$2500 live centurion
Blinds 600/1200/1200bba
Starting stacks 100k, over 200 runners in level 6, still reg/rebuy period into day 2

Me 250k raise 89dd BTN 3k BB (225k young asian aggressive / talented) calls
Flop QdJs6d
BB donks 5k
Raise or call? I called, mindful of bloating a pot with some sd/fd RIO potential and wanting to realise all equity

Turn 4c
BB donks 13k, raise / call / fold? all seem like options. i see a high frequency of draws in donking ranges and the 4c is a complete brick, so raise may be an option given BB may be denied odds to call which is ideal for my 9-high. folding seems weak but once again rio, I called

River 9s
BB overbets pot 50k, Hero?

I've asked a few players, but keen to get input from 2+2 - especially on how ppl are constructing donking ranges and responses

I think your calls on flop and turn were best. The problem with putting V on a draw is that you block a ton of his possible draws. River is easy fold to me, although KT is certainly a hand you can rep with a shove.

I definitely agree with just calling flop and turn, when you are 200BB deep, none of your outs are to the nuts, and you have position as well. I would definitely not hero call river. KT got there, T9 paired up (and beat you if he is still bluffing with it), and you block diamonds, which is the most likely busted draw. As for how he construct his leading range on this flop, I would not have a leading range in his situation, so no idea. But by default I would assume, that people lead with hands, that somehow connected with the board. It would be very stange to lead with for instance a baby pair or A5 or anything else, that missed completely.

I think call/call/fold is fine. You basically have the hand you want him to be semibluffing with here, so I'm not sure what you realistically beat on the river unless he has exactly Ax diamonds. And that's a big chance to take since your hand removes A9s and A8s, two of the combos that he'd likely flat call with pre as opposed to 3-betting.

I suppose you could raise the flop to try to win it now. Wide as your button range may be, if he's a good player, he should be 3-betting some of his best fits on this flop at least some percentage of the time. This may also factor into metagame and make him more cautious about donk-leading into your preflop raises. I don't know if that's a more EV play than just calling twice, though.

Thinking more about this I think I like raising the flop given how deep we are and we're extremely unlikely to get 3b on this board. As played turn is a clear call - I'd probably just fold the river. I mean he really only has 66/QJ, but you have blockers to diamonds and his sizing is odd if your range is diamonds/AQ/KQ imo.

He defended against a BTN open, so hands like Q6s or J6s would also be fairly standard, as well as all 16 combos of KT, which rivered a straight. Given that he sized up so dramatically on the river, he is actually mostly representing KT in my opinion.

Yea that's a good point - didn't realize he called out of the BB. I do agree with these points.

I like the flop and turn calls. But the problem is the sizing. These are strong 60% sizing bets.

The one hand we beat now that didn't get there is AT. I don't think AK would just call pre-flop.

Ironically T9 now beats us.

I think the important thing is the style of the player. Has he donked before?

It is a strange flop to be donking. Especially with QJ and 66. A cbet is almost always coming and the flop favors the range of the BTN over the BB so he is likely to be able to get a c/r in. So a "talented" player would be donking rarely and then would be extremely polarized.

I would probably fold because the initial two bets were big and looks like he is trying to capitalize on a winning hand. Also, a lot of his double barrel bluffs would be two spades with a spade coming on the turn. And again there are very few hands with two spades that are now straight draws because of the turn. So I think he actually has a big hand on the river.

We haven't lost too much so far, I woold fold.

I think this deep I prefer a flop raise. This flop is much better for your range.

On the river, I see an overbet usually being the nuts in this spot (The villain has KT in this spot is very reasonable). If you can find the guts to your hand into a bluff, then I don't mind going for it once in a while.

Normally I think you should be folding this river. Your hand looks like a Q or J. But you have worse than that.

Anything but folding river is bad. If you wanna bluff, do it with KK since he only really has KT that can b-c. Don't think it makes much sense for 66 to use that sizing and certainly not 2pr. I don't think his sizing makes much sense at all actually when you think about his flop range and how it flows through to the river.

Think you need to be even more explicit with you assumptions mate on his flop strategy and I don't think you're challenging yourself enough to delineate your risky assumptions to the level of granularity you're capable of. It's both to bolster the benefits of this training exercise, but also just proper form for solving these math problems to maximal accuracy.

