sizing. I mean theres like three hands on here in the last day about it. Every single one with a donk bet that is large is a really good hand

OP - I like the way you played this hand. It's the LAG way, you're on the button, V has no reads that you would 3B! this light. It's a good play with deep stacks. You might double up V, but that's is the variance you have to deal with in LAG. Yes, you bet the flop bc it's hit you hard and as a LAG, what you don't want to do is start the hand LAG and then go MUBSy. That's giving away money.

Against OMCs, a donk is a made hand and not necessarily the nuts, they might just be fearing a fourth flush card that would take the hand away from them. But V is not an OMC. This is 2-5, not 1-3. V might be trickier than your average player.

I'm not sure why no one is at least considering that V's donk turn bet when the board flushes is a bluff. When we consider that V has no reads on H, H's pre 3B! looks like he must have premium starters. On the flop, H looks like he is betting to defend vs the FD. A clever agro player would absolutely semi bluff a big donk on that turn because most Heroes holding an over pair or TPTK are going to have to give up on the hand unless they hold the A or K of the flush. V's rush to donk might be to prevent H from betting large and pricing H into a call of V's bluff. As a bluff, with V's stack, he has to donk vs x/r.

Is it possible V has the KX flush? Absolutely. But why the huge overbet when your hand is that good? It could be a reverse bluff bet, but since V has no history with H, that seems unlikely. V might also have a set, top 2, or AcX. I've seen lots of players with hands that "deserve" to win, like flopped sets, not bet big until the scare cards came out.

I wouldn't say this is a snap call, but I can't fold. There are too many other possibilities for what's happened and, though it doesn't carry much weight in my decision, worst case is I still have two outs to a better hand.

3x pot bet. This is never a bluff unless it is 1am and the drunkest loudest man in the room is trying to run over the table. Or you are playing against someone much better than you see at a regular 2/5 table. This is never a set or 2P. This is always a flush. I can fold. Face up against certain players. I cant understand the paragraphs written by multiple posters advocating for a call here. You might be good 5% of the time.

Well I think if we want to "see turn and river cheap" as op was thinking, that means pot control like just flatting the $45, not a bad price

If you wanted to rep a big hand and apply pressure not sure how well the $75 raise in a $225 pot will work.

Realize we're post-results now, but think it's fair to talk about flop action and what we are trying to do

BTW, I just want to mention that I think this is just way overthinking this spot. Personally, I find this is a really simple spot because I do not have the ability to properly range an unknown opponent taking an unconventional line, so why even try? There's something to be said for just playing your hand for the value that it possesses. Big pots for big hands and small pots for small hands is a thing and it's pretty fundamental to this game, IMO.

Whether I'm calling or raising, when villain donks out like this my chips are hitting the felt simultaneous to his. Does villain have JT, K2dd, AKcc, or 55? Hell if I know. And if he has some of these one pair hands is he going to call a raise or fold? Hell if I know. All I really know is that we have a flush draw with potential reverse implied odds and a backdoor straight draw, and there are next to no hands we can get value from on the flop. So lets see a turn in position with the possibility of improving our hand and the possibility that villain's hand becomes more defined based on his subsequent actions.