$1/3 6handed
Hero is the effective stack $550
Hero in HJ AcQs
Pre-flop: Villain (UTG) $11, hero HJ 3-bets to $35,
Pertinent dynamics: Villain is opening very wide. I saw him opening J4o for $23, 74s. I have been 3-betting him often and he has not 4-bet me.
Flop: Qc6h3d (Pot: $73-$8 drop= $65)

Action: villain leads into me $55. Hero calls

Turn: Ks (Pot $175)

Action: Villain $110, hero calls

River: Qd (Pot: $395)

Action: Villain checks, Hero jams remaining $350.

Would you exploitatively size down on this river?

If you've been 3betting him often, how does he respond? Those HH's will determine how to play this hand too but normally if someone donks out otf then donks out big again on a king turn when the king should hit our range (he's not afraid of AK) I might fold, especially if I've never seen him turn his hands into bluffs (especially in 3bet pots).

Otr I would probably bet 300 since the jam might look alil more value heavy, but that's just me.

He check raised his draws for flop and turn and shut down river 2 prior times. He fired 3 streets against another opponent twice with the nuts. This was the first donk I saw from him.

This Thread may get moved .. this is not really a strat Forum.


It's def hard not to go for value here, but based on history I may just check back to see what he Donked with and also 'knowing' I'm not getting called by worse anyway. If I do bet I probably go $180 with the intention of calling a shove knowing I'm beat. It's just 'so' obv that you have a Kx or Qx holding that unless he's a POW based on history I just take the 'lucky' Showdown.

If this is not a Reg and 'data' means nothing unless you feel your session is going to keep going for a bit, then I will put out the smaller bet looking for a crying call. But if you have an image of a polar bluff here, then perhaps a shove is better .. so Player dependent. GL

The real question here imo is the turn call. I'm usually folding to most players but if you think he's continuing with a bluff, because there's no draws there, then call but I would mostly fold.

Once we river top trips we're not getting away obv, even if he slow played a FH otr.

His donk lead felt very weak. He is very much a “probe to see where I am type. He showed me 75cc here so I am never folding turn here. He was check raising me light thinking I was only calling top pair and better and shitting down turns when I called but continued barreling when he had value.

I was not concerned about the king given his donk line unless he had exactly KQ. I never saw him go 3 barrel bluff and only went 3 streets for value. I think he weights his sets into his check raising line. The guy was not a bad player but he chose his aggression on me and I could deduce his strategy fairly quickly. I won $1000 off of this opponent alone just playing in position against him and 3-betting his wide opening range.

PB2000 .. Does the King change 'a lot' on a rainbow Board? Why would an infrequent Donker continue here on Turn .. unless for thick value, which might be your point.

I think we need to include 'bad' two pair as well as 45 in this range. Which may not be enough to continue v a 60% pot bet .. again, which may be PB2000's point.

When I run across 'these guys' they do tend to have it when they fire 3 streets .. the problem is stepping out for the first two streets to see what's going to happen.

It's hard for a Player to change his 'stripes' .. but if this guy 'all of a sudden' finds a 2x Donk and then x/snaps the River I think you better start to pay a little more attention to this guy's whole game or perhaps just rack up your profits. For as bad as they seem to play they can also run up a 3k stack in 45 min when they start to hit. GL

WP imo.

Against a tight V, there may be an argument for folding turn. Other than that, everything seems quite standard.

On the river, you are targeting a K or a Q, and those are calling anyway.
Conversely, any lower pair would fold to a river bet, unless you make it extremely small.

It's odd for him to take this large sizing when he donks flop and it's heads up. Usually in spots like this donks are weak top pairs trying to see where they're at, or draws trying to set their own cheap price to chase. Not sure what he's doing donking 80% pot, but it makes me wonder if he's flopped a set and decided to donk for value instead of check-raising.

When it's heads up and someone donks into me when I'm the PFR, I'll usually raise whenever I can beat a weak top pair or TPTK, and often raise as a bluff even when I can't. So, I might put in a small raise here, like 2.5x, planning to fold to a 3B. If he bet smaller, I might raise 3x. Given the stack depth, flat calling to see what he does on the turn also seems fine.

Turn doesn't change anything unless he has Kx. A good player probably wouldn't take this donk flop line with Kx, and I'd expect a good player to check here. So when V bets, we don't know if he's just betting his hand because it's strong, or if he's FOS. But I think we have to call again.

River, I think I'd be checking back a lot. We're either way ahead or way behind, and I think there's some value in seeing what he has that he played this way.

I definitely wouldn't size down if we bet, because this guy could have anything here, and do anything with it. If we bet $100 and he jams, how do we fold?

