Hand History driven straight to this forum with DriveHUD Poker HUD and Database Software

NL Holdem 0.10(BB)
BTN ($21.09) [VPIP: 20.5% | PFR: 15.9% | AGG: 31.6% | Hands: 317]
SB ($10) [VPIP: 25.4% | PFR: 20.6% | AGG: 33.3% | Hands: 63]
HERO ($15.11) [VPIP: 24.5% | PFR: 21.5% | AGG: 35.1% | Flop Agg: 40.9% | Turn Agg: 28.4% | 3-Bet: 10.8% | 4-Bet: 16.4% | Cold Call: 6.8% | Hands: 293763]
UTG ($13.40) [VPIP: 24.3% | PFR: 17.1% | AGG: 36.3% | Hands: 299]
HJ ($12) [VPIP: 25% | PFR: 15.8% | AGG: 29.3% | Flop Agg: 23.3% | Turn Agg: 35.4% | 3-Bet: 6.7% | 4-Bet: 3.1% | Hands: 989]
CO ($7.63) [VPIP: 29.2% | PFR: 0% | AGG: 31.3% | Hands: 25]

Dealt to Hero: T K

UTG Folds, HJ Raises To $0.28, CO Folds, BTN Folds, SB Folds, HERO Calls $0.18

Hero SPR on Flop: [19.21 effective]
Flop ($0.61): 9 6 7
HERO Bets $0.15 (Rem. Stack: $14.68), HJ Calls $0.15 (Rem. Stack: $11.57)

Turn ($0.91): 9 6 7 9
HERO Bets $0.91 (Rem. Stack: $13.77)

No issues with the flop donk. I might size down a tad on the turn since we're basically just trying to fold out 22-55/Ax/better Kx -- those should probably fold to a 2/3-3/4 pot bet, especially since any backdoors whiffed.

I think I like this strategy. Villain "shouldn't" have 67s/69s/79s/8Ts etc that you will have almost 100%. Your range also doesn't benefit too much from betting mergy hands OTT so a pot bet seems reasonable.

Speaking of donking. What is the cut-off point in EV gain you require to start applying donks? I've been looking a little at donking in 3bet pots and solver often likes donking 25% pot on various flops and often very high frequency. I've found this adds 1 or 2 % EV to your strategy. But I think we need to look if we still get that gain by doing some simplifications OTT, because I guess turn mixing in donk pots is a bit tricky and hard to get right.

Id put money with better Hands when out value range shrinks. Aldo would bet smaller as I would with boats.

I don't think this is how we extract max value with the top of our range. We will have a lot of good hands OTT we want to bet big. Villain still has plenty of PP's and A6s/A7s. I don't think turn is a spot where we mainly want to put Ahi in a tough spot.

Turn makes us a little more polarized because we have less 9x that otherwise on a blank would want to continue smaller. But I would guess equilibrium suggests both small and big bets OTT.

If turn was something like 2 I think our range benefits more from a smaller bet, because we still have one pair hands that want to bet for value and protection. Still a spot where we could split into polar and depolar.

If turn was K we are most likely switching completely to a big bet or check strat because we can't bet merged anymore on a card that favours villain.

could you elaborate on that?

*just read the above answer

Lol I'm sorry. I sometimes go on a massive streak of edits.

Why so small otf? Kind of hard to get all the money in by the river, and doesn't a reduced spr benefit the oop player?

1/4 pot donking otf is standard sizing.

An added bonus is that it should give you more wiggle room such that your donking ranges can be less exquisitely balanced then if you used a larger sizing. There's more room for error which is good.

More room for error on the part of villain?

The goal of the donk lead is to put all IP's marginal hands in a tough spot. Hands like AJ/AQ/KQ/KJ have no clue what to do vs a small bet.

This flop also get's checked back a lot as IP, but when we force the action with the nut advantage/more condensed range. We take away positional advantage for a street.

On our part; because we are going to get it wrong sometimes. A similar, but more common situation is betting range as a cbet for a small sizing even though it's a mistake sometimes. You may have gotten it wrong in a specific spot, but it doesn't matter much.

I don't look at it from an EV point of view (maybe that is mistake). I look at it by frequencies. For example on an A73tt board UTGvsBB we should be donking like 15-20% of the time. But I'm not going to implement that into my game because most of my range still wants to check.

