It's not random.

Maybe this isn't the best example for a flop but like Nar160 said ITT. Boards like 977/T88 cause massive equity shifts, that is why you donk at a higher frequency on these boards.

If you thought Pluribus and PIO never donk led - you are not really up to the current state of poker.

So you are just betting as an exploit against population?

Because I think theoretically it isn't good. Especially against tougher opponents.

Yeah, I don't think people are doing anything wrong betting the flop vs an unknown. This is how poker evolves and why c-betting a lot has always been good, but is now getting diminishing returns comparatively from just a year or two ago due to people defending more properly/raising more.

Most textures allow the PFR to c-bet vs a BB defense with ATC and profit, it's just a question of whether or not it's the most profitable. However, if you continue to look at turn/river deficiencies you'll see the vast majority of your micro stakes players are egregiously over folding rivers when OOP, so being particular aggressive with a large number of combos is often a pretty easy and quick exploit. This is probably why you've had some success, because although you do some stupid sht it's always over aggression. Take the QQ hand for example, you very likely made that guy fold a very strong hand.

Yeah people definitely donk bet more now. Then again, you need to know how and when to donk too, not just smash buttons. I have this opponent (actually the reg that plays the most on the site) than habitually donks the bottom of his range (and his preflop flatting range is wider than it should be against my raises, despite me being an active player) against me. I'm much more worried about when he checks to me cos that's when he might actually have a hand.

Naturally, I raise all his donks unless I have some kind of monster hand that can allow him to maybe catch something on turn. But most of the time I just re-bluff him and he folds aprox. 90% of times. Easy monies!

It's kinda like a continuation raise. I raised preflop, so now I continue the aggression by raising their donks.

I think you misunderstood him. He was talking about cbetting on paired boards - not donk leading them.

Oops, my bad! Since this is a donk lead topic, I assumed he was talking about defending against cbetting by donk leading. Which is sometimes awesome, sometimes not so much.

I thought overbet was better vs capped range, villain no need to raise flop?

This is a good question and one I started thinking about a bit more recently.

So first off - this whole concept of capped vs uncapped ranges is super outdated. Just because our Villain calls his whole range means we can't overbet? No not true at all.

Uncapped ranges are really just a vague generic term that means a person can still have all his strong hands in his range, but that doesn't mean he has an equity advantage. Nor does that mean that we can't overbet even if he is "uncapped."

So in this hand it is Cutoff vs BB. Let's say Villain opens up from the Cutoff with around 28% of combos. It realistically could be anywhere from 25-32% but 28 seems like a nice middle ground.

CO opening range



Now I gave BB a defending a 26.5% defending range

There's mixed frequencies in both of these ranges but this is not the point of the post



Okay the flop comes down 644

Who has the equity advantage? CO by far - even though we have a more concentrated distribution of 4x he still has all the overpairs so BB is certainly behind.

so OTF the equities (and EV's go like this)
BB


Cutoff



So we should never overbet the flop - but now let's look at how the 2 causes a massive equity shift in the hand.

Turn Equity and EV for BB on 2



Now compare this with Cutoffs' new equity OTT with a 2



Now we have a huge EV and Equity advantage - so we should overbet. Even though Villain is still "uncapped."

I am still studying overbets but the formula seems to be - Equity shift or maintain huge equity advantage.

So BTNvsBB AQ6r - we overbet flop for highest EV. Turn is 5s. We continue to overbet because that 5 is good for us and we still maintain a huge equity advantage.

In this example COvsBB - we donk lead flop and we have an equity disadvantage. But the turn is better for us so now we can overbet because the turn card nets us an equity and EV advantage.

Good stuff, ty
I think the capped range thing is still useful in spots eg for overbetting a brick turn after being cold called on a wet flop, ie villain raises 2pair+ on the flop so we put his sdv hands and draws (which is basically his range) in a tough situation

DooDoo, in your last example, BTN should be capped when he checks back flop because we are always incentivized to start building pots with the top of our range in GTO.

That's why there is an EV shift for BB since they gain the range advantage after we filter our flop range.

Or, is this when CO cbets and turn comes 2s, because 1. That looks weird and 2. we don't necessarily donk overbet because our EV increases.