The one exception would be a scenario wherein we think we can induce V to check-raise as a bluff if we bet small, and we're very confident we have the best hand. I'm not convinced we have the best hand here, and I'd think if this V wanted to bluff the river, he would have just barreled again. A donk-big-barrel-big-check-raise-jam line for a bluff would be pretty amazing.



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He had about $2.2k when I sat down so he was probably doing well. I saw him get paid on some rivers with people calling him light.

It felt like a really weak bet. I am not sure he was thinking that deeply to realize what boards and turns favor my range. I honest think he just marked me as weak tight and was over aggressive. I think folding turn is a mistake with my exact holding.

Agree with your points. Although against this villain I don’t think he would check with a Q and rely on me to bet river. But his line made zero sense. I didn’t want to fold out his bluffs by raising here especially with his 80% sizing. My read on him is that his aggressive style works on most of the passive players in our pool.

He did show me his 75cc for free

I wouldn't necessarily expect him to check river to you with a worse Q, but I also wouldn't expect him to barrel the K turn with a worse Q.

I wouldn't be surprised if he flopped a set with 66 or 33 and he decided to slow down or trap river with bottom or middle boat. When you call flop and turn you likely have a hand that's strong enough to bet when he checks river.

The issue with letting him take control of the betting all the time is that he'll dictate the pot size when we're ahead and we allow him to set his own price to realize his equity with his worse hands and draws.

Think about how his strategy works with his entire range on any board. He can value bet us to death when he has us beat, chase for a cheap price and value bet or trap when he out draws us, and give up or bluff when he doesn't, forcing us to always guess if he has it or not, without us having done anything to help narrow his range. The only way we can be sure we'll win is when we make the invulnerable nuts and cooler him, which doesn't happen often.

Even if (or especially if) the guy's an aggro maniac who just bets all the time, we should be pushing back on him, both with strong hands and bluffs, to avoid being run over.

To use this hand as an example, say we 2.5x raised his flop donk, to $135-$140, and folded to a 3B. That would cost us less than calling flop, calling turn, and either folding to a bet or betting and losing river.

Yeah, we lose value when he folds a bluff, but we'll make that up on future hands, when he calls our value bets, or when we raise as a bluff and he folds a better hand.

Gotta punish the donkers when we're heads up.

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This time, he showed a missed draw bluff. He didn't have to. Sometimes, he won't. Sometimes, he'll be trapping with a better hand or he'll get a bluff through.

Don't be results oriented. If he won't call with his worse hands, we should check.

I don't usually care what info is gained by seeing my opponents' hands, but against this guy, when he donks and barrels huge, I want to know what he has that he played that way.

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Fair points. It was his sizing on the flop that made me decide against the raise. If he bet 33%/50% pot I was definitely raising with top-top on a dry board. With that said, AQ is strong and in real time I did think about raising but thought he might find a fold with a weaker Q.

I was pointing out the 75cc to show how wide he is raising from EP and calling 3bets. Mostly to point out that if he is bluffing all his draws I think he is over bluffing and I feel I have to be willing to call him fairly wide.

In an earlier hand, he raised from CO, I flatted BTN I flopped a combo draw and action went bet-call, bet-call and check river and I bet pot with missed draw and he folded second pair that unblocked my flush draw.

Yea against any other villain at that particular table I was folding turn 100%. With how passive the rest of the players were I would’ve had to consider folding flop ( I say this in jest… kind of…)

Perhaps I am just patting myself on the back and just getting hit by the deck which allowed my strategy to work against this guy this time.

For instance I got lucky here and just let him keep betting.

6-handed
This same villain is $6 UTG straddle
Hero HJ 4d4h
Hero opens $20, only villain calls.
Flop: 8c4s3h (pot $44)
Hero $15, straddle check raises $55, hero call
Turn Kc (P0t $146)
Villain $150, hero call

River 3s (Pot $446)
Villain $250, jam all in $550 on top

Maybe he runs me over on nights I don’t have the goods

You're overlooking the larger point. This time, we had AQ, and you didn't want to fold out worse Q's.

Let's say it folded to us and we raised pre from the BTN with K2s, the BB calls, then donks into us on a flop of K84tt. He probably has a better K (because there are no worse K's), or a flush draw. If we raise his donk, and he folds a better K, that's a huge EV win. Even if he folds his draws or A8s, or 98, we're denying equity from hands that can easily catch up.

The alternative to raising in the above scenario is to fold top pair after we built the pot by raising pre, or just calling down, and hoping top pair, no kicker is good at showdown.

I'm not worried about V folding worse top pair hands when I raise with a better top pair. I raise donks to deny equity from better hands and worse hands that can catch up. Even if he has a worse Qx, he can still hit his kicker to make 2P and scoop.

In this particular scenario, I don't hate the flat call, simply because he did bet huge, almost full pot, which would make our raise larger, and we'd be folding to a 3B. In this one hand, we don't have the stack depth needed to raise-fold when he donk bets almost full pot.