It's especially important in spots like this where donking is extremely exploitable for value (it took me about 1sec to compute an unexploitable flop strategy--cbet 1bb 100% of the time--so he should almost always get a chance to xr here) and air (BB's range is way behind and its just really bad business to take air and charge headlong into a much stronger range). Donking should lose a ton of EV except perhaps in two dubious universes:

1. You don't cbet enough. Take fat value and begin exploiting since you are assumed to not put chips in aggressively at the proper frequency. It's not totally unreasonable--if all he has is 2pr+ for value and I'm really confident in that risky assumption them I'm folding naked Qx pretty assertively and feeling OK about it, but I'd guess 99% of your Qx in practice call and see turn--again this is mostly a function of people not properly accepting the fact that making risky assumptions is an entire pillar supporting the holistic framework. And I think most players will play there cbet opps acceptably with only a few declines here and there so I'd expect copious xr opportunities and this negates any potential exploitative benefit of donking--if it even exists in the first place. Sometimes I would own myself here and overfold--but a whole bunch of times I totally own V by just folding a queen and I'm pretty confident that the balance of times I am doing the owning.


2. You don't defend wide enough. Take air and begin exploiting. Problem is people never fold a queen OTF in practice (a strategy of very dubious merit IMO) and you'd probably cbet too passively in this universe and if you don't defend enough vs triples then you probably don't defend well enough period and a probe-barrel line exploitatively moves you off stuff just as well and for only two bets instead of three. Why stick your neck out with three bets having 90%+ air when two will work just as well? Besides, people will station down with just a queen here a lot. I don't see a ton of overfolding here tbh. I would not be confident at all that my triples get IP off say a naked Q any more frequently than Ip needs to defend in order to be exploitable enough to unpin my air OTF.

I personally think he's just really strong like 75%+ two pair and better. That's moderately large donk sizing--it's not a small bet, the forces generated by your range acting upon his Qx are really strong and it's an especially spewy bet for a naked Queen. Though donking Qx is not totally aberrational for someone who is not adroit. My guess is you need him to start folding 2pr vs raises since you probably only want to start raising sets unless V is terrible. In some universes like vs a silly person you can lower the raising threshold as wide as ~AQ but I'm guessing those universes are rare and I would only raise 66 and better.

His 2pr would be, at best, axiomatic catchers vs my raising strategy. J6, for example, would not be doing well vs my raising range but people are not sophisticated enough to compute that response in real time, and likely not even in a controlled setting.

Something is not right about your assumptions--we all click buttons sometimes, but in my estimation V's done so at least twice (flop and turn) in this hand and in my opinion that's a pattern. Edges are too small to throw away EV like he's done and still be considered competitive EV-wise.

How long did he take to donk? Did it genuinely seem like he was taking his time to make risky assumptions and properly compute maximally exploitative strategies? He's either the Bobby Fischer of poker, seamlessly integrating the insights of a trillion hand database with the power of a NASA computer--or he's just clicking buttons and I think you err on the side of assuming he's mostly fat value OTF and it's an easy spot if you begin with that risky assumption.

^ I personally think he's just really strong like 75%+ two pair and better.

Hey mate, nice to hear from you

While it’s tough to define a population donking range (when GTO has virtually zero donks) I’ve seen mostly draws on those rare occasions BB has donked in the past. Whether that applies to donking a QJx type texture is unknown.

I read the spot differently. V liked to be creative and aggressive and it appeared he was experimenting with a non standard line. I’d basically made the opposite assumption to you - 75% weaker draws and 25% weaker value.

But im not sure. The main reason I posted this was to find out how 2+2 regs defined a donking range here. Tbh I struggled to give BB any value in his donking range at all. There may be some level one strat for BB to start building a pot immediately if I had a low cbet frequency - but that certainly wasn’t evident in the 3 (?) hour sample of hands we’d played to that point. If anything I’d been one of the most active players both pre and post. If BB flopped 2pr+ then I’d expect cr strat, but then I’d also expect that cr from his strongest combo draws.

So that left weaker draws - KTo T9o some dd, along with some Qx. On the river we’re left with KT for value and T9/dd for bluffs.

I agree it’s essential to approach these spots with granular ranges and in hindsight I could make a case for more Qx in his donk range than I’d given him on the day.

At least it doesn’t matter all that much holding 98dd - which plays virtually the same against a donking range no matter how you define it.

But I’m sure next time I’m in this spot I’ll have AJ, Q9 or some other combo that is a nightmare to figure out, probably leading to a flop raise and some horrid donk-raise-jam-? decision.

Data are pretty limited as you might imagine, even with a massive sample, but reality is probably somewhere in between our assumptions.

I found in my data 11 instances of knowing BB's hole cards in similar spots. It's mostly naked Qs.

Filtering for sizing makes a huge difference. Small to moderately small sizing puts a ton more crap in there: for <50% sizing we'll start seeing 6x and Jx start betting, 44, K-high, A-high (with no backdoor FDs).

Only found two triple barrels and BB has 2pr both times: A8 (?) went runner-runner and QJ flopped 2pr and kept barreling. Actually, QJ donked flop and got raised; then he donked turn and got raised again; then he donked river