But in a spot like this - we should be donking over 50% of the time. So I think it is a small mistake to just never have a donking range on these boards.

The EV gain may only be 1-2% in theory but I think it's much higher in practice. Not many people study how to react to donk leads in SRP or 3bet pots. As far as your comment on donking in 3bet pots. Yeah as OOP we donk lead a ton, even range donking on some boards. Which really no one does.

The hardest part about donking isn't identifying the boards to donk though, it is playing the turn and river and how to go about picking bet sizes.

Since donk spots happen much less often than traditional spots, we are going to be in a lot of unfamiliar waters. But so is Villain. So if we can study turn/river, I think we can boost our winrate a ton because our opponent's will make more mistakes than us.

I don't think such a small flop bet really accomplishes the goal of putting those hands in a tough spot, at least not immediately. I think that'd be true for later streets, but I don't think it's very difficult to defend fairly appropriately even just based on intuition when facing that flop sizing

How exactly does donking neutralize IP's positional advantage? By not letting him x behind?

Well the good thing about poker is that it is testable. So for instance, let's say you had a hand like AJ OTF. And I donk led 25% sizing into you - do you call or fold this hand? (Don't cheat and solve the hand )

The truth is that the 25% sizing has nothing to do with fold equity. It has to do with wanting to put money in the pot when we have both an Equity AND EV Advantage (yes even OOP we have an EV advantage because of how ranges are constructed).

Secondly, I gain more information than you by how you react. If you just call, I put you in a capped vs uncapped range spot OTT. My range can have all straights/sets/2 pair while yours mostly won't.

I doubt many people know what hands we should be raising OTF here and to what sizing. I sure as hell didn't until studying the spot.

Forgot to answer the last question - free cards almost always benefit IP more than OOP. So in high check frequency spots, we force IP to put money in the pot and define his range when he would rather check back with most of his range.

Seems like a pretty clear call to me

I guess raising might not be as intuitive, but I don't think it's going to be very difficult to defend something close to the correct % of hands facing such a small sizing (even if there are some mistakes calling vs raising). I also don't think calling vs raising is going to make a huge difference most of the time for some of those marginal hands (but of course I could be wrong here)

I guess my question here is why 25% over say 50%, especially given that we're OOP with a fair amount of hands that want to pile money in the pot, that's what I'm trying to wrap my head around

And this is why a fair number of pros rarely use donk bets. The flops they can donk are also the ones on which they want to do a fair amount of x raising. This requires balancing 2 ways of playing the same range, and many would prefer to only deal with one.

This is true.

But the reason for donking is also because these are the kinds of flops that tend to get check backed the most.

I think we can just x/r vs players that cbet to much and donk against the rest.

It's mixed with a bunch of different sizing's but 25% is the most frequent on most boards so I just use that sizing. It also has the added benefit of keep IP's range weaker OTT/OTR.

I can see why a lot of people just don't use donks at all in their game, even in MMA Sherdog's High Stakes Course he blatantly says just don't donk at all and you won't be giving up much.

But I like the challenge so I'll stick with it.

Id listen to him. i mess up enough in simple spots using the simplest strategy. I’d rather master no donk range then add it in. IMO you’re underestimating how convoluted the game tree gets when you start donking, and how hard it is to do well.

doesn't make that much sense to me to pot anything

What was the outcome DooDoo?

Plenty of merit learning obscure parts of the tree.

That said, I didn't understand the logic of this min-donk because I wouldn't assume villain folds enough, either in practice or theory. I ran a sim fwiw, seems Pio prefers the larger sizing with it's donk-range (about 11% of range), presumably to target more offsuit broadway folds. I only ran it for 100bb though, so take it with a grain of salt.

I think donking needs to have some reasoning behind it other than just "this flop is good for my range and bad for villain's" because otherwise you are betting a bunch of hands that should not be, and then on this turn, we continue betting with a hand that has essentially no equity vs the calling range.

He just ended up folding. Yeah as far as sizing - I haven't figured out when to increase my sizing on flop donks yet. That's the next step I need to take.

wrt to my turn pot sizing. I ran it through a solve and it never pots OTT, mostly going small again for a high frequency.

Looks like we can split sizing's OTR

I dont see the relevance with the top of our range