So, the reason to NOT raise here is simply his bet size and our stack depth, not because we don't want to fold out his weaker Q's. Folding out worse hands is not really a concern.

Sorry to be pedantic, but again, you're missing the bigger point I was making.

On the river, we're either way ahead or way behind. He's not going to call our jam with his pure bluffs that have no showdown value. He's not calling with no pair.

If he has a worse Qx, or any sort of "value" hand, in order for him to call our jam with it, he has to think his hand is good. If he thought that, he probably wouldn't have checked. He probably would have continued to bet, unless he's an absolute lunatic who was planning to check-raise with a non-nutted hand here.

Think about it - we could have KQ or KK here. Is he taking this line with QJ or worse Qx? Like I said, V taking a donk-bet-donk-bet-check-raise line as a bluff would be pretty amazing. Doing it with a worse value hand would likewise be pretty astounding.

Much more likely, when he checks, he doesn't have a hand that can call a jam, and probably not any bet of any size, or he's checking a boat to trap. When we jam, he can only call when we're beat, so there's no point in jamming for value, because we won't get any.

MAYBE he shows us he was bluffing if we jam, but maybe he just mucks his hand face down, and we don't find out what he had. If we can't get any more money when we jam in a way-ahead/way-behind spot, then the only value we can get is the info gained by seeing what he was donking with.

Yes, we can and should call down wider against this V, but that's not pertinent here, when he checks to us on the river, and we should just be checking back.

The big takeaway here is don't jam this river in this spot, against this or any other V.

I understand the concept of wanting to deny equity. My perspective is that with the top of my entire range on Q63r serves better as a call against 80% pot bet in order to keep his range sufficiently wide enough. I am not particularly concerned about denying the equity on his slim draws to gutshots and two pair draws. In my mind calling is higher EV because raising will allow him to continue with a strong range that even my TPTK is vulnerable to.

If this is Q63tt where I am unblocking the relevant flush draw I am raising. I am raising with top of range and some of my own flush draws.

I do not think you are being pedantic. You are providing a valuable perspective that I had not considered which is very helpful. I appreciate your time and expertise helping me become a better player. In real time I heavily discounted him trapping and felt my hand was the nuts and I could possibly get a crying call from Kx or Qx.

I don't know if it's patting yourself on the back. It seems like you're overlooking some mistakes because they didn't seem to lose EV. But mistakes are mistakes, even if we get lucky enough to avoid the consequences.

If you're battling against an overly aggro V, and you're getting hit with the deck, and you just always have it, then you won't get hurt by taking a passive, never-raising this guy line in every hand. On nights when you don't get hit by the deck, guys like this will run you over.

Food for thought - this guy is terrible. But suppose this guy is actually not terrible, and just playing aggressively. When he donk leads or check-raises, it's with value. You'll get crushed.

We can't know what the next card is going to be. In the hand above, you flopped middle set and rivered a boat. If he had 88 or 33, it's just a cooler, and you'd have lost your stack, but no one would say you mis-played your hand.

If he had 76, 65, 52, or A5 and turned or rivered a straight, or if he had 99-TT and turned or rivered a bigger boat, anyone could rightly say you mis-played your hand on flop or turn, by not trying to get stacks in when you likely had the best hand, and were only losing to 88.

Someone - including you - might say, "well, I don't want to raise middle set and have him fold out his bluffs," but that's just bad logic. You want to get max value with your strong hands, which means raising to build a pot and to deny equity, not slow-playing to let Johnny Aggro decide when he wants to go broke or take our whole stack.

Fair. In my mind the exploit against villain is to give him more rope to allow him to make more mistakes. But if I think he is shutting down bluffs on the river, I think raising turn here is the better line than what I did. I don’t allow his draws to realize their equity and maximize value versus his two pair holdings.

If you keep playing this way, you'll be very exploitable.

Putting myself in V's place, I can see that donk-leading on rainbow boards is going to be profitable, because you won't be punishing me by raising with your better hands, but checking on two-tone boards will be profitable, because you'll do the betting for me, and I can play perfectly, by calling with my draws when you bet small, or folding when you bet big.

On those rainbow boards, I can donk into your AA, KK, QQ, AQ and KQ with any Qx, possibly hit my kicker to make 2P on the turn or river, and put you in the blender with every 1P hand in your range, or give up and check when I don't improve. I can donk lead with my flopped bottom and middle sets, and know you're not going to raise me with QQ, allowing me to set my own price to get to showdown.

Trust me (or don't) - you need to raise when he donks, with a polarized range of thick value and bluffs. If you flat called flop with KQ or QJ, I'd have no problem with it. But flat calling with AQ is allowing this guy to realize too much of his equity.