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NL Holdem 0.10(BB)
BTN ($26.80) [VPIP: 25.3% | PFR: 21.3% | AGG: 37.2% | Flop Agg: 40.4% | Turn Agg: 25% | River Agg: 50% | 3-Bet: 13.6% | Fold to 3-Bet: 52.9% | 4-Bet: 11.8% | Hands: 410]
SB ($11.01) [VPIP: 22.1% | PFR: 16.3% | AGG: 37.5% | Hands: 593]
BB ($12.03) [VPIP: 22.1% | PFR: 16.6% | AGG: 38.2% | Hands: 330]
HERO ($16.31) [VPIP: 24.5% | PFR: 21.4% | AGG: 35.1% | Flop Agg: 40.9% | Turn Agg: 28.4% | River Agg: 31.8% | 3-Bet: 10.8% | 4-Bet: 16.4% | Hands: 295192]
HJ ($18.88) [VPIP: 24.1% | PFR: 18.6% | AGG: 41.8% | Hands: 615]
CO ($18.40) [VPIP: 40% | PFR: 20% | AGG: 50% | Hands: 17]

Dealt to Hero: 5 A

HERO Raises To $0.22, HJ Folds, CO Folds, BTN Raises To $0.75, SB Folds, BB Folds, HERO Calls $0.53

Hero SPR on Flop: [9.43 effective]
Flop ($1.65): 5 7 4
HERO Bets $0.41 (Rem. Stack: $15.15), BTN Calls $0.41 (Rem. Stack: $25.64)

Turn ($2.47): 5 7 4 6
HERO Bets $2.47 (Rem. Stack: $12.68), BTN Calls $2.47 (Rem. Stack: $23.17)

River ($7.41): 5 7 4 6 2
HERO Bets $12.68 (allin)

Interesting spot. I don't have a good understanding of spots in this hand so I'll wait for someone wiser to respond.

Spontaneously I don't think this is a donk spot and river we probably should be a bit creative because we don't have one bluff combos often enough.

why are you donking flop?

Agree, I don't understand **** about this hand. I might actually fold/4bet bluff preflop as an exploit because my pool is too nitty when it comes to 3betting and our ev woth this hand is extremely marginal.

Very curious about wise answers tho!

I'm not convinced by the call pre. I don't mind the donk post flop and subsequent betting but I worry villain could have flush by the river given the action.

put money in with good hands

fold or 4bet pre - dont donk (c/r would look stronger IMO) - bluff without a spade is questionable on the river)

Probably it worked because villains has nearly no 8's in his range - but probably a smaller bet on the river (like 80-100% of the pot will also fold out all non-flushes/non-straights)

I think flop is ok
turn looks forced, surely you have better hands to bet for that size
river would only jam flushes and flush blockers and block everything else, he still has hearts he's folding and the occasional op with no spade. I'm giving up with random hearts and checking any weak pairs for sdv

Do these spots work often enough? esp when we ship double pot, sucks to get called. I had a virtually identical board texture yesterday and similar scenario and got snapped by 2pair :P

Do we need to go so big otr

can someone explain to me why it's ok to don the flop?

I think this would be a better flop to donk BBvUTG

But against a player whose stats lead me to believe he probably 3bets a very polarized range on the button. I don't see how we have enough of an equity advantage to warrant a donk bet on this flop.

Turn looks too big river too.
Flop is fine i guess, depends what is your calling range, if you have all sets should be oke.
I think pre depends on V, vs some we 4b vs some fold vs some call.

It's because we have way more sets. So we have a nut advantage we can leverage with lots of small bluffs to make villain indifferent to calling with his check back hands.

That said, I don't think our line as a whole makes any sense from villain's POV because by the river we're saying we have a flush we've donk barrelled. If we had that magical set on the flop why would we jam a bad river?

In villain's shoes I would be happy to call this down with most of my overpairs, spade or not, believing I was playing a weaker opponent. When they call turn BU's range is weighted towards overpairs and FDs. So we need that blocker imo.

I dont hate the idea of the flop lead, just dont like it in this exact spot. If we were HJ or CO vs BTN it would be a much better spot for it. We would have more sets and 2 pairs in those scenarios, as we shouldnt be opening 44 or 54s utg as we would in HJ or CO, and also flatting 55 and 77 in this formation is a mix at best facing a btn 3 bet. We also have no straights so in reality our value range is fairly limited.

Ok, done a solve which is slightly modified to include A5 (I 4bet/fold as others have suggested) and essentially half the sets, presuming they're in your calling range.

Turns out flop and turn are played well. Pio basically donks range, then on turn cbets nearly everything (!). Although it prefers a larger (125% in my model) sizing.

Pio never jams river though, particularly, I think, with being so deep. Prefering 75% with it's value + bluffs, which is generally weaker broadways, split throughout range and least of all A5. Villain does have to fold a whole lot of strong hands when we jam but, as I said, I think villain underfolds this spot if anything because they probably won't interpret donk barrelling as a legit form of value-betting.

Interesting hand though.

We don't have any spade blocker hands though except AK that we decided to just call preflop.

It's true we have very few spade blockers that make sense so it seems pio shifts focus on bluffing with suited broadways that don't block whiffed spade and heart draws but do block overpairs.

Yeah it's a good point. I've been studying flop donks in 3bet pots and I thought this would be a decent spot for it, but it looks like I just forced the action.

In your SIM does it bluff a hand like AQs OTR over a hand like JTs?

Prefers JTs albeit slightly by ~25%.

Only reason I can think for that is AQ blocks the kind of hands we expect villain to raise our flop donk with? Idk

This.

I think your (DDP's) main theme/problem is you don't know when to just give up on the river instead of following through so often.

But it's also a relatively low freq spot you are in. I.e., Call 3bet OOP UTGvsBTN=>donk flop.

I don't like the way I played this hand at all, but I guess that comes with the territory when trying new things.

I have this as a 0% donk lead OTF.

Like buggit said, this would be better if it were BTNvsCO.

Hmm, my UTG calling range includes 54s and half of 44-55, which yours might not.

After thinking about it I think it's reasonable to presume micro UTG calls with those hands a certain freq, whereas BU effectively never has those hands.

Yeah, 8 or 9 high is probably better to start mixing in donks than 7 high in these positions. OTOH, even if the solver doesn't donk this board it's probably okay as an exploit with a small sizing.