Forget the merits of donking…. why do you think this is a good combo to use in the river jam? Seems really random....

He didn't check back flop though, he called our donk lead.

Although CO's range changes from calling a donk lead vs cbetting himself when X too.

I think we XR a lot of our strong trip combos so our x/c - donk lead overbet range would be weaker than our donk lead- overbet turn bet range.

it wasn't a good combo - i mistakenly thought the Ace was better for me OTR.

A solid donking strat is one of the hardest things to get right in poker, it's why so much of the literature out there tends to avoid it as there are far more important fundamentals most of us need to work on.

Personally I only bring donk bets in once I have a decent amount of data or specific reads on a villain. Working them in vs unknowns is very difficult as you just don't have enough info on how the react to standard situations.

Stick at it Doodoo, my only recommendation would be to avoid donking until you have many more hands on a villain.

If we donk flop and he doesn't raise, that usually caps him to some extent since solvers will start piling money in the pot with the top of our range most ott

So, in the land of solvers, especially OOP, if hero is not raised, villain becomes pretty capped and overbets are chosen as a way to maximize EV. From what I understand at least.

It doesn't mean we can overbet when villain is uncapped

You're right. Solvers raise all strong 4x on 644r and most weak 4x. Quads are always raised and 66 most of the time.

vs 33% donk lead



Looks like he is capped when he just calls.

Overbets are so tricky to figure out in situations like this. I get the the basic AKx boards - good turns where we can bomb it. But on low boards it becomes a lot harder to navigate.

Thanks for the lesson.

yea lol

The way I have been taught to think about it is, we have to ask ourselves in every spot if villain should be capped or uncapped based on action and if the answer is uncapped, we have to size down, capped, then we size up with the top of our range and can split it to have a middling range also


So for eg.

If we open pre btn/bb and villain defends. we range bet AKx and villain calls, he is automatically capped from a GTO perspective because within GTO they are always incentivized to raise the top of their range OOP.

Or, if we open UTG/MP and villain flats, board is 789tt we should be range checking. if they check back, they are capped and we can develop an overbet range

contrary to this, if villain flats K72, I think they will be uncapped and we can't overbet.

It's especially true for villain IP in 3bp's on dry boards, since SPR is low and they have position they can afford to have a call only strat since it's easy for them to pile money in whenever they want and therefore their turn range is never capped when they peel one off

Only really started to understand it myself so that's not the full story and additionally in practice, people play they ranges poorly from a theoretical perspective so sometimes we end up overbetting into uncapped ranges were they should be capped, but I don't think it matters if we are striving for pseudo GTO ourselves, since it will just cost villain EV in the overall game tree and not be a huge deal for us

Good points.

I wanted to touch upon the bolded part because even though Villain X back the flop here on 987 tt. Theoretically he still has a ton of strong hands in his range.

Villain is supposed to X back hands as strong as 2 pair at almost 100% frequency. Hands like 87s/97s are almost always checks.

Even a hand like 77 (bottom set) is supposed to be X back half the time , likewise with 65s.

So I actually don't think that would be an overbet spot.

Also if you look at solvers and the EV between betting and checking a hand like top set/middle set in Villain's shoes. There is no difference at all. The EV is exactly the same. GTO is so weird

It's an over bet spot. Our value range will need to be very narrow. We aren't overbetting one pair at all.

Hands like top/middle set and high equity draws like Ax flush draw etc

Not very many combos but still there

ok fair enough. I guess my goal is to try to find overbets at somewhat high frequencies. I don't want to have too many bet sizings OTT because that will complicate the game tree too much for me to keep track of.

Like for instance. You can potentially donk lead on most boards between 5-10% of the time. But I am only focusing on 20%+ donk lead spots because I can implement that much more easily into my game.

cool discussion though.

Yea of course we need to simplify for the sake of being human but there should always be an overbet in those spots, and it should be the goal for the construction of these overbet ranges to become second nature

Not much to add on the donking debate

However, I can't imagine that a 4.5x OB forces many more folds than, say, a 2.5x overbet

+1

There’s really no practical difference.